#;analysis

cheekbone. what makes them smile ?

hyoid / neck. who taught them to speak up, or stay silent ?

teeth. what lasting mark do they leave on others ?

metacarpals. do they ask for help or clench their fists and bear it ?

sacrum. what sacrifices have they made ?

ribcage. who/what are they trying to protect ?

hyoid : circumstances always has been the reason , from her family to her superiors and missions. she always learn something about when to speak and when not. but sometimes her own opinion interfere when it comes to bad and good or right and wrong ( even in silly matters ) she won’t just stay silent if she believes that’s her way or thinking is in the right . she won’t take trials for that one. if you say something stupid or act on it she would call it and argue. she have strong head on the speaking part.

teeth : kindness and strength, i feel like there’s more depends on the person there’s so much sherry could leave on others and she’s unaware about it. she has great amounts of good traits that some appears surreal. like how can such a person exist ? she’d always make others think about their ideas of other people I believe. the heart of humanity is still there.

metacarpals : sherry wouldn’t hesitate to ask for help. she is aware there’s people who work on the same goal are even better than her in doing it or have different strength to help them succeed and sherry would use it. she won’t underestimate anyone who walk the same path as her and won’t risk failure by doing it alone. this is mainly post re6. as prior she was immature.

sacrum : she basically sacrificed her soul and life for this job and case. her grown up years and she won’t complain about it. whilst yes all her teens and twenties she had no choice because again she had no proper guidance or motivation to try normal things or even treatment. everything was buried that night twice. sherry sacrifice is something not everyone would see. but that’s how she was born a second time. to be for the case not herself. this lessen as she turns 40 . in that age she finally could focus and do things for herself as the human she is .

M.ydei is an odd Kremnoan. This is something that is brought up countless times in the narrative by those who come to understand his mindset differs from tradition that has governed the land and its people (as it has all of Amphoreus). He is lauded as an incredible warrior by those who look to him, and yet, though M.ydei does enjoy a good battle like any Kremnoan, he takes no enjoyment out of bloodshed, nor the death enacted. There are parts of his people’s culture that make up who he is just as much as they make up everyone else, and yet, he also firmly believes that they do not have to continue to follow the same path as they have done for hundreds, thousands, of years. Strife is a necessity to growth and an enemy to stagnation. For through strife, one comes to appreciate peace. This is how it should be, but this is not what his people look to when they think of the Titan. They think of glory in death, of intense battles, and the destruction of their foes. Not the pain that follows.

Never the pain that follows.

He is introspective to this as a result of his history. Because though he is a proud Kremnoan – very proud of his people – he was able to look on the outside due to those nine years that he had been cast out into the Sea of Souls by his father. This has helped him see beyond the blind patriotism to see a larger picture. How can it not when he has heard the countless souls of that river? Each time he ‘dies’, this is still so.

Tradition is everything to Kremnoans. They long for the past constantly while in Okhema – yearning for their home and the familiar like anyone would. This is also tied to their treatment within the city by some who would much rather keep their distance of them than interact if they can. This is understandable. Following the path of Strife has caught many in the bloodshed spread, families lost and homes taken or destroyed (such as the Sky Kingdom) by Kremnos’ armies. At the end of the day, this kind of lifestyle is not sustainable or good for anyone, even with victory. M.ydei sees this, understands this, and wishes to steer his people away from it to one where the tenants that Strife has imparted – courage, honor, reason, tenacity, and sacrifice – are what should be at the forefront:

Unfearing of the blade at their throat, manifesting the visage of courage

Unyielding to conniving treachery, protecting the crown of honor

Unblinking of eyes burning bright, upholding the cornerstone of reason

Unbending from the wounds to the flesh, forging characters of tenacity

Undaunted of risking life to protect, embodying corpus of sacrifice

It is these words that should be followed. Not whatever bastardization his father had followed to his demise. This too was also a side of Strife as shown in the lead up of their battle, when their other half was able to return, bringing some clarity to the Mad Titan’s gaze. During his conversation with Krateros, he brings up the fact that M.ydei’s mother sacrificed her life for him, and for all that their homeland represented. His words meant to make him feel as if anything other than how things used to be, is a wrong choice; a spit in the face of those who did die to see the crowned prince take to the throne.

