Growing up every little girl has been read stories full of magic, princesses, and castles that always begin with “once upon a time,” and end with “and they lived happily ever after.” These fairytales are a practically inescapable piece of childhood passed down from generation to generation that relay the story of a girl being or becoming a princess and finding her prince charming. In 2004, DreamWorks released a movie based on many classic fairytales familiar to both children and parents entitled Shrek 2. From the surface it seems that the movie is a traditional fairytale including all of the typical aspects that go along with that, the castles, the magic, the mythical creatures, however, Fiona is not your normal princess.
Just a Wave of My Magic Wand
Rhetorical Analysis:
All the princesses in the stories before have been beautiful. They have long flowing hair, clear skin, perfect straight white teeth, inexplicably small waists, and are human, but Fiona on the other hand is an ogre. Fiona has green skin, rotting teeth, is bigger boned, lives in a swamp, and is not married to a prince, but an ogre, not even a prince ogre, just a normal ogre (Shrek 2). Ogres are relatively common in fairytales although they are normally depicted as huge, man eating monsters. While Shrek 2 is largely based off of traditional fairy tales it is obvious from the beginning that the movie itself is not one. The scene from Shrek 2 that I am analyzing is when the magical fairy godmother appears to help comfort the upset princess Fiona and preforms a song and dance number in the process. The fairy godmother’s scene was meant to not only entertain but to break the mold of normal, expected fairytales by making them seem absolutely ridiculous and absurd to viewers through their purposeful use of juxtaposition, stylistic choices of music, imagery, color choices and position of symbols throughout the scene.
When you are talking about fairytales and fairy godmothers there is one story in particular that everyone’s mind jumps to, often considered the most popular or classic fairytale, Cinderella. Walt Disney’s version of Cinderella was originally released in 1950 setting the standard for children’s fairytale movies advertised as a “love story with music” made “for all the world to love” (“Cinderella (1950 Film)”). Shrek 2 plays off of the idea of Cinderella being the perfect epitome of the type of fairytales and movies they are poking fun at using the rhetoric device of juxtaposition throughout the scene with the fairy godmother. At the beginning of the scene in both Cinderella and Shrek 2 the protagonist is shown crying and upset when their fairy godmother appears out of thin air and magically gives their princess a new fancy dress. The juxtaposition would be that in Cinderella the fairy godmother forgets about Cinderella’s outward appearance and almost sends her off to the ball without a dress, while in Shrek 2 the first thing the fairy godmother does is show shock and discomfort over Fiona’s appearance as an ogre, made obvious through her facial expression, nervous laughter, and stumbling speech, and gives Fiona an extravagant gold dress hand made by hundreds of tiny mice to make her feel better (Prole). By creating two similar situations, both including an upset princess and a fairy godmother, but making the perception of appearance and the dress stark differences it draws attention to the craziness of placing value in outward beauty and giving someone a pretty a dress to fix their problems making many traditional fairytales seem irrational and nonsensical.
The rhetorical use of juxtaposition is used alongside with imagery through the colors used in the scene as well. The fairy godmother is wearing a sparkly light blue gown in the forefront of the screen similar to the one Cinderella wears, again reminding the audience of the timeless tale,while the background is black with green and purple spot lights shining down. The black background “symbolizes the unknown, and all our fears associated with the unknown…because we can see well during the day and only poorly at night” (Bang 236). The purple spotlights are representative of mystery and hiding something (Bourn, “Meaning of the Color Purple”) and the dark green ambition and greed (Bourn, “Meaning of the Color Green”). By placing the blue that is calming, safe, and reminiscent of Cinderella in the front and the darker more menacing colors in the back it sends the message that the stories we are so familiar with have a darker meaning hidden behind their appealing surface. It is clear to see how DreamWorks purposefully includes elements that are similar to that of the original Cinderella movie to evoke the audience’s memories of the fairy godmother scene in Cinderella while making other features of the scene the exact opposite of the Cinderella movie. This causes the components of the scene that are different to seem glaringly obvious, extreme, and more impactful than if the viewers did not recognize the same comparison the creators had in mind, furthering the absurdity of the traditional scene.
