Eric McTavish
02-22-2005, 10:58 AM
:shock:
ok first sponge-bob now this...
I give up---I really do...
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=984da568-5035-4088-928d-de9f7f8b5edf
Shrek character is target of traditional values religious group
John Mckay
Canadian Press
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
TORONTO (CP) - The hit feature Shrek 2 joins the ranks of animated films to be "outed" by some Christian fundamentalists in the U.S., who charge that cross-dressing and transgender themes have made their way into the beloved kids' movie and warn parents to beware.
Although many people see the Oscar-nominated film as a humorous story about a green ogre and his true love, the Traditional Values Coalition has a different take on the animated feature.
"Shrek 2 is billed as harmless entertainment but contains subtle sexual messages," the coalition says on its website of the movie, a popular DVD rental. The group describes itself as a grassroots inter-denominational lobby with more than 43,000 member churches.
"Parents who are thinking about taking their children to see Shrek 2 may wish to consider the following."
The article then proceeds to describe one of the characters, an "evil" bartender (voiced by Larry King) who is a male-to-female transgender in transition and who expresses a sexual desire for Prince Charming.
In another identified scene, Shrek and Donkey need rescuing from a dungeon by Pinocchio and his nose, which is made to extend as an escape bridge by getting the wooden boy to lie about not wearing women's underwear.
Shrek 2 has plenty of company. Christian activists have also targeted SpongeBob SquarePants, Barney the dinosaur and Sesame Street's Bert & Ernie as children's characters who are conduits for a soft-on-gays message.
The Traditional Values Coalition report, A Gender Identity Disorder Goes Mainstream, raps DreamWorks, the maker of Shrek 2, for helping to promote crossdressing and transgenderism.
But Charles Keil, a film studies professor at the University of Toronto, says transgendered groups might also have reason to complain about being parodied.
"You have an image within a comic context that could be read either way," says Keil, who adds quickly that such humour is designed for parents anyway and goes way above the heads of the children in the audience.
"If the kids don't get it, it doesn't really matter."
Keil says the whole idea behind the Shrek movies is a general message of tolerance - that outward appearances don't matter and that it's what's underneath that counts - and such complaints defeat that larger, more important message.
"Targeting minuscule elements within a much larger work and then trying to extract from that some kind of argument that borders on the paranoid is really misconstruing the general aim of this entertainment."
So far, the coalition's "gaydar" doesn't seem to have picked up on DreamWorks' Shark Tale, in which a shark mafioso, voiced by Robert DeNiro, must come to terms with the fact he has a vegetarian son who likes to dress up as a dolphin.
But the Shrek accusation follows hot on the heels of other cases of animated characters being accused of infiltrating the minds of America's children with pro-gay messages, much to the detriment of traditional family values.
ok first sponge-bob now this...
I give up---I really do...
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=984da568-5035-4088-928d-de9f7f8b5edf
Shrek character is target of traditional values religious group
John Mckay
Canadian Press
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
TORONTO (CP) - The hit feature Shrek 2 joins the ranks of animated films to be "outed" by some Christian fundamentalists in the U.S., who charge that cross-dressing and transgender themes have made their way into the beloved kids' movie and warn parents to beware.
Although many people see the Oscar-nominated film as a humorous story about a green ogre and his true love, the Traditional Values Coalition has a different take on the animated feature.
"Shrek 2 is billed as harmless entertainment but contains subtle sexual messages," the coalition says on its website of the movie, a popular DVD rental. The group describes itself as a grassroots inter-denominational lobby with more than 43,000 member churches.
"Parents who are thinking about taking their children to see Shrek 2 may wish to consider the following."
The article then proceeds to describe one of the characters, an "evil" bartender (voiced by Larry King) who is a male-to-female transgender in transition and who expresses a sexual desire for Prince Charming.
In another identified scene, Shrek and Donkey need rescuing from a dungeon by Pinocchio and his nose, which is made to extend as an escape bridge by getting the wooden boy to lie about not wearing women's underwear.
Shrek 2 has plenty of company. Christian activists have also targeted SpongeBob SquarePants, Barney the dinosaur and Sesame Street's Bert & Ernie as children's characters who are conduits for a soft-on-gays message.
The Traditional Values Coalition report, A Gender Identity Disorder Goes Mainstream, raps DreamWorks, the maker of Shrek 2, for helping to promote crossdressing and transgenderism.
But Charles Keil, a film studies professor at the University of Toronto, says transgendered groups might also have reason to complain about being parodied.
"You have an image within a comic context that could be read either way," says Keil, who adds quickly that such humour is designed for parents anyway and goes way above the heads of the children in the audience.
"If the kids don't get it, it doesn't really matter."
Keil says the whole idea behind the Shrek movies is a general message of tolerance - that outward appearances don't matter and that it's what's underneath that counts - and such complaints defeat that larger, more important message.
"Targeting minuscule elements within a much larger work and then trying to extract from that some kind of argument that borders on the paranoid is really misconstruing the general aim of this entertainment."
So far, the coalition's "gaydar" doesn't seem to have picked up on DreamWorks' Shark Tale, in which a shark mafioso, voiced by Robert DeNiro, must come to terms with the fact he has a vegetarian son who likes to dress up as a dolphin.
But the Shrek accusation follows hot on the heels of other cases of animated characters being accused of infiltrating the minds of America's children with pro-gay messages, much to the detriment of traditional family values.