Three Little Pigs
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Image:Three little pigs - the wolf lands in the cooking pot - Project Gutenberg eText 15661.jpg Image:Three little pigs - third pig builds a house - Project Gutenberg eText 15661.jpg Image:Three little pigs and mother sow - Project Gutenberg eText 15661.jpg Three Little Pigs is a fairy tale featuring talking animals. Published versions of the story date back to the late 18th century, but the story is thought to be much older. The story was assured its place in world's folklore thanks to an immensely popular 1933 Walt Disney animated cartoon.
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Plot summary
Mother Pig sends her 3 little piglets out into the world to live on their own.
The first little pig builds a house of straw, but a wolf blows it down and eats the pig. The encounter between wolf and pig features ringing proverbial phrases:
- One day the big bad wolf came and knocked on the first little pig's door and said "Little pig, little pig, let me come in." And the little pig answered "No, no, I won't let you come in, not by the hair on my chinny chin chin." "Well," said the wolf, "then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in." So he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down and ate the little pig.
The second pig builds a house of sticks, has the same conversation with the wolf, and meets the same fate.
The third pig builds a house of bricks. The wolf cannot huff and puff hard enough to blow the house down. He attempts to trick the third little pig out of his house, but the pig outsmarts him at every turn. Finally, the wolf threatens to come down the chimney, whereupon the third little pig boils a pot of water into which the wolf plunges. The little pig cooks the wolf and eats him.
The phrases used in this story, and the various morals that can be drawn from it, have become enshrined in western culture.
In recent years the story, as has happened to other fairy tales, is often softened from its original version. In these versions, neither the wolf or the pigs end up eating each other. For instance, the two less prudent pigs escape to the house of the third pig while the wolf is captured rather than boiled.
History
Printed versions - Traditional
The tale has several similarities with "The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids" (the "kids" being young goats) included in Grimm's Fairy Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen, or Children's and Household Tales) by The Brothers Grimm, a collection which was first published in 1812 and had several revisions and additions till 1857.
The tale of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf was included in Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, first published around 1843, and seems to have become popular during the late 19th century. Variations of the tale appeared in Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings in 1881 and Nights with Uncle Remus in 1883, both by Joel Chandler Harris, in which the pigs were replaced by Brer Rabbit. The story in its arguably best known form appeared in English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, first published in 1898 and crediting Halliwell as his source.
Printed versions - Re-envisioned
The Three Little Pigs were prominently featured in the second story arc of the Fables comic book. Two of them were prominently involved in an attempt to overthrow the Fabletown government, and were beheaded for the murder of the third pig, who had tried to warn Snow White of trouble brewing at the "Farm" where non-human-looking Fables are required to live. At the end of the story arc, they were replaced by transformed giants, since the Fables believe that the existence of real-life counterparts of well-known figures from stories is necessary. The giants had agreed to this transformation because the only other option they had was an enchanted sleep---they are difficult to hide and impossible to explain.
A more recent version titled The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig switches the character roles of the traditional story.
Works influenced
In Japan, the puppet show that draws the subsequent story of Three Little Pigs, Bū-Fū-Ū , was aired in 1960 to 1967. The show named Three Little Pigs Bū, Fū and Ū, and these became pronouns of them in Japan.
The Disney cartoon
Today, the most popular version of the story is an animated short film produced by Walt Disney and directed by Burton Gillett, Three Little Pigs, first released on May 27, 1933 by United Artists. The short introduced names for the pigs: Fifer Pig (with the voice of Dorothy Compton), the one who played the flute and built the straw house; Fiddler Pig (Mary Moder), who played the fiddle and built the stick house ; and Practical Pig (Pinto Colvig), who played the piano only after he built his brick house and felt safe in it. The latter proved his ability to stay ahead of both his brothers and the wolf, in taking authority over his brothers, defeating the wolf and playing a practical joke on his siblings. The voice actor for the Wolf was Billy Bletcher.
The movie was phenomenally successful with audiences of the day, so much that theaters ran the cartoon for months after its debut. A number of theaters added hand-drawn "beards" to the movie posters for the cartoon as a way of indicating how long its theatrical run lasted.
Animator Chuck Jones said, "That was the first time that anybody ever brought characters to life [in an animated cartoon]". (Other animation historians, particularly admirers of Winsor McCay, would dispute the word "first.") The straw and stick pigs are frivolous and care-free; the brick pig is cautious and earnest.
One sequence in the cartoon, which showed the Big Bad Wolf dressing up as a caricature of a Jewish peddler, was excised from the film after its release and replaced with a less offensive sequence, with the Wolf pretending to be the Fuller Brush man instead.
The original song composed for the cartoon, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", was a best-selling single. When the Nazis began expanding the boundaries of Germany in the years preceding World War II, the song was used to represent the complacency of the Western world in allowing Hitler to make considerable acquisitions of territory without going to war.