DreamWorks choices in music and sound also has an important impact on the audience and is used as a tool to further their purpose of making classic fairytale ideals seem ludicrous. In Shrek 2 the fairy godmother enters singing a sweet melody on top of slow, sugary instrumental background music while floating down to Fiona in a bubble (Prole). This classical sounding music at the beginning is meant to remind the audience of exactly that, the classics, the customary fairytales the audience is familiar with that often feature similar sounding music. However, right as the fairy godmother reaches the balcony where Fiona is the music comes to a halt and you can hear an audible and loud pop as her bubble bursts. This intentional use of imagery, music, and sound all come together to portray the idea that in reality, fairytales are ridiculous and portray false sentiments. Molly Bang describes the messages sent through different imagery tactics saying, “[t]he upper half of a picture is a place of freedom, happiness, and triumph,” (Bang 231). This same idea applies to the fairy godmother entering flying in from the top of the screen showing that she is this ideal, happy, positive, typical fairytale that is cohesive with the classical music playing and sweet sounding melody being sung. The loud popping noise that marks the end of this fantastical music brings the audience’s attention to the fact that the bubble she was floating in has popped. Sturken and Cartwright speak on the representation of images saying “[o]ver time, images have been used to represent, make meaning of, and convey various sentiments” (Cartwright 245).
Representation through images is seen in the image of the bubble popping meant to convey the popular idiom of bursting one’s bubble. The free dictionary webpage defines the idiom to burst someone’s bubble as “to destroy someone’s illusion or delusion; to destroy some’s fantasy” (“burst bubble”). The bubble popping in Shrek 2 is meant to convey the same idea, that this overly positive, perfect, happy fairytale is not reality but someone’s bubble, illusion, or fantasy while reality is what happens after the bubble is popped and the fairy godmother comes back down to earth. After the bubble has popped music begins to play again and the fairy godmother sings to Fiona about how she can fix things and the music continues to get faster and faster until it becomes chaotic and the lyrics become absurd and barely comprehensible. This use of imagery, music, and sound shows how DreamWorks is trying to communicate the idea that the reality is fairytales are crazy and outrageous and are just a mere illusion of perfection from the outside.
Traditional fairytales still remain a significant piece of childhood and an important piece of literature known for creating shared memories between parents and children for generations with or without the input of DreamWorks input on the matter. However, DreamWorks does successfully manage to respect the timeless tales and effectively entertain their audience while also implementing rhetorical devices such as juxtaposition, colors, imagery, positioning, references, and musical elements to successfully escape the conventions of a typical fairytale style children’s movie in order to reveal the underlying irrationality and absurdity behind these classic tales.
Works Cited
Bang, Molly. “Excerpts from ‘Picture This: How Pictures Work.’” Everything’s a Text. Eds. Dan Melzer and Deborah Coxwell-Teague. Boston: Rearson Education, Inc., 2011. 227-44.
Bourn, Jennifer. "Meaning of The Color Green." Bourn Creative. Bourn Creative, 5 Jan.2011. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.
- - -. “Meaning of The Color Purple.” Bourn Creative. Bourn Creative, 5 Jan. 2011. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.
“burst bubble.” McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. 2002. The McGraw Hill Companies, Inc. The Free Dictionary. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.
“Cinderella (1950 Film).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Sept. 2015. Web. 28 September 2015.
Prole, Aaron. “Shrek 2 The Fairy Godmother Song.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 27 May 2014. Web. 29 Sept. 2015
Shrek 2. Dir. Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Vernon. DreamWorks Pictures, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, FilmFlex, 2004. DVD.
Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright. “Excerpts from ‘Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture.’” Everything’s a Text. Eds. Dan Melzer and Deborah Coxwell-Teague. Boston: Rearson Education, Inc., 2011. 244-51.
Zemliansky, Pavel. “Literacy Is Not Just Words Anymore.” Everything’s a Text. Eds. Dan Melzer and Deborah Coxwell-Teague. Boston: Rearson Education, Inc., 2011. 210-19.
Author's Note:
From this project I learned how to look at a work in any given media form text, images, sound, video, etc. and analyze it to determine a rhetorical purpose and what means the author used to excute their purpose whether their techniques were considered good or bad. Through the digitizing of this piece I opted for a back ground that was reminicient of an old fiary tale book since that was the main topic of my rhetorical analysis. I chose a background color that went along the same lines meant to look like yellowed or aged paper found in an old story book. I included the YouTube video to the clip that I was rhetorically analyzing to give my audience and quick and acessable way to understand what I was talking about. A lot of my justification relies on previous knowledge of other fairy tales as well specifically Cinderella so I also included a scene from the 1950 making of Cinderella that is heavily refrenced in both the original text and my analysis. I included gold glitter clip art icons to break up text because it both looked like the magic dust in the fiary god mother's wands and matched the back ground of the page adding to aesthetics. Lastly, I included images of both the princesses in discussion right after one another to make their similarities and differences more astute.