"Hey, oh oh, whoa...man I'd really love to stay but you know I'm, uh, I'm an asthmatic..."
This isn't really a scene from Shrek.
It's mine. I made it.
"Sure! I mean of course..."
But I didn't do it for no reason.
I made it as part of a massive collaboration to remake the movie Shrek in its entirety.
Each scene was covered by one of 200 different artists, which means that every shot has its
own unique interpretation.
Like, this is a Pokemon battle.
This is anime Shrek.
This is one person playing every character.
Perfect! Never been better!
And this is just some guy vlogging but, hey, Shrek is for everyone!
SHREMP
The feature length remake has the same story and scenes as Shrek, but it's much weirder.
There's a lot of surreal 3D animation, a lot of dudes painted green.
The Shrek remake is definitely unique.
But it didn't come out of nowhere.
There's actually a history, a context that explains why a bunch of people got together
to make this.
So to really understand why the Shrek remake exists, we have to peel back its layers.
"Ogres are like onions!"
"You know what else everybody likes?
Parfaits!
Have you ever met a person who ..."
In the summer of 1982, three 12-year-old boys picked up a camera and decided to film a scene
from Indiana Jones, starring themselves, in their backyards.
It took them all of puberty but, after 7 years, they have a movie:
a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Their remake eventually built a cult following because it was the first of its kind.
No one had ever remade a film shot-for-shot before.
But it was so much work that it might have also been the last of its kind, if not for...
"We're riding on the internet!"
The internet connected fans like never before.
Remaking films became easier because the labor could be crowdsourced: you could
break up a film into pieces and give each piece to a different artist.
But collaboration by dividing and conquering produces a different kind of fan film.
Unlike the Indiana Jones remake, a crowdsourced remake includes potentially hundreds of artists,
which means hundreds of styles.
The Shrek remake is part of a genre that is necessarily chaotic.
But that doesn't explain everything.
The Shrek remake is really weird in a way that even other remakes aren't.
Like, the Star Wars remake has nothing like this guy.
"Only real donkeys and Goblins for the J-Man."-J-Man
To understand why the Shrek remake is like this, you need to know about the people behind it.
I'm here to remind you to go to Shrekfest 2018 brought to you by 3GI!
Held in Madison, Wisconsin, Shrekfest is an annual celebration of all things Shrek.
In many ways, it's a pretty typical festival.
There's beer, games, music, and dancing.
It's a day-long, outdoor celebration of a character from a movie that came out almost
two decades ago.
And it was first started by this guy.
Cause that's the number one thing people say to me is, 'Is this real?'
People are never sure if it's real.
That's Grant Duffrin, one of the coordinators of the very real Shrekfest.
SHREK!
SHREK!!
He also organized the remake,
which screened at this year's festival and had been his passion project for a long time.
I've wanted to do Shrekfest for like five years.
I think before we even did the first Shrekfest.
Grant likes Shrek a lot.
When he isn't running the festival, he works as a filmmaker, and Shrek consistently makes
appearances in his personal work.
But if you actually watch his work, you'll notice that the way he depicts Shrek is
kind of dark.
A little off.
And if you've been to the same parts of the internet that I have, you might recognize that Grant
shares a lot of his aesthetic with Shrek memes.
Shrek memes have proliferated online since the early 2010s, and they've evolved their
own dark, uncanny aesthetic.
On the internet, Shrek is one big joke.
But Grant says he doesn't see himself as part of that world.
He told me that his work has nothing to do with memes.
We don't get excited about memes really.
And he said he likes Shrek sincerely, which honestly kind of surprises me.
I have no idea if it's possible to like something ironically.
It's like, could you enjoy ice cream ironically?
Could you eat ice cream as a joke?
I don't know if Grant is serious or not.
But I do know that he's an artist.
Like, he went to art school and everything.
So let's examine his work on his terms: as art.
Grant's films, and the Shrek remake, and Shrek memes, all have something in common.
They take something that already exists, and they use it in a different context.
In other words, they appropriate.
And they do it in a way that leaves the appropriated object totally recognizable, if a little distorted.
The act of appropriation is transgressive.
It questions the boundaries of what we consider to be art, which is why appropriated art has
always faced questions like:
Yeah, ok, but does he actually like Marilyn Monroe?
Is he making fun of the Mona Lisa?
Is this fountain supposed to be ironic?
These questions don't have any answers because they completely miss the point.
And they've been missing the point for more than a century.
Like everything else in our universe, Shrek has its own network of associations.
So when a work of art appropriates Shrek, it brings those associations with it.
And if you haven't seen the original movie, all this Shrek art definitely won't make any sense.
Here's another example.
You're probably already familiar with a popular and contemporary form of appropriated art:
Disney cosplay.
Disney cosplay operates within the context and the spirit of Disney.
Their costumes are sincere, nostalgic, and pretty.
And this makes sense because Disney movies are sincere, and Disney characters are pretty.
But Shrek is different.
The movie is a parody of fairytale tropes.
So the people who dress up as Shrek characters aren't going for sincere, nostalgic, or pretty.
They're dressing up in the spirit of Shrek, which means their costumes look...like this.
I'm one of the seven dwarves.
I'm Cinderella's stepsister.
She's the big bad wolf!
The ogre himself but with hair!
He's freakin' Shrek boiiiiiiiii!
Viewed through the lens of art history, Grant's work makes a lot of sense.
Because Shrek the movie is a parody, art about Shrek will also be parody.
And you can see this across the entire fandom.
Shrekfest parodies comic conventions.
Shrek memes parody fan art.
The Shrek remake parodies both the original movie and the genre of fan remakes.
And the Shrek fandom is a parody of fandoms.
Grant's work isn't sincere or ironic.
It's both, or neither, because it's art.
And it's art that comes with some benefits, like a preexisting audience.
It's hard to be an artist and have people care about your stuff.
And with the Shrek remake, it's like, yes!
I get to basically make a feature, and everybody cares about it.
That's it.
Here's my favorite part of the remake.
Grant's part.
What a load of [toilet flush]
Somebody once told me the world's gonna roll me
I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
Hey, let's do a toast.
I don't have any water.
Oh wait, I've got a pitcher of water right here!
Say, hey boys, drink up, cause Shrekfest is back.