The film includes footage of early sleep deprivation experiments and offers interesting tidbits on the sleep habits of Dali, Napoleon and Einstein. Among the experts represented are psychologist William Dement from Stanford University and neuropsychologist Allan Hobson from Harvard. For all those interested in myth and storytelling as a way to understand ourselves and our universe, this interpretation by South African philosopher Johan Degenaar will make fascinating viewing. In this film, Degenaar shows three interpretations of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. In what he calls the cosmological interpretation, Little Red Riding Hood is the sun, swallowed by night and resurrected.
All cultures have resurrection myths to explain the dawning of each new day.
The psychological interpretation put forth by Bruno Bettelheim is that the story is a symbolic rendering of crucial life experiences. The sexual interpretation is that the wolf is the girl's awakening libido. The hunter saves her from her unconscious sexuality. Perhaps more than the specific interpretations, it is Degenaar's enthusiasm for the use of metaphorical thinking, creative imagination, and artistic expression to bring the unconscious to consciousness. If you do not bring forth what is in you, it will destroy you.