The Established and the Outsiders: a Relational Analysis of Political Representations in the Trilogy Shrek

The Established and the Outsiders: A Relational Analysis of Political representations in the trilogy Shrek Aurélie Lacassagne PhD Department of Political Science Laurentian University [email protected] PLEASE, DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR The trilogy Shrek has been one the most successful animated movie in the box office in the history of cinema. DreamWorks, the production company, decided to make the Green ogre a worldwide cultural product, by designing hundreds of products relating to the monster. The profits of the franchise are estimated at 1.4 billion dollars (The Independent, 2007). Just the first movie Shrek, made a total box office of $ 479.2 million (Hopkins, 2004: 33). This fact could clearly lead to insights pertaining to the political economy of film. This paper, however, will focus on the narratives of the movies. We are interested in these narratives (in our case visual representations) and their interplay with power politics and especially race and gender conflicts. Insofar as movies constitute partly social reality, how can we interpret these visual texts? Our contention is that popular culture, among which children movies, constitutes and represents the social world. Therefore, proposing an interpretation of these texts, also offers an interpretation and a representation of the world. Children (and in our case also adults) are more than just socialized by movies, the films as texts affect directly their representation of the world and participate to the constitution of the social world. As the early writers like Hall (1997) on cultural studies showed, popular culture is a site of struggles between the hegemonic discourse and resistance to it. The immanent divisions of our capitalist societies (in terms of class, race, gender, sex) are, at the same time, produced, reproduced and contested through popular culture. Will Wright (1975: 19) gives the example of Burke, in his interpretation of Venus and Adonis, in which he: interprets the characters of a narrative as representing social types acting out a drama of social order. In this way, interaction – such as conflict or sexual attraction – is never simply interaction between individuals but always involves the social principles that the characters represent. Thus, a fight in a narrative would not simply be a conflict of men but a conflict of principles - good versus evil, rich versus poor, black versus white. The narratives being very rich, we will focus on representations of political regimes. Indeed, the movie series depicts a number of regime types: a liberal capitalist monarchy, in the form of Far Lacassagne 1 Far Away; totalitarianism as instantiated in the Kingdom of Farquaad; and finally, an individualist anarchist space - Shrek’s swamp. All of these regimes are disrupted by rebellions led by groups excluded from the established social order. The three political regimes identified are all-territorially based. The space is segregated: an inside and an outside. This spatial segregation is associated with a social segregation. In international relations literature, Andrew Linklater (1990) speaks about this “tension” between “men” and “citizens”. Citizens of a particular spatially-defined political community are entitled to specific rights, while outsiders are deprived of those very rights. But even within the community of citizens, appear logics of “established” and “outsiders” to speak in Eliasian terms. This logic often relies upon exclusion based on perceptions of gender, race, class, ethnicity, bodies. This paper is therefore informed by an Eliasian perspective (Elias, 1994) and explores how logics of exclusion are constructed. The paper is divided into three sections, each describing a particular political regime. Individual anarchism The first few scenes of the first movie Shrek open with the ogre living by himself in his swamp. The space is clearly delimited by the “décor” of the swamp; but the ogre goes further and territorially marked his space with signs to signify the others that this territory belongs to him and that no one can trespass. Two images can come in one’s mind while watching this scene. First, the absence of authority: Shrek lives alone in his swamp and he is the sole master of his life. It refers to individualist anarchism. Second, for anyone familiar with French literature and political philosophy, Shrek evokes images of the myth of “le bon sauvage” (the noble savage) depicted by Montaigne (1595) in his Essays and Rousseau (1992) in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Individualist anarchism encompasses various conceptions. It is not the point here to refer to a particular conception of this philosophy but to make the point that, Shrek living in his swamp matches with the spirit of individualist anarchism. There is no state and no society. Nothing seems to prevent Shrek from fulfilling his self-interests. Shrek appears also very reluctant to engage in any form of social relations. One can say that he is egoist. He represents more the tradition of Max Stirner than William Godwin. Shrek looks fully in control of himself- his mind and his body. Even if one can see a sort of melancholia, he seems satisfied and happy, enjoying the calm of his swamp, the easiness of his life; he eats whatever he finds around him, he has arranged his shelter to his taste. He does not appear like having intellectual or spiritual concerns. As long as he can live alone in his swamp, he fully accepts the body he has; his body appearance becomes an issue when he enters into social transactions. I insist on the full control of his body because not only it is important for the rest of the story, but also because it is what makes him an egoist individualist anarchist: Not till one has fallen in love with his corporeal self, and takes a pleasure in himself as a living flesh-and-blood person – but it is in mature years, in the man, that we find it so – not till then has one a personal or interest, i.e., an interest not only of our spirit, for instance, but of total satisfaction, satisfaction of the whole chap, a selfish interest. (Stirner in Horowitz, 1964: 295) Therefore, Shrek seems to represent this egoist adult with none of the material and spiritual constraints described by Stirner. He is fully satisfied. Lacassagne 2 But as stated earlier, for someone ingrained of French literature, Shrek also triggers memories of the myth of the “bon sauvage”. When Montaigne (1960: 210) speaks about the Indians, he underlines the fact that they live in harmony with nature”: Now to return to my subject, I think there is nothing barbarous and savage in that nation, from what I have been told, except that each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in. There is always the perfect religion, the perfect government, the perfect and accomplished manners in all things. Those people are wild, just as we call wild the fruits that Nature has produced by herself and in her normal course; whereas really it is those that we have changed artificially and led astray from the common order, that we should rather call wild. The former retain alive and vigorous their genuine, their most useful and natural, virtues and properties, which have debased in the latter in adapting them to gratify our corrupted taste. And yet for all that, the savor and delicacy of some uncultivated fruits of those countries is quite excellent, even to our taste, as that of our own. Montaigne continues on to describe how their shelters are made with materials from their natural surroundings; how their food is made, what they hunt and gather. He depicts a perfect world, an idealized world. For Montaigne, society is a form of corruption of the man living in harmony with his natural surroundings. Rousseau (1983: 145), a century and a half later, will echo this idea: O man, whatever may be your country, and whatever opinions you may hold, listen to me: Here is your history, as I believe I have read it, not in books by your fellow men, who are liars, but in Nature, who never lies. Everything that comes from her will be true; if there is falsehood, it will be mine, added unintentionally. The times of which I am going to speak are very remote: How greatly you have changed from what you once were! It is, so to speak, the life of your species that I shall describe to you, on the basis of the qualities that you have received. Your upbringing, education, and habits may have corrupted those qualities, but they have not been able to destroy them. There is, I feel, an age at which each individual man would like to stop: you will seek the age at which you would have liked your species to stop. Rousseau (1983: 146-147) continues on: When I strip that being, thus constituted, of all the supernatural gifts he may have received, and of all the artificial faculties that he could have acquired only by long progress; when I consider him, in short, as he must have come from the hands of nature, I see an animal less strong than some, less agile that others, but on the whole, the most advantageously constituted of all. I see him sitting under an oak tree, quenching his thirst at the nearest stream, finding his bed at the foot of the same tree that supplied him with his meal; and thus all his needs are satisfied. And indeed, Shrek is reluctant to enter into the social world because he equates it with problems.

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