When I first saw Shrek I was probably four or five years old. My mom swears she checked it out from the library to watch right before a big snow storm was going to hit. I don’t really remember what I was thinking then, but when I was a little older-- maybe six or seven-- I watched it again. That time was definitely more memorable. It immediately became my favorite movie and ever since then I’ve been becoming an increasingly intense die-hard Shrek fan-- my friends can attest to that. Eventually my favorite Shrek movie became the second but looking back, the entire series shaped how I thought about the world, heros, and life a lot more than I initially realized.
Shrek One turned around the way I thought about heros. Before I saw that movie, I’d mostly encountered heros where the characters around them thought they were somewhat attractive people, they looked like regular people, and they were accepted by most of society. Shrek, however, was an ogre who was an outcast and continued to be an outcast of society throughout most of the movie. When we first see Shrek encounter Lord Farquaad’s soldiers, he bares his teeth at them and yells, which makes Shrek look like a scary character. At that point in the beginning of the movie it’s harder to align with Shrek, but by the end we see that we all are a little bit like Shrek. That was the first movie that taught me that you don’t necessarily have to live by society’s norms to be a hero. But, it also taught me that there is more to a person than what’s on the surface-- there are many layers.
When Shrek and Donkey rescue Princess Fiona from the castle, Shrek doesn’t perceive it as having the stereotypical hero role that most other saviors have in fairytales. At that point he’s mostly in it for himself so that he can get his swamp back. His final plan of delivering Princess Fiona to Lord Farquaad (who we found out is a villain when he interrogates Gingy-- a gingerbread man-- and breaks off his legs when he doesn’t get the answer he wants) isn’t really that heroic. But, as the movie goes on and we begin to know Shrek for who he is instead of just being and ogre, he steps more into the shoes of a hero and ultimately saves Princess Fiona from marrying Lord Farquaad. Because Lord Farquaad is a villain, but also a person a big person in charge, this movie put the thought into my mind that sometimes people in charge don’t always do the right thing.
In a way, the Shrek Series taught me that princes aren’t always heros. Prince Charming (a villain who wants the crown of Far Far Away and tries to use magic to make it happen) is everything we’d expect a heroic disney prince to be-- charming, nice looking, and loved by everyone. But yet, he causes more problems than he solves. In the second movie Shrek is more of a traditional hero-- becoming a human and having the main goal to find and rescue Fiona from Prince Charming.
