Thoughts on Shrek

I have to say that Shrek definitely has a spot among my favourite movies. Since I had forgotten about so much of the plot in the movies, I decided that I would re-watch Shrek and Shrek 2 tonight, more as a kind of pick-me-up for my weird emotional state than to just to refresh my memory and keep me busy for a bit. Not only are my emotions back up to standard and maybe even a bit better, but it really gave me something to think about that I never noticed before. And I'm not just talking about all the sexual jokes and references.

If you pry them apart, the two movies serve to teach a shitload of lessons. Think about the first movie for starters. Here we have Shrek, a hideous monster who lives on his own and shuts out the world because of how the world has treated him. Man has dubbed him an outcast and refuse to look beyond his labels and physical features. They refuse to get to know what Shrek is really like and instead choose to exile him for what he seems to represent.

I'm sure a lot of people I know as well as I myself can relate to Shrek's problems. In society today, though tolerance levels have increased quite a bit over the years, a lot of people have grown up "different" and have been treated as such. Because of high or low intelligence, physical or mental handicaps, medical conditions, sexualities, fetishes, and even the looks that people are born with, society has found it okay to bully and torment people, all because they are weaker and more vulnerable in appearance. Like Shrek said, ogres are like onions because they both have layers. It may not be a pretty thought, but think of yourself as an ogre. The outer layers of your mental-defense-grid-type-thing is coated in small bits of gossip that don't matter to you. Everyone sees you and sees the way you act in your everyday life and they make assumptions and gather an impression from the first few times they see you. These outer layers are what people gather a first impression from, looking with only their eyes to judge if the onion will prove to be good enough for their social stew. If people find you to be interesting enough, they will try to get your attention and will attempt pulling back the layers to further seek reassurance that you are the right one for mingling with.

I'm not going to go through all the steps to get there, but of course like in an onion there is always a deep, well-protected core hiding in the middle. Most people are too confused to figure out their own cores, and I myself have barely uncovered the vast wealth of secrets about my personality hidden within. The core was given to us and was not created by us; it is the mental foundation on which we continue to build our personalities, and therefore we do not at first know exactly how it works. But in growing and interacting with the world around us, we eventually discover some of the bits that make up our core while also developing layers around us to protect us from those who don't take to kindly to what's inside. An onion's exposed core can cause people to cry, and in turn flaunting your own core a little too much can cause people to become upset and agitated. That's why it's always important to have a couple layers over top to prevent such conflicts with others from happening, though if you put on too many layers you'll lose your own personality and won't be true to what you want. The layers will be too thick for even you to penetrate, and you'll end up believing that you're something you're not. Along the course of the first movie, Shrek was reluctant to allow anyone in, but eventually Fiona and Donkey got past a few of his layers and in getting to know the real him and getting to taste a bit of his core, they were able to become really close and Shrek became much happier and more appealing.

And believe it or not there's actually more than just that in the first movie. Think about how Fiona has her little secret of turning into an ogre every night. She and Shrek don't get along at first but in hearing some personal things about Shrek, Fiona finds it easier to get along with him despite what he is and they soon fall in love. But even though Fiona has come to terms with Shrek being different, she isn't quite able to come to terms with her own differences. This caused a huge fight when Shrek thought Fiona was not all up for such a different relationship and preferred the more normal path of marrying the short guy that fit the picture more naturally in terms of keeping normality. However, Fiona was unhappy trying to be "normal" and Shrek was just as unhappy about being deserted like that. She eventually "came-out" to Farquaad and Shrek and accepted herself for who she was, and obviously Farquaad wasn't accepting of her and only cared about his "perfect" and "normal" lifestyle, so he was naturally furious with the new development. In the end Fiona turned into an ogre full-time and accepted herself and the two were able to live happily ever after with their differences in plain sight. If you don't get how this relates to sexualities and all those other weird differences that a lot of people deal with, then you most likely don't deserve to live.

In Shrek 2, Fiona and Shrek seek the blessings of Fiona's father and are really nervous about how the old coot might react to seeing his daughter stray down an unintended path. Her father wasn't accepting and tried to sabotage their relationship while her mother was able to accept that Fiona needed to make her own choices and that she needed to do what was best for herself, not what other people wanted her to do. The father eventually realized that Fiona and Shrek were meant to be and no amounts of prying and intervention could split the two apart, and he turned away from his old habits and gave their marriage his blessings. Sounds a lot like modern reactions to fetishes and homosexual relations, eh?

Also: why is it so hard for people to accept fellow humans' differences when they can so easily accept donkey-on-dragon action and a relationship between two ogres? It just doesn't make sense.

So yeah...even thought they are enjoyable, immature, and a downright hilarious couple of movies, they seem to get pretty deep and teach very important lessons. But even then, it seems that it didn't stick all too well with the world. Must everything be blatantly obvious for people to understand the point that is trying to be made?

That's about all I have to say on the topic...other than the fact that Puss in Boots is the best character ever and I need to go research his fairly tale now.