Racism And Racism In Shrek

Everything ranging from the stall at the local fair to the programs we see on TV can be called media. Media is the plural of Medium and it describes the various ways through which we communicate in society. TV, radios and newspapers are forms of media which reaches millions of people, or the masses, across the country and the world, and thus, they are called Mass Media. The various ideologies used in media as well as the different methods of framing and encoding, shed the light on important features present in our daily lives such as classism, discrimination and racism. An identity analysis of the character Shrek in Shrek II would help examine how racial identity is coded.

Shrek is a computer animated fantasy comedy

But what is racism? It is an interaction in society with a race-based worldview. The newspaper The Sunday Independent published an article Racism is a pervasive poison that takes root deep in people’s hearts defining what is racism. “Racism is a deadly disease and a mental disorder which has caused many disasters, such as the Holocaust, apartheid and many wars.” (Benoni, 2011) This definition explains how piousness it is to treat people based on the color of their skin. In fact, Shrek is not only an ogre, but a green ogre. The many struggles that faced Fiona and Shrek explains how race is an issue for him. His situation with Fiona is an example of interracial marriage and the plot as a whole shows how stigmatic society is. Fiona kept insisting in Shrek II that they should not judge Shrek by his appearance. In fact, prior to 1967 interracial marriage as well as interracial sexual relationships were banned and highly restricted in many countries such as Germany, South Africa and the United States. This emphasizes on the fact that race is not a simple identity issue.

But in Shrek II, gender and race issues are bridged. For example, even though Donkey having a typical black accent voiced by Eddie Murphy (a popular black entertainer) is treated as inferior by Shrek the ogre, Shrek and Donkey find a relationship in their commonality. In addition, Donkey manages to enter in a relationship with Dragon. This

Also the encoding and framing contributed in representing his identity by choosing the specific needed information and sizing elements. As seen his racial identity has contributed many issues. But Shrek put it best when he said “Maybe it’s hard to believe what’s with my obvious charm and good looks but people used to think that I was a monster. And for a long time I believed them. But after a while you learn to ignore the names people calling you. You just trust who you