Shrek's Message

Shrek's Message

In traditional fairy tales, ogres are man-eating beasts. The prince

usually rescues the princess, they marry and live happily ever after.

How do the makers of 'Shrek' use presentational devices to reverse

this tradition, to reveal the Ogre as good, and the Prince as evil?

In this essay I am going to analyse the characters of Shrek and Lord

Farquaad and write about how the film makers use different

interpretations making Shrek as good and the Prince as evil to create

an unusual fairytale.

In traditional fairytales they start with an elaborate book which

opens up to tell the story, gradually each page of the book turns to

reveal the next page. The book starts by telling the reader the

background about the fairytale "Once upon a time there lived a lovely

princess" with beautifully painted illustrations.

In traditional fairytales such as 'Snow White and the seven dwarfs'

the witch casts and evil spell upon Snow White, a handsome prince

rescues Snow White and she is freed from the spell and lives happily

ever after. In 'Jack and the beanstalk' the giant chases Jack away

from his kingdom; Jack runs away from the giant as fast as he can

otherwise the giant would eat him.

Language is an important device, and I am going to write about how the

language can create the impression of good and evil in both

characters, and in films. At the beginning of 'Shrek' the film opens

with a leather binded book that opens and starts telling the story

gentle music is played but stops and a giant illuminated hand appears.

The hand rips the page out of the book, you hear a flush of the toilet

at the start and modern rap music is...

... middle of paper ...

...ts job and finds true love by marrying

Princess Fiona. Although Lord Farquaad looks like a lord, his actions

suggest that he is evil. He tortured the gingerbread man, he stole

Shreks swamp, he made the knights fight Shrek, rejected the princess

when he found out after sunset she becomes an ogre but he still wanted

to become king. He is an extremely lazy and selfish person.

The story of Shrek uses presentational devices to reverse our

expectations this makes a good film not just because of the devices

that the film makers use to influence the viewers. The viewer feels

that Shrek is a far nicer character than Lord Farquaad even though by

glance does not look like he is. Lord Farquaad looks important but is

a bitter, twisted evil person.

Perhaps the message of the story is that you can't judge a book by its

cover.