You think Shrek sounds authoritative? I can think of lots of words I could apply to that character, but authoritative wouldn't be one of them. I think the particular voice that Mike Myers did was supposed to convey a rustic, lower-class, cynical nature, but with an underlying softness that could be gradually exposed throughout the film, and I think it achieves it pretty well. I don't think it was necessarily meant to lend authority to the character, especially since the story gives Shrek very little authority at all. He's an essentially passive character to whom bad things happen, which is juxtaposed with the established Ogre archetype for comedic and narrative effect.shootthebandit said:
I also don't think that there is an inherent stupidity or crassness in the Hollywood accent. I think under the right conditions it can be quite poised and elegant, providing we stay away from certain turns of phrase, which I shan't go in to. Nor do I think the English accent implies intelligence. There are plenty of characters in British drama who are well spoken and articulate, but actually very stupid. Just look at adaptations of P. G. Woodhouse's work. I think one of the problems afflicting modern film-making, certainly that of Hollywood, is the need for everything to be very clear-cut, the slovenly desire to make every character and faction fit an archetype. This is why we run into debates like this. There's nothing in any accent that really prevents it being used on a particular character, it's just that accents are used by lazy film-makers to make the qualities of weak and poorly conceived characters easier to identify.
