From far, far away to 4chan – The sur­pris­ing lega­cy of Shrek

As Dream­Works’ sec­ond com­put­er-ani­mat­ed fea­ture, fol­low­ing 1998’s Antz, Shrek broke new ground by cre­at­ing real­is­tic human char­ac­ters that avoid­ed the dread­ed depths of the Uncan­ny Val­ley. As an anti-fairy tale that tack­les themes of iden­ti­ty, inclu­sion and accep­tance, how­ev­er, the film’s wider cul­tur­al impact has tak­en some unex­pect­ed turns in the two decades since its release.

Google the film’s prong-eared green hero and you’ll find some risqué videos inspired by ​‘Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life’, a sex­u­al­ly explic­it meta-meme birthed from homo­erot­ic fan fic­tion found on the anony­mous image­board forum 4chan. It’s a lega­cy that nei­ther of the film’s direc­tors could ever have fore­seen – but as they’re quick to tell us, all are wel­come in Shrek’s swamp.

Loose­ly based on car­toon­ist William Steig’s epony­mous kids’ book, Shrek invit­ed audi­ences into a sto­ry­book world where a grumpy ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) is forced to save a strong-head­ed princess (Cameron Diaz) with his loud-mouthed Don­key side­kick (Eddie Mur­phy). But it didn’t start out that way. In fact, the ini­tial plan was to cre­ate a motion-cap­ture live-action hybrid before a dis­as­trous test screen­ing led to then-Dream­Works boss Jef­frey Katzen­berg fir­ing every­one involved. Enter Andrew Adam­son, who came aboard to re-steer the good ship Shrek.

Still, when pro­duc­tion got under­way, expec­ta­tions were low. ​“No one set out to make a block­buster,” admits Adam­son, who along­side Vicky Jen­son became the first film­mak­er to win an Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture. ​“Shrek was kind of being made in the garage at Dream­Works,” he adds. ​“It was an exper­i­men­tal thing and they saw it as a side-project. We were very much the bas­tard child.”

With com­put­er ani­ma­tion expe­ri­enc­ing a boom in the ear­ly 2000s, artists from oth­er Dream­Works projects even­tu­al­ly made their way into the Shrek hive-mind, influ­enc­ing its irrev­er­ent tone. ​“That’s how we got some of the fun­ni­est, most tal­ent­ed sto­ry­board artists,” Adam­son explains, ​“because their ran­dom humour didn’t quite fit any­where else.” It was dur­ing this peri­od that Jen­son – a suc­cess­ful sto­ry­board artist who had pre­vi­ous­ly worked on Ren & Stimpy – signed on as co-direc­tor. ​“The project was going through a dif­fer­ent sto­ry phase,” she recalls. ​“Chris Far­ley, who was orig­i­nal­ly cast as Shrek, passed away and the sto­ry was lost in a land of action, adven­ture and com­e­dy. Shrek want­ed to be a knight, he hat­ed peo­ple… it was strug­gling for what it was try­ing to say.”

Known for his explo­sive work on Sat­ur­day Night Live, Far­ley had record­ed most of Shrek’s dia­logue before his untime­ly death from a drug over­dose in 1997. ​“It was very trag­ic los­ing Chris,” Adam­son says. ​“He was a beau­ti­ful, vul­ner­a­ble man, and he brought that vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to the char­ac­ter which influ­enced our writ­ing. When he passed, we went through a year or so with­out hav­ing a voice actor attached. I actu­al­ly asked Jef­frey Katzen­berg to fire me because we were mak­ing a movie that I real­ly didn’t like. It seemed to have lost its origins.”

For­tu­nate­ly, Katze­berg denied Adamson’s request. Instead he encour­aged him to per­se­vere with the project, and with fel­low SNL alum Mike Myers step­ping in to replace Far­ley, Shrek’s per­sona sud­den­ly clicked into place. ​“Mike is huge­ly involved in char­ac­ter,” says Adam­son. ​“He wasn’t as broad­ly volatile as Chris but he also knew Chris well. I think it was dif­fi­cult for him emo­tion­al­ly, but at the same time he respect­ed what had been done before. Both of them had this vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that real­ly informed the char­ac­ter. Shrek’s main thing is that all of his out­ward volatil­i­ty is to hide his vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. I think a lot of come­di­ans are like that. Com­e­dy is a great defence mechanism.”

