The widely popular film Shrek, produced and distributed by DreamWorks in 2001, grossed a total of $484,409,218 in worldwide sales (Box Office Mojo). The success of the film has led DreamWorks to create several shorts, companion films, and sequels. From its memorable characters to its whimsical, edgy humor, Shrek was an amazing, highly successful animation that would pave the way for DreamWorks to make billions off the franchise. Shrek’s success can be attributed to three main factors: the range of ages it appeals to, its creative use of intertextuality, and its ability to cover a wide range of the fairy tale functions proposed by Vladimir Propp. According to IDMb, the popular voice actors involved in Shrek were: Mike Myers (Shrek), Eddie Murphy …show more content…
written by William Steig in 1990 (“Shrek!”). The plot of the book and the film are similar in some ways, but the film adaptation creatively incorporates many different fairy tales into its plot to create a new fairy tale. Some of the fairy tales characters included in the plot are the Gingerbread Man from The Gingerbread Man, Magic Mirror from Snow White, and the Big Bad Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood. For the creators to pull multiple elements of different stories into their own, they used intertextuality, as opposed to allusion, to mold the story into a single universe, where each character feels as though they belong in said …show more content…
Vladimir Propp played an integral part in the analysis of the structure that fairy tales typically follow. Born in Russia in 1895, Propp was dedicated to studying folklore and fairy tales (“Propp, Vladimir Iakovlevich”). He studied many folklore and fairy tale stories to break them into individual sections. These individual sections defined what Propp called a “function” of the story that references a common plot device or archetypal character. In 1928, he published a book titled Morphology of the Folktale, written in Russian. It would be another 30 years until the book was finally translated into
Presentational Devices of Shrek and Reversal of Traditional Roles In this essay, I am going to analyse the characters in 'Shrek'. I will mainly focus on Shrek and Lord Farquuad. I will also write about how the film makers use different presentational devices to create an unusual film. Stereotypically the prince is good and the ogre is evil. In traditional fairy tales ogres are pictured as man-eating beasts, while the Princes are tall, handsome and save the Princess.
In this essay I am going to analyse the characters of shrek and Lord Farquaad, and write about how filmmakers use different camera angles, lighting, music and setting to create an unusual fairy tale. The giant in jack and the beanstalk is what we expect of giants/ogres. In traditional fairy tales ogres are normally man-eating beast, at the beginning of shrek, shrek is what you expect him to be like. When the farmers go to his swamp and the meet shrek. When shrek is shouting at them the low angle camera shot makes shrek look intimidating to the crowd and audience.
In this chapter, the author explains how many stories relate to fairy tales, like a parallel. Themes and storylines from popular fairy tales are often reused and made into newer and sometimes slightly different versions of the tale. A prime example of this would be the 2013 movie production of Jack the Giant Slayer or the 2011 production of Red Riding Hood. One characteristic of fairy tales is that they all have a plot and a solution which makes the story easy to connect to. This characteristic makes it possible for there to always be a way to connect a story to the fairy
The creators of films Shrek and Mulan have clearly shown us the hero's journey step by step through the different film techniques and effects used to represent the hero's journey. This has shown us how Shrek and Mulan formed into hero's through the events of call to adventure, crossing the threshold, challenges, the abyss, transformation, revelation, atonement and the
Firstly I will be writing about ‘Shrek’. ‘Shrek’ is an animated comedy film about an ogre trying to get everyone out of his swamp. He goes to rescue a princess from a tower guarded by a dragon to get permission from the king to get everyone out of his swamp but instead he falls in love with the princess.
es indeed, animation is fun for children, but it also expresses important ideas for people of all ages. In some ways, ‘Shrek’ is your classic fairy tale for example, it has a hero, a beautiful Princess, and a dastardly villain. But unlike the traditional fairy tales, the hero is an ugly, ill-tempered ogre, the Princess is not all she appears to be, and the villain has some obvious shortcomings. The award-winning animated film, ‘Shrek’, is directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, the viewers learn that being a good person is more important than just being good-looking. It also shows that true friends help each other in difficult situations and that women can be equally as strong characters as men. These ideas are portrayed through characters such as Shrek, Princess Fiona and Donkey. The directors use camera angles and dialogue to express their ideas.
