Shrek and His Modern Princess

Shrek and His Modern Princess

The film Shrek makes myriad allusions to various other texts. These allusions are usually presented as a parody of an original text, in which the makers of Shrek imitate the style of the parodied texts. Their re-creation of these hypotexts (Dentith 36) involves subverting key aspects of the original texts, setting up incongruities between what the audience expects to see and what actually takes place. The focus is thus brought to the audience, as writers of media texts write based on assumptions that they make of their audiences. Studying the assumptions behind the construction of both the original texts and the parodies can then reveal something about the audiences for whom these texts were created.

This basis of creating media texts is important in order to further explore broader issues that are raised in Shrek. Since the effectiveness and popularity of many texts is based largely on creating a text that the audience can relate to and understand, such media texts are often reflective of society's conventions and mindsets at the time of the creation of both the parodied text and the parody itself. In the case of Shrek, in which one of the main parodied texts can be said to be Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty (first screened in 1959), the film brings audiences back to the conventions and mindsets of the 1950s and sets us up for a conventional "fairy tale." However, in imitating the 1959 classic, then re-creating it in a modern, contemporary context, Shrek provides a contrast between the conventions of the 1950s and the reality in society today. By looking closely at a scene in Shrek, I will explore how the filmmakers use parody to show the degree to which conventions and mindsets have chan...

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...in the film is deliberately dramatic in this scene. As the audience recognizes Princess Fiona's traits as characteristic of the modern day woman, they are led to question the validity of the age-old conventions and stereotypes that are reflected in Disney's fairy tales, and this forces the audience to the realization of the extent to which the reality of "woman" has changed over the last fifty years. This achievement is one example of the success of Shrek in addressing issues using the tool of parody, which provokes questioning and critique at a deeper level.

Works Cited

Dentith, Simon. Parody. London: Routledge, 2000.

Shrek. Video CD. Dir. Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson. Dreamworks, 2001.

Wilson, Deirdre and Sperber, Dan. "On Verbal Irony." The Stylistics Reader. From Roman Jakobson to the present. Ed. Jean Jacques Weber. London: Arnold, 1996. 260-279.