You know the Hollywood blockbuster animation “Shrek” and its subsequent series, right? And I bet, most of you truly enjoyed the first installment, if not all, that was seemingly iconoclastic and, even rebellious, you might say, to a traditional storytelling.
Other than the Beast in the Beauty and the Beast; or Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, how many movies or fairy tales were casting a beastly, and ugly-looking character as a protagonist? Besides, Shrek didn’t seem to be a good guy in a traditional sense. What he wanted was to be left alone in his muddy, dirty, messy private world. But the whole situation has forced him to enter the tumultuous, funny, and often perilous journey to save the princess who happened to be transformed into another green monster, or Ogre, who may or may not go back to her beautiful self with Shrek’s kiss.
So the whole story goes upside down, entertains us with a serious of shock therapy sessions. It mocks the hitherto good guys including the Prince Charming, who’s now the biggest villain or biggest victim depending on how you see it, Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Pinnochio, Gingerbread man, and so on so forth. We were pleasantly surprised to see that those gorgeous princesses were in fact naive, dependent, passive, helpless, and even lazy, and their only hope seemed to see their savers, but unfortunately for them, Shrek didn’t seem to be one of them.
O.K. we were entertained, we liked the new story a lot, and we cheered. It certainly broke all the traditional “happily ever after” storytelling frame. Then what? And what for? What moral does this story convey to us? Inner beauty is more important than the outer one? Beauty is only skin deep?
In fact, if you search the web, Yahoo! Answers provides some good ones. Let’s see the predictable ones first.
= That even the seemingly ugliest (on the outside) person can be one of the most gentle, honest, and good people on the inside; so not to judge someone's character based on a shallow thing like looks.
= That accepting yourself for who you are is more important than accepting the opinions of others about yourself.
= True beauty comes from within
= Love comes in many forms, be it in Ugliness and Beauty
Here are more unconventional ones that I like:
= Ugly people should only date and marry other ugly people. Or, more simply put: stick to your own kind. Very racist, actually.
1. Your crush could turn into an ogre at night. But then again, you are an ogre yourself, so it evens out.
2. Donkeys can really get annoying.
3. Don't do drugs.
They seem all nailing the animation in a way or other. But for me, Shrek and other similar varieties, particularly from Hollywood studios, provide us different kinds of moral. That we have to be careful and conscious about those Commercial machine’s hypocrisy, and self-inflicting, so-called life lessons.
Fellow toastmasters, what I would like to say here is that, fairy tales, regardless of original ones or Hollywood-tampered, do not always convey innocuous moral. It also contains their own pitfalls and dangers - use those fairy tales at your own risk. Or as many, many TV programs these days put it, “Viewer discretion is strongly advised.”
On another note, to be honest, EVEN IN THEIR LOOKS, Prince Charming and other princesses were not even half charming or cute as Shrek or the cat, Puss in Boots. (+)
