Ogres are like onions. They stink and have layers to themselves that can be peeled back. I would also offer that they have thin skins that protect the layers. This movie is like an onion. It doesn't stink but it has layers of meaning. The layers that I always need to peel back and examine are the ones about identity.
The ending of this movie always annoyed me. I hated the fact that Fiona turned into an ogre at the end. My perspective was that, I didn't really see why she couldn't be a princess and be in love with an ogre. I thought that the two ogres being together at the end was a rather racist ending (i.e. only ogres can be with ogres). That may be one interpretation. I think that there also exists another possibility. It's entirely possible that "Princess Fiona, " the beautiful and thin princess was only a mask that she wore to fit into the world. The world expected her to be a beautiful princess. It expected her to be thin and completely helpless. But her true self was not beautiful in the way that the world expected. She truly was strong. That is the other layer to this movie. But I wonder under that layer, why can't she also be beautiful on the outside? She doesn't have to, but why can't she?
This gets more complicated when you see Shrek 2.
at February 10, 2007 8:52 PMYou know something? I *loved* that Fiona turned into an Ogre at the end! What I took out of it was this:
She was told that she would take on beauty's true form when she kissed her true love. The whole time she assumed that the true form was her human state and that the ogre state was ugly. She couldn't wait for that kiss because she'd never be an ogre again. To her surprise, the true state of beauty is what she was: an ogre.
From my perspective, this was a great message to give to our girls. We shouldn't be ashamed of who we are because of our differences. We are not supermodels (hell, we aren't even news anchors), we are who we are. We have blemishes. We have love handles, we have flabby third-grade-teacher upper arms. We're *beautiful*.
I guess it hit me because I honestly thought I would never find somebody to love me because of things like my toenails (stubby and ugly) or the scars from my surgery or the athletes foot I have between two of my toes or because I don't like to shave above my knees or because I have too many moles AND A MILLION OTHER THINGS. Should somebody ever love me, I thought it would be despite all of this, and they would never really think I was beautiful. (I feel lucky that this is absolutely not the case. I'm baffled at how much my husband appreciates my looks!)
I can't blame movies entirely for this, but it's always the pretty one that ends up happy in the cartoons. They never have ordinary imperfections.
When Shrek tells Fiona that she is beautiful at the end of the movie, I cry every single time. She *is* beautiful. She just didn't know. If she had stayed in human form, she would have been living up to her own (and ours, too) jaded ideas of what beauty is.
Posted by: Kate at February 21, 2007 1:11 PM