The Films That I Have Taught: Shrek

In addition to books, the other big text that I teach as a teacher is films. Much like the book series, The Films That I Have Taught, is a personal reflection on the films I have taught in my classes. Their experiences often revealed interesting truths, not about the themes necessarily, but more about the outcomes and interactions I had with my students and how it influenced my writing.

I mentioned in my last post that there was a selection of texts that students simply adored and that I would be discussing three of them. Last week was WALL-E and this week it is Shrek by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson.

As a new teacher I was prepared for the inevitability that I would talk about a favourite film to my class and they would stare blankly at me as if I was talking about some Ancient Egyptian artefact, and while that does occasionally happen, this is not the case with Shrek. I watched Shrek as a child and at school and loved it and my students share than enthusiasm.

I believe that the reason it retains its quality is partly because it is a great film (and all great texts transcend time) but also because it is a film that grows with you. When you watch as a child, there are certain jokes that work but as you get older, there are other jokes that suddenly makes sense. It is an incredible quality to be able to create a film that grows with its audience, and I know for my writing, it is something I could aspire to. Now, I don’t write children’s stories, nor is my current published work for families, but that doesn’t mean that I should not consider how to make my work grow with my audience. That when they read it in their youth it had meaning and as they got older they saw something new, something that they had missed or were simply not ready to receive.

In terms of studying Shrek, it can be useful in terms of parody, as long as you do the pre-teaching, so the students enter in knowing what to look for. Honestly though, I have mostly used Shrek as a “it is the last day of term and there are four of you here so let’s watch a movie” kind of text. Not that I think any less of doing that, some times you just need to put a movie on and if you were, at least the students will be engaging in a high-quality text, even if they are not actively analysing it.