Myers’ sen­si­tive nature and com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty became the beat­ing heart of Shrek, Jen­son explains. ​“Mike’s sense of humour became key to the char­ac­ter. Ini­tial­ly he wasn’t going to do an accent, but there was a scene where Shrek was read­ing a let­ter from his par­ents and he just broke out into this Scot­tish voice. Both Andrew and I looked at each oth­er and said, ​‘Can you just do that for Shrek?’ He didn’t real­ly want to because he knew he had a char­ac­ter in the forth­com­ing Austin Pow­ers sequel that had a Scot­tish accent, but we got him to do it.”

Adam­son and Jenson’s next task was to cre­ate real­is­tic human char­ac­ters – some­thing even Pixar hadn’t quite fig­ured out yet. ​“We got to a point with Fiona where the real­ism of the char­ac­ter wasn’t pleas­ant,” remem­bers Adam­son. ​“It was not real enough and too real at the same time. Also, around 90 per cent of our ani­ma­tion staff were male. Luck­i­ly it’s changed a lot since then, but you’d be get­ting guys com­ing out of col­lege who had bare­ly even dat­ed try­ing to ani­mate Cameron Diaz…” Jen­son adds, ​“We need­ed some­one to talk to our ani­ma­tors about flat­ter­ing light and make up so Fiona felt warm and alive. We had to prob­lem solve as we went but some­times tech­nol­o­gy lim­i­ta­tions help you find bet­ter solutions.”

Thank­ful­ly their exper­i­ments paid off, ben­e­fit­ing not just the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion but many of the film’s more emo­tion­al sequences. ​“One of my favourite moments is when Shrek is out­side the wind­mill about to take flow­ers to Fiona and over­hears her,” says Adam­son, refer­ring to the scene where Shrek believes his love for Fiona is unre­quit­ed. ​“It’s a close-up and all of the act­ing is in his facial expres­sions. When we got that right I was real­ly hap­py because that sub­tle­ty of emo­tion and expres­sion was not achiev­able a year before.”

Since its ini­tial release Shrek has become a cor­ner­stone of pop­u­lar cul­ture, recent­ly being added to the Nation­al Film Reg­istry along­side Cit­i­zen Kane. More recent­ly, the title char­ac­ter has found a new lease of life online thanks to his cult meme star­dom. Self-described ​‘Bro­gres’ cel­e­brate their patron saint of dank meme­dom with niche Shrek appre­ci­a­tion projects rang­ing from the tame to the taboo. There’s the fan-made shot-for-shot remake Shrek Retold, a Twit­ter account ded­i­cat­ed to shar­ing the film in its entire­ty, one frame at a time, and of course the explic­it and endur­ing, Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life.

“When some­body told me about ​‘Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life’ I didn’t know what it was about. Sud­den­ly I’m online and there’s all this gay Shrek porn – I was like ​‘I didn’t see that com­ing!’,” laughs Adam­son. ​“I was very touched by it all because I realised it had come from a lot of dis­en­fran­chised young men who felt like they didn’t fit in. The fact that they were able to say ​‘I’m like him’, and find com­fort in that, is real­ly wonderful.”

“I was late to the par­ty with the online fan­dom,” adds Jen­son. ​“I think the rea­son Shrek has been adopt­ed by fans in this way is that there’s an innate qual­i­ty to the orig­i­nal sto­ry that begs the char­ac­ters and audi­ence to reex­am­ine what they think they know about them­selves and ques­tion the world’s expec­ta­tions of them.”

She con­tin­ues: ​“Shrek plays the ogre because he assumes every­one thinks of him that way until a bunch of fairy tale refugees and a don­key make him their hero. Fiona denies her inner-ogre because she was raised to believe the only way to be hap­py is to force her­self into an old-fash­ioned fairy tale image of a princess. The prince isn’t the hero but the vil­lain because he pun­ish­es the world rather than embrace his own imper­fec­tions. These ideas about ques­tion­ing our assigned roles are clear; there was no Dis­ney movie that allowed kids to grow up feel­ing free to be who they were in this way.”