The Message in Shrek

The Message in Shrek

In traditional fairy tales, ogres are man-eating beasts, the Prince

rescues the Princess and they live happily ever after. How do the

makers of "Shrek" use presentational devices to reverse this

tradition, revealing the ogre as good, the Prince as evil?

In traditional fairy tales, the story begins "Once upon a time" and

the general story line is a happy one. Fairy tales are designed for

small children so they can't be violent or contain swearing etc.

Snow White is a traditional fairy tale in which the evil queen tries

to kill her but a prince rescues her, a typical stereotype fairytale

layout.

Sleeping Beauty has the same lay out but slightly differs from Snow

White as there is a beast involved.

Jack and the Beanstalk is a fairy tale but doesn't involve any love

and there is a Giant which doesn't feature in many tales as for

example a princess does.

Early on in the film the villagers go to hunt Shrek but are un

successful as he scares them off by "roaring" at them but you don't

get any hint of evil or intent from Shrek to kill the villagers by

diffusing the situation by whispering "this is the part where you run

away" which adds a hint of comedy to the situation. From this we can

tell that Shrek is a nice friendly harmless beast.

A few scenes later Shrek and Donkey meet for the first time in the

film. Donkey's first impression of Shrek is that he is scared but

later finds out that Shrek is harmless and starts to make friends with

Shrek but Shrek finds Donkey annoying by singing, making comments and

constantly talking. From this we can see that Shrek is not as

frightening as he should be.

...

... middle of paper ...

...al fairy tale the ogre would normally eat

the princess or something.

While Farquaad looks, in some ways, like a lord, his actions suggest

that he is evil and uses other people for his own benefit. For example

he used/married Princess Fiona just so he could become king and

clearly didn't love her as when she transformed into an ogre he

instantly rejected her.

The story of Shrek uses presentational devices to reverse our

expectations, so by the end of the film the stereotypical image of

evil ogre and heroic lord have been completely turned on their head

and we see the lord as a small, evil, manipulating and self centred

man, and the ogre to be a heroic, comedic and triumphant and who gets

the girl in the end.

The message of the story is that that looks can be deceiving and

"Don't judge a book by its cover".