I would never take anybody under the age of 20 to a Shrek movie. It's fun entertainment for adults, but, I believe, it is psychologically devastating to youngsters.
I would refer everybody to the seminal work on fairy tales by Bruno Bettleheim, "The Uses of Enchantment." In this masterful work, he argues insightfully and convincingly that the work of fairy tales is to help young children work out their developmental problems in the neutral subliminal setting of the story itself. Here, issues of developing sexuality, power struggles and resentments against parents can be safely resolved by stories about wicked witches, wolves and step-parents.
One of the most important tasks, Bettleheim points out, is to help the child achieve full maturation psychologically. This is achieved by the use of princes and princesses, and kings and queens. These represent, not a brief for royalty, but the highest self which the psyche is capable of attaining.
The problem with the Shrek movies is that they delight in glorifying the lower self. They pull the child down and entomb him in his lower impulses and desires with their jokes about flatulence, their celebration of ugliness and their mockery of traditional fairy tale figures. These features are prominent and persistent enough that one might suspect a malicious intent, although I certainly hope that is not the case. All of which leads to conclude that showing these movies to children is a subtle, but psychologically dangerous form of child abuse.
I know many will object that the movies are in good fun, and only point out that true beauty is within. This is a fine message for adults, but to children it has to be demoralizing and dangerous to the maturational process. I strongly recommend that you destroy any and all video copies you have of these movies if that is what it takes to keep them out of the hands of children. Of course, for adult viewing, apart from the grossness of the humor, one could watch these--but why would one want to?
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1 comment:
Lighten-up on Shrek..he is merely another victim of the bloated entertainment industry..The enormous capital required to produce and distribute a film encourages a search for the lowest common denominator audience at the expense of any artistic risk..if elevators had video instead of music, I have no doubt that you would watch Shrek on your way to the 30th floor
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