The beloved Sondheim musical is being adapted for film by Disney, but not even the composer’s recent statement praising the film is calming the frayed nerves of the faithful. WARNING: Major spoilers for Into the Woods , both the musical and the film adaptation.
Meryl Streep as The Witch in Disney's adaptation of Into the Woods.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
A little girl and her grandmother are swallowed whole by a wolf, whose stomach is then slit open to retrieve them. A young woman's cruel stepsisters chop off chunks of their feet to fit into her gold slippers. And a boy gets taken in by a woman offering him shelter, then robs them blind and kills her husband.
These are stories intended for children.
To call fairy tales dark would be an understatement. And yet, these are the stories we're raised with — albeit often in sanitized, Disney-fied adaptations. As violent and occasionally traumatizing as these fairy tales are, they still offer the traditional "happily ever after" coda. Especially in their modern, kid-friendly iterations — which cut out many of the more unseemly, nightmare-inducing elements of the traditional folk tales — fables that were once dark morality tales to scare the shit out of children have become appropriate fare for toddlers.
Part of the brilliance of the musical Into the Woods, now a film in theaters Dec. 25, is that the book by James Lapine and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim combine the versions of fairy tales we've come to know and love with the dark undertones that have been scrubbed clean over the past couple centuries — not only the grisly plot elements, but also Freudian subtext. Sondheim and Lapine were inspired by psychologist Bruno Bettelheim's 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. Thus, Little Red Riding Hood once again becomes a story of lost innocence: The Wolf's carnal desires are reflected in his penis, prominently displayed in the original 1987 production, and the red hood retains its symbolic meaning — red for hymenal blood.
Into the Woods' Little Red Riding Hood — who, it should be noted, was played by 16-year-old Danielle Ferland in the original production — sings "I Know Things Now" after her encounter with the Wolf. There are heavy undertones of a first sexual experience: "When he said 'Come in' / With that sickening grin / How could I know what was in store? / Once his teeth were bared, / Though, I really got scared— / Well, excited and scared." Sure, it's literally about getting eaten alive, but the Wolf's ample package does a pretty blatant job of underlining the subtext.
Danielle Ferland sings "I Know Things Now" in the original Broadway production of Into the Woods.
As with any movie musical, Disney's upcoming adaptation of Into the Woods has filled musical theater fans with a mixture of anticipation and dread. There are plenty who will see every new movie musical, and chances are, find a way to love it, flaws and all. In this case, it's not difficult to have faith in the cast — most of whom ostensibly know how to sing — and director Rob Marshall. (Yes, even after his 2009 adaptation of Nine.) And naturally, it's comforting to know that Sondheim has given his stamp of approval, and that Lapine himself wrote the screenplay. The real red flag here is that the film comes from the same studio that popularized so many of the fairy tales from which Into the Woods borrows: Disney.
You can't Disney-fy Into the Woods because Into the Woods is already a deliberate subversion of Disney-fied fairy tales, challenging the notions of heroes and villains and ensuring that "happily ever after" comes with a caveat or several. To make the work more kid-friendly is to rob it of its thematic weight. (Check out ABC's fun but light Once Upon a Time for a glimpse of what a family-friendly fairy tale mash-up looks like.) And I'm not only referring to the aforementioned Freudian subtext: "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" are still parables of lost innocence, whether or not that's spelled out overtly. The real danger of treating Into the Woods like any other Disney film is that doing so undermines the musical's refusal to give its audience a true happy ending.
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