Rhetorical Analysis Of Shrek

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A fairy tale story can easily establish rhetoric devices in order to enhance its storyline or give some character development. The movie Shrek is about an ogre named Shrek and a donkey named Donkey who is ordered by a prince named Farquaad to rescue a princess named Fiona so he can get his swamp back, but Shrek ends up falling in love with the princess himself (Adamson, Jenson, 2001). The movie Shrek breaks the norms of a typical fairy tales, reversing the role of who would be the hero and who would be the villain. This film adopts rhetoric devices like the four cognitive schemata to construe the perception of the characters towards Shrek, the Social Penetration Theory to show the growing relationships Shrek has with Donkey and Fiona, and verbal …show more content…

The first scene of Shrek starts off with him in his swamp having fun to an upbeat track (All Star by Smash Mouth), which presents Shrek to be a laidback, peaceful character. After the opening scene, there were a bunch of nearby villagers, who have negative stereotypes about ogres, headed towards Shrek’s swamp to try to drive him away from there (Constructivism). The usage of stereotypes set a theme for the film, to never judge a book by its cover. Once Shrek met Donkey and Fiona, neither one of them assumed that because Shrek was an ogre, it meant he is an evil monster. In addition, everyone else in the movie does not call him Shrek. Everyone calls him “Ogre” instead, further confirming the stereotype. In another scene after Fiona goes into a cave at night to sleep, Shrek and Donkey have a conversation of the aftermath of their quest to rescue Fiona. Shrek goes off on a tangent about how people hate him despite not even getting to know him. Donkey shows an example of personal construct by telling Shrek that he never thought of him as an ugly monster. This scene shows the bipolar dimensions aspect, where people who never tried to know more about Shrek would have a default negative view about him. Donkey, who learned more about Shrek during their journey, does not characterize him as any type of villain and …show more content…

There are five stages of self-disclosure: orientation, exploratory affective, affective, stable, and depenetration (Communication Studies). Only three steps are visibly displayed: orientation stage, exploratory affective stage, and affective stage. The orientation stage involves non-personal small talk that occur get two or more characters get acquainted. There was a scene where Fiona asked Shrek “What kind of knight are you,” where Shrek responded “one of a kind.” This scene left Fiona with an ambiguous first impression of Shrek. Fiona did get saved by Shrek, however, she was not saved in the way she desired. This small talk helped develop Shrek and Fiona’s relationship because she realized that Shrek was one of a kind (the fact that he was an ogre) and still started has affection toward Shrek. The exploratory affective stage will involve revealing the smaller qualities to the characters’ personalities. There is a scene where Shrek and Donkey are walking in a sunflower field; Shrek came up with an analogy: “Ogres are like onions… Onions have layers, ogres have layers.” Shrek hints that he has a gentler side to him and he wants Donkey to know that he is not just a ferocious ogre. This scene gives the viewers an understanding that he dislikes people only looking at his outer layers, which is his physical

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