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When Disney's Pocahantas opened in 1995, the New York Times Magazine published a parody titled "Mohandas." Pocahantas was typical Disney fare, bleached and sugary, so "Mohandas" pretended to review a similarly Disneyfied animated life of Gandhi, complete with treacly coming-of-age ballads ("The Man in the Diaper"), hyper-idealized historical characters (Disney's Gandhi looked like Mr. Clean and was voiced by Michael Jackson), and fictional sidekicks (a sassy cow voiced by Whoopi Goldberg, and an animated spinning wheel voiced by Jackie Mason.)[1]
But one part of the parody was pure invented silliness, suggesting that the villain in the fictitious Mohandas looked suspiciously like Jeff Katzenberg, the former Disney animation executive whom Michael Eisner had famously overlooked for the Number Two job—and who had therefore huffed off to found Dreamworks with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. There wasn't anything in Pocahantas that actually referred to this famous rivalry, especially since it was only just budding, and no media executive could be that petty anyway, right? Wrong. For—lo and behold!—six years later the bud hath flowered and hath borne rivalrous fruit in Dreamworks' Shrek—so taste and eat, and you will be as entertainment insiders, knowing both good and evil industry gossip, whether you care to or don't.
Let me explain. Shrek is Dreamworks' latest salvo in the bloody popcorn wars it wages with Disney, its only current rival in the feature animation industry. Loosely based on a book by William Steig, it is a twisted fairy tale about a green ogre, the eponymous Shrek (Scottishly voiced by Mike Myers), who dwells in a swamp, happily alone, until the evil Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) chases all of the other fairy-tale creatures—from Snow White to various witches and unicorns—into Shrek's swamp. Shrek cuts a deal with Farquaad: If he can rescue the lovely Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from her dragon-protected castle and deliver her to Farquaad to marry—so Farquaad can become a legitimate king—Shrek will get his swamp back. Simple enough. Except, of course, while the grotesque Shrek is delivering Fiona, he falls in love with her, and she with him. Oh, and along the way, Shrek picks up a sassy donkey sidekick, voiced by Eddie Murphy. Perhaps Ms. Goldberg was unavailable.
Now, as most reviews will tell you, Shrek is Dreamworks' digitally animated raspberry to the Disney Corporation. It makes nasty references to past Disney films, and is supposed to have somehow cast the cowardly Lord Farquaad in the mold of Michael Eisner. The whole dopey feud is everywhere for all to see. But in attempting to subvert Disney's saccharinized version of various fairy tales and legends, Dreamworks has fatally overstepped, as if Katzenberg, socking Eisner in the nose, had knocked himself unconscious in the process. Shrek doesn't just subvert the treacly Disney version of fairy tales, it subverts the glorious and mysterious and ennobling idea of fairytales themselves.
For one thing, Shrek is tiresome in its unalleviated puncturing. No sooner does a moment fill with meaning and beauty than you can sense the hatpins poised to prick it. It's as if Mona Lisa smiles, Jeff Katzenberg paints a mustache on her, and we cut to the next scene. When the seven dwarves carry Snow White to Shrek's house in her glass coffin, Shrek exclaims, "Get the dead broad off the table!" And much of this is disturbingly inappropriate for children. When Farquaad tortures him for information, a legless Gingerbread Man spits in his eye and barks: "Eat me!" A goofy announcer says of Snow White, "Although she lives with seven men, she's not easy!" Later, when Shrek sees the tiny Farquaad's towering castle he asks, "Do you think maybe he's compensating for something?" It's funny, barely, but are phallic jokes necessary in a children's movie? Flatulence jokes abound, too, as though sophisticated animation equipment and $100 million had somehow fallen into the hands of fifth-grade boys.
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