TORONTO -- 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 cross-dressing bartender, voiced by Larry King, from the film Shrek 2. (CP PHOTO/HO/DreamWorks)

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.

Recently, PBS was upbraided by the group Focus on the Family - and supported by the U.S. secretary of education no less - for an episode of the cartoon series Postcards From Buster, in which Buster the rabbit encounters a couple of kids with lesbian parents.

Just last month, the American Family Association took exception to the makers of a new video being distributed to thousands of U.S. elementary schools and which the organization said used characters like SpongeBob and Barney to indoctrinate children into a homosexual lifestyle.

The video is designed to coincide with National We Are Family Day in March. But what upset the AFA in particular is the We Are Family Foundation's website and a tolerance-for-diversity pledge (including sexual orientation) that children and others are asked to sign there.

It seems all of this began back in 1999 when Rev. Jerry Falwell described that purse-toting Teletubby, Tinky Winky, as a gay role model.

One wonders how far back critics could go, though, in seeing pro-homosexual context in cartoons. Remember when shotgun-toting hunter Elmer Fudd realized Bugs Bunny was in drag? He was furious, but only because he saw Bugs's cotton tail and learned he was a rabbit in disguise.

"There's all sorts of things going on in those cartoons that are pretty suggestive," concedes Keil. "But (the kids) are laughing at the pratfalls, the funny voices, the very basic humour.

"Kids at that age don't even have pre-formed notions of sexuality."

In the recent SpongeBob movie, there is a scene in which the oddball undersea character suddenly pops up in his neighbour's shower (and quickly gets the boot). It's also been pointed out that he holds hands with a pink friend and gets boating lessons from a teacher called Mr. Puff. Creator Stephen Hillenburg assured the Wall Street Journal that the sponge-man was not gay but that the show had become a gay community favourite because of the tolerant attitude displayed by the show's characters.

"Everybody is different and the show embraces that," Hillenburg said. "I always think of them as being somewhat asexual."

Keil wonders what these religious groups would accomplish if they managed to get a law passed banning any representation of untoward social behaviour in children's entertainment.

"It would still be there covertly," he argues. "What would these groups see as the ideal state of affairs?"

© 2005 the Canadian Press

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