Sequels
Disney produced several sequels to Three Little Pigs, though none were nearly as successful as the original. The first of them was The Big Bad Wolf, also directed by Burton Gillett and first released on April 14, 1934. All four characters of the original film returned along with two new additions: Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, originating from a different folktale which also featured a wolf as the villain. The plot was fairly simple. Practical Pig is seen building an extension to the shared residence of the three pigs.
The added space is presumably needed as the residence was originally intended for a single occupant. Meanwhile, Fiddler and Fifer Pig offer to escort the Red Riding Hood to her grandmother's residence. Against the advice of Practical, the trio attempts to follow a shortcut through the forest. They encounter the dressed-in-drag Wolf and barely evade capture. He proceeds in running ahead of them to the residence of the old woman. The Wolf places her in a closet and then awaits her granddaughter to arrive. The young girl soon does, but also enters the closet with the assistance of her grandmother. Then Fiddler and Fifer Pig alert their brother to the situation. Practical arrives and soon manages to send the Wolf running by placing hot coals and popcorn into his trousers. The short contained several gags but at the time failed to repeat the commercial success of the original. Modern audiences have found it entertaining enough but still inferior to its predecessor.
In 1936, a third cartoon starring the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf followed, with a theme more towards The Boy Who Cried Wolf. This short was entitled The Three Little Wolves and it was so called because it introduced the Big Bad Wolf's three cub sons, all of whom just as eager for a taste of the pigs as their father. This short opens with the Wolf describing to his sons the edible parts of a pig. The cubs, after pelting their father with stones shot from slingshots just for a prank, all sing and dance to "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" Then it fades to Fifer and Fiddler Pig doing the exact same thing of singing and dancing. They then discover a wolf alarm (used for emergencies only) and then they discover the Practical Pig building a contraption called a Wolf Pacifier. Fifer and Fiddler then play around with the alarm (which is in the form of a horn) to get Practical's attention and when he discovers it was just a trick, he warns his brothers, "Someday the wolf'll get ya. Then you'll be in a fix. You'll blow that horn and I won't come. I'll think it's one of your tricks." He then storms off in a huff. Unbeknownst to Fifer and Fiddler, however, the Big Bad Wolf and his three sons are stalking them. The Wolf dresses in drag, this time as Little Bo Peep and he/she sadly tells the pigs that he/she lost his/her sheep and doesn't know where to find them. Then the pigs discover the sheep (the Wolf's three sons in disguise) and the Wolf and his sons, still in disguise, run away home, to the wolves' cave and the pigs follow. The Wolf then locks the door and swallows the key. At first, the pigs embarrassedly think that "Bo Peep" has sexual intentions (a rather unusual scene), but of course, the wolves spring their trap and soon overwhelm the pigs. They try to blow the wolf alarm horn, but Practical, of course, doesn't come. Soon Fifer and Fiddler are soon put on a dinner dish by the wolves and they tauntingly blow the horn repeatedly. The pigs challenge the wolf cub blowing the horn to blow it real loud. He tries to, but can't, and the pigs think that was a sissy blow. So the Big Bad Wolf tries to blow the horn. This time, it gets tooted real loud, so loud that this time, Practical hears and goes to the rescue, pulling the Wolf Pacifier along behind him. Now the Wolf is just about to place the pigs in the oven, but just before he does so, he hears a knock on the door. It's Practical, disguised as a fruits-and-vegetables salesman and he's giving a free sample on tomatoes and the Wolf accepts the offer and comes out, asking for Practical to let him have it, which Practical does... right in the Wolf's face. Furious, the Wolf chases Practical into the Wolf Pacifier contraption. The result is the Wolf getting assaulted by the contraption's many mechanisms: kicked by boots, bashed on the head by rolling pins, punched by boxing gloves, tarred and feathered and, finally, being shot out of a cannon. The short ends with the Three Little Pigs emerging from the Wolf's den, playing "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" patriotically (with Fifer playing a flute, Fiddler beating a homemade drum and Practical holding a flag, which is really the Wolf's clothes).
The moderate, but not blockbuster, success of the further "Three Pigs" cartoons was seen as a factor in Walt Disney's decision not to rest on his laurels, but instead to continue to move forward with risk-taking projects, such as the multiplane camera and the first feature-length animated movie. Disney's slogan, often repeated over the years, was "you can't top pigs with pigs."
Another cartoon, The Three Little Bops, featured the pigs as a jazz band, who refused to let the inept trumpet-playing wolf join until after he died and descended into hell.
The Lil Bad Wolf was a character in Disney comic books. He was a constant vexation to his father, the Big Bad Wolf, because the little son was not actually bad. His favorite playmates, in fact, were the Three Pigs.
External links
- 19th century versions of the Three Little Pigs story
- Similar tale by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm
- A page examining Disney's Three Little Pigs (not valid as of 16MAR2005, moving servers)
- Lyrics of "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf"de:Die drei kleinen Schweinchen
es:Los tres cerditos ja:三匹の子豚 pt:Os três porquinhos sv:Tre små grisar zh:三隻小豬