Privilege of the Voice: The Struggle for Authorship in “Little Red Riding Hood” of The Grimm Variations (2024)

Abstract

This article examines the Brothers Grimm’s “Little Red Riding Hood” in comparison with its most recent adaptation in The Grimm Variations (2024) on Netflix, with a particular focus on the concept of voice. Using narratology, feminist narratology, and intertextuality, the study investigates how the notion of voice operates as both a narrative device and a metaphor for authorship. While the Grimms’ version sustains patriarchal control by silencing the heroine, the Netflix adaptation reconfigures the female voice as a source of power and agency. To account for this shift, the article proposes the concept of “negative voice”, which is the possibility of an encroachment of an outsider on the narrative space in practice and effect. By repositioning voice from absence to presence, the adaptation destabilises patriarchal storytelling and reclaims narrative authority for the female voice. The anime thus functions as an “anti-narrative”, reworking familiar motifs to highlight silenced perspectives within the admission of the Grimms’ fallibility. Hence, the anime embodies what we term as “negative voice” in perfect conditions. The findings indicate that voice is not only central to meaning-making but also to the cultural and ideological transformations. Through this micro example, the article argues that foregrounding voice as a critical axis allows for a deeper understanding of how contemporary retellings intervene in and reorganise questions of gender, power, and authorship within the cultural afterlives of fairy tales.