Shrek

About

Shrek (not to be confused for the franchise) is the titular ogre from the animated film series of the same name^[1] created by Dreamworks and based on a book^[2] by American cartoonist William Steig. Although the first film was released in 2001, the series suddenly gained attention mid-2012. Shrek can most commonly be found back in ironic fanworks and pun jokes based on either him or ogres in general.

Background

Shrek is a computer animated film series first released on May 18th, 2001, and produced by Dreamworks. There were 3 official sequels to the franchise, being Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), and Shrek Forever After (2010). The films focus on the titular green ogre Shrek, his companion Donkey, and significant other Fiona. The movies are a parody of the standard children’s fantasies films, mainly those produced by Disney, and feature various well known characters from these films.

The popularity of the franchise has resulted in various spin-off and short films based on the Shrek universe. So was the character Puss in Boots given two films in which he was the main character. Various short films were also released, such as a Christmas special and a 4-D ride found on various theme parks around the globe. A musical^[4] for the franchise was first shown during a Seattle tryout 2008, followed by a 12 month long run from December 2008 to January 2010. Since its debut, the musical’s rights have been available for independent overseas theatres, who have chosen to stage their own versions of the show. So far 10 incarnations of these independant adaptations exist worldwide.

Spread

The popularity of the character has resulted in quite a few websites offering content related to Shrek. Shrekchan^[3] is a 4chan style image board solely dedicated to Shrek. Launched on May 29th, 2012, the site consist of a total of 4 boards.

On Tumblr, search results can be found for both the #Shrek^[6] and #Shrek-jokes^[7] tags. The LittleShrekThings^[5] Tumblr blog started reposting on January 10th, 2013, after the previous incarnation of the blog eventually turned into a porn blog for Shrek and contains over 600 posts as of January 28th of the same year. On DeviantART, searching for “Shrek”^[8] yields over 12,000 results as of January 28th, 2013.

On June 3rd, 2012, Tumblr user skrillbgolyb made a post in the style of Are You Frustrated along with the caption “Check Urself Before U Shrek Urself” (shown below, left).^[9] On November 4th, 2012, Tumblr user fuckyeahmeelz made a Hey Girls post using Shrek (shown below, middle).^[10] On November 13th of the same year, Tumblr user mossball made a post featuring a life-size Shrek doll sitting in a car alongside with the note “PUTTHATSHITINTOOGREDRIVE” (shown below, right).^[11] As of January 28th, 2012, the posts gathered respectively over 13,500; 36,500 and 22,000 notes.

Other common usage of Shrek is through the usage of pun jokes, commonly being a play of words on either Shrek or Ogre. Various of these pun jokes are commonly found back in greentext stories on Shrekchan.^[3] Captions of these greentext stories can also be found through the Tumblr tag #shrekchan.^[12]