Analysis of the opening of the Shrek movie

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                              ‘An Exploration Of ‘Shrek’

 

‘In traditional fairy tales humans are often portrayed as good whilst ogres are terrifying beasts.’ Contrast the presentation of the humans and ogres in the opening few minutes of ‘Shrek.’

The portrayal of the human and ogre in the opening credits of ‘Shrek’ is certainly quite unlike that of which the audience has come to expect or is usually exposed to in the genre of the traditional fairy tale story.’ Shrek’ judging by those first few minutes, is a parody in the sense that it copies the style of the traditional fairy tale story yet adapts it in an amusing way. This is cleverly done by ‘Dreamworks’ using techniques such a colour and light, sound effects, music, and the general characterisation of the main character especially.
          There is a huge contrast between the portrayal of Shrek and that of the humans.

Shrek’s appearance certainly fits the criteria of an Ogre. His stocky, boulder-like shoulders and shiny, lucid green skin is what makes him emerge as a main character.

         The character of Shrek is presented as happy-go-lucky and so content with life, which you can see in the way he looks full of admiration and pride at his home. Shrek leads a modest life. He lives alone in a swamp but he has adapted to this in his own way. Shrek is also presented as having extremely revolting habits. Certainly, they fit the criteria of what one would expect from an Ogre. We see him go through his morning routine in the first few minutes of the film. We can construe that the reasons as to why Shrek outwardly displayed such degrees of improper conduct could be as a result of him living alone.  This essentially means that he can just be himself.          In addition to his bad habits, we see how at tune with nature Shrek is. For example, when Shrek uses an insects’ entrails as a toothpaste. That was not only a demonstration of one of his many bad habits, but also it was also a display of his adaptability to his environment and an embracing attitude of the natural environment to which he was disposed.   Also, If we are to touch on Shrek appearance, and his presentation of having shiny green skin, it can be seen that this further adds to the idea of Shrek being in tune with nature, as the colour green has connotations of plant life and forests and woodland . This further associates him with nature.
          Another of Shrek’s character traits is his voice. Shrek has a ‘Scottish’ accent which is friendly and calming. Not at all the expected, loud, booming voice, of an Ogre. This does the job of bringing the audience to a personal level with Shrek. His voice along with his Characterisation convinces me that the character of Shrek could almost be human. This is quite ironic as in most fairy tale stories the role of the Ogre is seen as vicious and most dislikeable.

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           The characterisation of the humans in ‘Shrek’ challenges that of Shrek’s vastly. The humans in Shrek are presented as very ordinary and uninteresting. None of the humans that we see in the first clip of ‘Shrek’ are acknowledged as individual characters. This, as well as further establishing that Shrek is the central character, goes some way into portraying them as mindless ‘sheep’ in the sense that they show no expression of  individual thought. Also, the fact that we, as the audience see the humans as a mob with no individual personalities works in Shrek’s favour ...

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There are lots of apt points made in this essay but the reason it cannot gain top marks is because it is not a concise response. Points are repeated or drawn out which means the flow of the response is lost. 4 Stars