Intertextuality Shrek

In the movie Shrek perhaps the entire movie is a giant example of intertextuality. The movie Shrek is a mixed up fairy tale, the ogre ‘Shrek’ (Mike Myers) who is usually a bad guy is the main character or in a fairy tale sense our “prince charming”. On the other hand our prince charming in the movie is the role of the bad character. Through out the movie there are countless references to other fairy tales; From the gingerbread man, to the three little pigs,  Pinocchio, Cinderella, Snow White, Mirror on the wall, and even in the later movies of the Shrek series the fairy godmother. Then we have a quest of the main character, which is to rescue the princess “Fiona” (Cameron Diaz), who ironically also becomes an ogre after finding her true love (Shrek), from a fire surrounded dragon protected tower of a castle. I feel like the entire movie is based off of the idea that it doesn’t matter what you look like. So, rather than the handsome young lad landing the gorgeous princess, the ogre gets the ogre chick. It showed that sometimes the princesses charming prince comes in the appearance of an ugly ogre with a good personality rather than vise versa. They completely went the opposite of fairy tale by mixing up the roles. Rather than taking a courageous dog or white stallion as his companion, Shrek the main character has a talking Donkey played by the voice of Eddie Murray, who is constantly showing his clumsy fearfulness. Also in the movie, you hear the saying “you and what army?” when Shrek is confronted by the knights attempting to arrest him. This same line appeared many times before, I can specifically recall Angelica of the Television show ‘Rugrats’ saying the same thing to Suzie, while having a confrontation. The movie is an excellent rendition of a fairy tale and also fun for all ages to watch.