Shrek is an American animated fantasy film written by Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio, Roger Schulman, and Joe Stillman. The film includes both human and animal characters. Characters in the movie are used in showing the gender roles by depicting the masculinity, femininity, and intersectionality. Actors in Shrek represent gender roles through various traits and tasks that they play in the film. Gender roles are the social norms that dictate different behaviors that are people consider as appropriate, acceptable, or desirable based on the perception of sexuality. The notion of gender roles is far displayed by the presence of masculinity and femininity in society. Gender roles have significantly been staged in the film Shrek using animals and humans.
In Shrek, characters are used to exhibit the idea of gender roles. For instance, Shrek is given a trait of masculinity in his way of life. He is associated with doing hard tasks related to masculinity. He is seen rescuing Princess Fiona. Additionally, he is not liked in society because of his character of practicing masculinity like pride. His pride is also seen in a huge way when he is asking for his swamp back from Lord Farquaad, who had taken it away (Bateman, 2012). The movie uses ogre characters to portray the nature of masculinity in society, tall and strong.
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Usually, the male and female genders differ from each other based on the role played by each. Activities like mode of dressing are used as the non-verbal communication to show the difference in gender roles. In the movie, Shrek tends to behave differently on the occasions of the moment and men. He maintains greater distance when meeting with Donkey as compared to when he was meeting with Fiona. His behavior is greatly attributed to his masculine characteristics.
Men and women have specific roles that they are expected to play in their daily activities. Often, women are supposed to be feminine, weak, and engage in natural tasks. In the case of Fiona, she is not exactly that. She portrays masculine traits when she fights her attackers back. She breaks the stereotype of the society where women do not engage in a fight because they are male duties and responsibilities. Fiona still shows her feminine nature when she stops in the middle of a kick to make her hair to show the female nature of caring about how she looks despite being in a fight. The stereotype is seen when Lord Farquaad seeks to recruit people to go and rescue the princess. Lord Farquaad gathered all his top knights in DuLoc and requested his guard to pick the best men (Marshall & Sensoy, 2009). The statement mentions that the only members of the society that are expected to be tough enough and engage in such activity are male and not females.
Shrek is not a stereotypical prince Charming, he went to rescue the princess despite him not being a knight and eventually defeating all those that had been chosen by Lord Farquaad. Therefore, he confirms that he is indeed not some insufficient being despite him being portrayed as a scrappy dog figure when he appears from the adventure (Marshall, 2012). Shrek is taller and way stronger than any other member of the team of knights selected, which makes him look even more masculine compared to other males. Height and strength have always been a necessity associated with courage, and the ogre had it all.
The film presents a proverbial plot where a princess in need of rescuing. Even though Princes is displayed as more self-sufficient, she still shows the need for help from a courageous person to save her because she is incompetent in doing so herself. This indicates that despite having masculine traits, Fiona, as a woman, is still feminine. Fiona has the notion of helplessness, which she shows when she sees Shrek reaches at her chamber to rescue her. She, therefore, closes her eyes to pretend sleeping while waiting for Shrek to kiss her (DreamWorks, 2019). She willingly submits to the fairytale ideology of a helpless damsel in anguish. Through the entire practice, she was disappointed that things were not unfolding as it was supposed to be. The thought influences her for so long through the loyalty and magic of the community. Therefore, she continues to perpetuate and support the idea. She spent so much time awaiting her happily ever after. Fiona expected Shrek to act just like a stereotypical prince as she expected.
Throughout the film, the clinched gender roles are omnipresent. Before the introduction of Princess Fiona, the magic mirror presents the suitable bachelorettes to Lord Farquaad just as they are a price on the game show, thus implying that these women are up to his ownership. To Lord Farquaad, women are worth nothing more than a mere path to the crown. He degrades women by considering them as property or even a farm of animals.
Donkey and Shrek are heard poling fun to women and their value to society when he said that even though Fiona was an adamant woman, she was still waiting for them to save her from the dragon. On their way back to the castle, Fiona was in constant complain and demanding. Therefore, Shrek chose to shut her up physically (Marshall & Sensoy, 2013). This portrays women as annoying for their chatters hence giving them the authority to exploit and exercise their dominance on them when they are annoying. The act of cooking breakfast for Donkey and Shrek after realizing that she had misbehaved is a stereotype of how women are portrayed. Women are said to belong in the kitchen and responsible for performing light duties like cooking while men provide for the family. Besides, while making a camp to spend the night, Fiona insisted that she wanted to add some homey touches to the place. This reinforces the idea that women are homemaker as they are the only ones that can be trusted with activities entailing to decorating and cooking.
According to Marshall & Sensoy (2009), there is a fear of being rejected due to an unusual appearance. Fiona is afraid that Shrek might fail to accept her because she is not an ogre. She is seeking to help Shrek to the extent of crying by herself. Crying is a character associated with femininity because they are considered weak. Her femininity is also seen when she puts all her energy into helping Shrek develop a relationship with her family.
In addition to reinforcing the stereotypical gender roles of women in the movie, Shrek ridicules deviation from idealized masculinity. The character of Lord Farquaad symbolizes the penalty of toxic masculinity brought out and exemplified physical form. Shrek is always poking Lord Forquaad for lack of height and strong masculine traits. The film associates masculinity to height, thus the notion of gender roles in comparison to the formerly recognized female gender roles (DreamWorks, 2019). For instance, when Lord Farquaad tries to such as when he had fake armor leg built into the side of his horses, he appears tall in front of princes Fiona. When he had his cake topper set at the same height as that of the princess, Fiona pushed it further sown in the cake, thus implying that shortness is something that should be hidden. To men like Farquaad, they are expected to feel embarrassed for being short as it is seen as weakness, especially to men.
Conclusively, the film Shrek is successful in changing the view of gender roles in society. There is a shift of the femininity and masculinity as characteristics in an attempt to gain perfection. It is due to such changes that Shrek is seen to demonstrate feminine traits like crying when he is no longer able to explain his love for Fiona. On the other hand, Fiona is seen displaying masculine characteristics poke fighting Robin Hood and pride while responding to Lord Forquaad. Throughout the film, the character and personality have been vital in depicting gender role changes. Shrek makes signs of progress in a positive direction by evading a conventional princess or knight in good armor. The consistent use of the gender roles complemented by the clinched ideas of the happily ever after implant such insights into the heads of the audience.
References
Bateman, J. A. (2012). Multimodal Film Analysis: How Films Mean.
Bateman, J., & Schmidt, K. H. (2013). Multimodal film analysis: How films mean . Routledge.
DreamWorks. (2019). Shrek. Accessed from https://www.dreamworks.com/movies/shrek
Marshall, E., & Sensoy, Ö. (2009). The same old hocus-pocus: Pedagogies of gender and sexuality in Shrek 2. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education , 30 (2), 151-164.