Walt Disney needed to change his version and many of his other fairy tales and in doing so started a change in the way we see fairy tales. Ask someone today to define a fairy tale and they will tell you along the lines of a beautiful woman put threw hardships that in the end of the story gets the man and becomes a queen of her own castle.
The simplicity of fairy tales and non-specific details renders them ideal for manipulation allowing writers to add their own comments often reflecting social convention and ideology. Theref...
Produced in 2009, The Frog Princess is a Disney animation inspired by the Grimm Brothers’ fairytale, The Frog Prince. Both The Frog Princess and The Frog Prince deal with a multiplicity of issues, all of which contribute to supporting positive messages and morals (Ceaser, 2009). However, though The Frog Princess is based on a classic fairytale, it is far from being the same. The writers at Disney have taken a classic fairytale and created a “Monster” (Prince, 2001). This essay will examine the evolution of the original Grimm Brothers’ fairytale, the messages both main characters represent, and how the adaptation to fit a modern child readership diminishes a classic fairytale. Through discussing these arguments, this paper will prove that Disney’s adaptation into The Princess and The Frog is counter-productive in representing the original story’s messages, morals, and values.
The animated film Shrek is a Dreamworks fairy tale that teaches us to look beyond what we expect to see, by completely subverting the traditional fairy tale concepts of gender, appearance and beauty. The characters in Shrek are vastly different from what we would expect to see in their appearance and behaviour. With unexpected plot twists, the directors of Shrek create important messages and morals that would not usually be conveyed, using techniques such as humour. The techniques have been placed strategically to result in an entertaining and educational film.
In the poem Half Past Two, a young child is in detention, to be let out at ‘half past two’. The room and his detention become a fairytale-like adventure, which Fanthorpe signals in the opening with the phrase ‘Once upon a time’, the typical start of childhood fairytales. The magical experience mostly stems from the boy’s ignorance of the concept of time: completely unacquainted with the idea of numerical time, he uses his own language to make it understandable to himself. Like a fairytale story, he introduces a beast, a clock personified: an alien with ‘little eyes’ and ‘two long legs for walking’, whose language he cannot ‘click’. The fairytale diction used and the imaginative clock-person he conjures is the essence of childhood: creative and magical at once.
communication to more intimate communication. Shrek is the fairy tale where the ugly, green ogre is the hero, donkey that talks non-stop as his sidekick, and there is a princess who turned into an ogre at night. At the beginning Shrek helped the donkey and as result the donkey tried to be his friend even though Shrek insulted him over and over. But the donkey could not realize why Shrek was trying to avoid him and liked to be isolated from the social life. Every one hated Shrek for his ugly outfit without thinking twice. That is why Shrek was tried to keep himself away from everyone and did not want any friend ever. But the donkey was a following Shrek at his every step after all the insulting from Shrek and he escorted Shrek at his journey of rescuing the Princess Fiona. But in real if anyone misbehaves as Shrek did with the donkey can never be friends as the turned out to be very intimate buddy at the end.
Thorslev, writes “The Byronic Gothic Villain (of the novel, at least) is never sympathetic” (Thorslev 22). Neither, Heathcliff nor Shrek has any sympathetic behavior. Both characters do not mind doing what they have to so they feel protected. Also, if they feel they have been wronged by someone, they will not hold back on their wrath when it comes to soliciting revenge. Heathcliff and Shrek carry themselves of being dominant characters, which is important for a Gothic Villain, Thorslev writes that “An air of mystery is his dominant trait, and characteristic of all his acts” (Thorslev 54).
Zipes, Jack. Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Propp, V. (2004) Morphology of the Folk-tale. In: Rivkin, J. and Ryan, M. (2nd ed.) Literary Theory: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. pp. 72-76.