"Let our freak flags fly": Shrek the Musical and the branding of diversity

"'Let Our Freak Flags Fly': Shrek the Musical and the Branding of Diversity" argues that DreamWorks used Shrek the Musical to exploit a generic theme of multiculturalism to extend the reach of the Shrek franchise and challenge Disney's domination of the Broadway market. By bringing a political-economic analysis to bear on the study of commercial theatre, the essay shows that DreamWorks's marketing strategy - diversification - provided the theme - diversity - for the product it was employing to implement that strategy. Yet because Shrek's multicultural message is contradicted by the blatant racial stereotyping of Donkey, Shrek's "jive-spouting sidekick," the musical in fact epitomizes the contradictions that inform multiculturalism in the early twenty-first-century marketplace and functions as an unlikely emblem of the Age of Obama.