Has hidden messages

Rating: 7/10 (30 April 2005)

Shrek has hidden messages that will likely sail right over the heads of its target audience. The resettlement of the fairly tale creatures in the villainous Farquaad's (ruthless and cruel Anglo-Saxon) kingdom is an allusion to the resettlement of Jews in ghettos carried out by many European principalities during the Middle Ages (at the time of Martin Luther, I think they were expelled from England, France and Spain but tolerated, with restrictions, in some German city states). The filmmakers seem to be suggesting that just as Farquaad did not appreciate the fairy tale creatures and their magical and unique abilities and may have in fact been afraid of them, so, too, were Europeans afraid of Jews and their foreign culture and thus unjustly persecuted them. Apparently, all for no good reason. Shrek, the ogre, of course, represents how the African would have been received in medieval European society. He is feared and misunderstood as a stupid, grotesque, and violent menace. Of course, we are shown that in his private moments, he is anything but these undesirable qualities and his moral fibre transcends his physical ugliness. The fact that the fair princess Fiona is revealed to really be an ogress is to confirm that well worn cliché that we are all the same inside. In a classic fairy tale, which Shrek is the antithesis of, written by someone like Hans Christian Anderson for instance, Farquaad would be the hero, Shrek the villain, and Fiona would indeed be the fairest maiden in all the land.