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Greetings, and welcome to Earthling Cinema.
I am your host, Garyx Wormuloid.
This week's artifact is "Shrek", the very first winner of the Best Animated Feature Oscar,
even though the animation is creepy as hell.
Oh God.
The film takes place in one of Earth's fairy-tale kingdoms, like Never-Never Land or Scandinavia.
Our protagonist is former Batman villain Max Shrek,
a big green ogre who lives alone in a spacious one bedroom loft.
But when a bunch of squatters are forced onto his land by royal decree,
Shrek ain't havin' none o' that,
not no how!
Shrek goes to appeal to Lord Facebook and uses an extremely talkative GPS to get to Silicon Valley.
Lord Facebook agrees to give Shrek his land back on the condition that Shrek rescue some princess for him
to force into his outdated conception of patriarchy.
So Shrek and Donkey meander on over to the nearby volcano castle
and rescue Princess Fiona from a dragon who's all about that vape life.
Fiona thinks Shrek is a prince because a small portion of his face is obscured by a helmet
that he put on for basically no reason,
but then he takes it off, and she gets bummed that he's an uggo.
Kind of like the pot calling the kettle hypocritical,
don't you think?
[Screeching music]
No!
Also, she doesn't even try to contact her family once she's free.
Who's the ogre now?
Soon, Shrek and Fiona warm up to each other —
"Ow"
— even experimenting with a little butt play.
[Shrek groans]
But then Donkey finds out Fiona has been cursed to turn into an ogre every night.
Still better than finding out she's an ogre the next morning,
am I right, fellas?
[Laughs maniacally]
[Sighs]
Fiona and Shrek get in a big fight based on a simple misunderstanding —
"Who could ever love a beast so hideous and ugly?"
— that would be cleared up in five seconds
if either one of them stopped talking so vaguely.
"Well, I thought you'd understand."
" Oh I understand!"
— and Shrek delivers Fiona to Lord Facebook.
Donkey waits until Shrek is wee wee wee wee all the way home before finally getting around
to telling him he misunderstood the misunderstanding.
"She wasn't talking about you."
So they how to train their dragon back to Facebook HQ, toot sweet.
They don't do an all out ripoff of "The Graduate", since Mike Myers has done that already,
but Shrek does stop the wedding.
"You can't marry him!"
Fiona transforms, and the disgusted Lord Facebook tries to put on his ad blocker —
"Get that out of my sight"
— so the dragon enables cookies.
Shrek and Fiona kiss, which breaks the curse.
Mmm, breaks it all night long...
Only she's a ogre now instead of a hot girl.
"I don't understand"
They do humanity's most popular and timeless dance, the Macarena,
before ending the film on a somber note:
a tribute to Eric Garner and other victims of police violence.
"Oh, oh , oh"
"Can't breath, I can't breath."
"Shrek" undermines the idealistic perfection that pervades traditional fairy tale stories,
in particular, Disney's superficial and overly sentimental offerings —
may our Disney overlords forgive and protect me.
Throughout the story, the film takes potshots at several of the beloved characters associated
with classic Disney IP.
[High pitched screaming]
Robert Hood and his merry men are depicted as a bunch of creepy Frenchmen
who kidnap young girls and probably smell like cheese.
Cinderella is presented as a mentally abused shut-in —
"Bachelorette Number One is a mentally abused shut-in from a kingdom far, far away,"
— and Shrek dismisses Snow White as just another piece of clutter.
"Dead broad off the table!"
Though to be fair, I have the same rule about my kitchen table.
The film's anti-Disney agenda is most evident in its central characters,
by which I mean the characters in the center of the screen.
Shrek's first action is literally wiping his ass with a page from a book of fairy tales,
and his second action does not appear to be washing his hands.
He brushes his teeth with slime and farts like no one's watching,
the opposite of the glamorous entrance usually awarded to more clenched-up Disney heroes.
Fiona eventually comes to her senses, but initially she behaves like a stereotypical Disney princess.
"You were expecting prince charming?"
"Yes, actually."
She expects to be swept off her Sketchers in the storybook manner, with acts of chivalry
and grand, dramatic gestures.
"Recite an epic poem for me!"
However, the character who espouses these characteristics is the most odious character in the film
and also has the lamest haircut.
"Will you be the perfect bride for the perfect groom?"
The film's numerous attacks on the Disney aesthetic
were purported to be the result of a feud between Disney CEO Michael Eisner,
and his former whipping boy, Jeffrey "J Money" Katzenberg.
Under Eisner, Katzenberg ran Disney's movie and television division for a decade and
was responsible for revitalizing Disney's stale animated film catalog with hits such as
"The Little Fish Lady", "Interracial Couple", and "The Genie Saves Hanukkah".
Despite Katzenberg's efforts, Disney refused to promote him,
so Katzenberg left to start Dreamworks out of pure spite.
Some believe that Katzenberg based the Lord Facebook character on Eisner,
while I maintain that Eisner was based on him.
Either way, Lord Facebook's kingdom is a dead ringer for Disneyland,
complete with employees in ridiculous costumes and puppets singing incessantly
about what a small and pitiful world Earth is.
Katzenberg and his new friends at Dreamworks criticize the idea that the beautiful are
destined for greater rewards than "normal," less valuable people.
Typically, at the end of a fairy tale, the lovely princess and handsome hero live "happily ever after."
"Shrek" rejects this narrative by making both of its heroes ugly,
thereby suggesting that their marriage will be rocky, and probably end in divorce —
and isn't that the ending we really deserve?
For Earthling Cinema, I'm Garyx Wormuloid.
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