Shrek Threatens Family Values
Sunday June 13, 2004
The computer-animated feature film Shrek 2 has become quite popular - but not among a certain segment of far-right Christians who see threats to their religious beliefs under every bed and around every corner. According to them, the new Shrek movie is guilty of promoting a “transgender agenda.”
Mike Argento writes for the York Daily Record:
The [Traditional Values Coalition‘s] advisory says, "Parents who are thinking about taking their children to see 'Shrek 2,' may wish to consider the following: The movie features a male-to-female transgender (in transition) as an evil bartender. The character has five o'clock shadow, wears a dress and has female breasts. It is clear that he is a she-male. His voice is that of talk show host Larry King."
The bartender is only the beginning. The warning continues: "During a dance scene at the end of the movie, this transgendered man expresses sexual desire for Prince Charming, jumps on him, and both tumble to the floor." ... And then, the warning says, "In another scene in the movie, Shrek and Donkey need to be rescued from a dungeon where they are chained against the wall."
The warning continues: "The rescue is conducted by Pinocchio who is asked to lie so his nose will grow long enough for one of the smaller cartoon characters to use it as a bridge to reach Shrek and Donkey. Donkey encourages him to lie about something and suggests he lie about wearing women's underwear. When he denies wearing women's underwear, his nose begins to grow."
I called Frank York, the editorial director for the Traditional Values Coalition, and asked him: "Are you serious?"
"Yes," he said. "Yes, I am." He said, "What they showed in the film was supposed to be humorous, but if you look at the transgender agenda ... there are more serious things going on here." ... Anyway, he talked about the whole transsexual agenda and how it wants to take over the world and stuff like that. He clearly spends a lot of time thinking about transsexuals, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Cross-dressing for the purpose of humor has a very old, very long history. That’s all that’s going on here: poking fun at situations where people wear the clothing of the other gender. If that’s “bad,” then the Traditional Values Coalitions must be out to stop a great deal of humor produced through the centuries.
They must really hate Monty Python.
Read More:
Comments
Seriously - I get the humor, and Monty Python is hilarious. But putting it in a kids movie? Who wants to explain this to a six year old? Regardless of your personal opinions about the nature of alternative sexual orientations and lifestyles, and gender confusion in general - can’t we at least agree on a more appropriate venue? Or is that fanatical?
And another thing: there is a difference between having an openly transsexual character and using cross dressing in humor.
cross dressing is usually employed as 1)a momentary insight into a side character’s tastes - someone is caught cross dressing or with secret transsexual preferences (still not okay for a kids movie folks)
or 2) an outrageous accident-
some man has to disguise himself and dress up like a woman to avoid detection, the only clothing he could find to keep warm was a pair of…etc.