For my first post of the new year, I'm going to talk about examples of satire in the movie Shrek. There are four types of satire: exaggeration, reversal, parody, and incongruity. There are many exaggerations in the movie, such as Lord Faarquad's height, Shrek's hygiene and Fiona's fighting abilities. The main character, Shrek, is an example of reversal satire, since he is an ogre, but he is the hero of the story instead of the villain. The fairy tale creatures are an incongruity since they are so out of place with the otherwise realistic world. However, the type of satire that was used the most was parody.
The entire movie was essentially a parody of fairy tales in general, particularly princess rescue stories like Sleeping Beauty. Numerous other individual stories were parodied as well, such as Snow White (Faarquad's mirror). Fairy tales aren't the only things parodied in the movie: many other things are poked fun at as well. The movie parodies pro wrestling in the tournement scene, king fu movies in the forest scene and celebrity marriages in the wedding scene. Throughout the entire movie, the goal of the satire was to make a movie that could appeal to a younger audience with exaggeration and slapstick as well as an older one with the movie's various parodies.
No comments:
Post a Comment