M.ydei acknowledges those sacrifices – very distinctly does so when he thinks of his mother, and he thinks of those who followed him and died to see him where he is (the flashback of his closest comrades as they fell, and his remembrance of their deaths and their final words). He would never belittle them or speak ill, but he will never forget that their fate is not a one-way road forward. It is countless roads.

He wants his people to see this.

(I know I said I wouldn’t submit this essay. And look, you don’t need to read it. But it’s a serious essay and something I am very passionate about. I hope you’re not mad. It’s just important to me.)

Subversions of classic fairy tales are commonplace staples in the world of fiction. Whether that includes grimdark retellings, parody or adult-oriented interpretations of the morals, twisting these well-known and classic stories for a piece of fiction is an easy way to deliver a subversive experience because the visual framework and shorthand are already present in the audience’s lexicon.

These fairy tale parodies/retellings typically take a story oriented toward young girls, and either for the sake of comedy or in efforts to capitalize on an older male audience, inject levels of violence (ex: Revolting Rhymes by Ronald Dahl, Fables comics) or sexual themes and interpretations - often sexualizing female characters in the original stories (ex: Red Hot Riding Hood cartoon May 8, 1943) into the fairy tales.

Shrek is a very obvious subversion of fairy tale stories, honing in specifically on the tropes of the Walt Disney versions of classic fairytale stories for its parodic forumla; but rather than rooting the subversion in inducing a raunchier/more violent take on these stories, the subversion is actually one rooted in a feminist rejection of Western beauty standards and a commentary on race in America. 

Fiona and White Beauty

Fiona is a character who is presented to the audience with all of the necessary visual and storytelling cues necessary for us to inform our interpretation of her as a typical beautiful princess: she is a thin, traditionally beautiful damsel in distress.

This interpretation comes with it our built-in ideas of what a beautiful princess should be (dainty, kind, loving, etc.) but it is subverted with the duality of Fiona’s visual form, and the visible efforts we see Fiona take to fit into our preconceived ideas of fairy tale princesshood.

During the day, Fiona has a more socially-acceptable form (smaller-framed, white) and she takes efforts to wear an air of demurity and exaggerated femininity, as is expected of her by the society she lives in. She hides interests and skills not typically valued in women of her environment (kung fu, etc.), feigns helplessness and formality for her savior, and she demands the outcome that she was raised to believe she should want — a fairy tale ending with a prince — and code-switches into princesshood to get that.

 But during the night, Fiona transforms into an ogre - and while the face-value interpretation of this as visual shorthand for not having the features deemed beautiful by Western beauty standards (i.e.: thinness, whiteness, femininity, etc.) is definitely present, it would be remiss of the viewer to not observe the parallels the ogre experience echoes of the experience of people of color in America. 

Our peek into Shrek’s day-to-day life at the beginning of the film strengthens the metaphor - Shrek is, at his core, a man who is assumed violent by the public at large due to his physical appearance, with these assumptions impacting his treatment by nearly every character in the world he resides in. These assumptions and the microaggressions he faces inform his decision to live in seclusion in an under-funded area of the woods with little-to-no attention from those in power, where he is assumed dangerous and mocked or dismissed by the majority community — an experience that many men of color would say are echoed in their own day-to-day lives.

Shrek is also coded as undesirable because of his ogreness, and the in-story-public and audience is encouraged to find the idea of him finding love with a white human princess to be a ridiculous notion. 

Similarly, Fiona’s nightly transformation into an ogre comes with its own list of assumptions on behalf of the audience — that it makes her less desirable and less likely to find love. 

So, paired with what we know about Shrek’s ogreness and the way it impacts his experience, Fiona’s transformation into an ogre isn’t just an aesthetic message for the viewer - it can be interpreted as a racially-coded one. 

Sometimes the beholder is just too damn white: Beauty and the moral of Shrek

It often happens that fairy tales and other stories oriented to younger children or younger girls cannot decide if beauty is important or not. 

We have the Ugly Duckling, where the namesake protagonist goes its entire life feeling ugly and like it doesn’t belong until it turns out the duck was hot all along and just had not yet hit puberty. We also have stories like Beauty and the Beast where aesthetic beauty that complies with Western standards of beauty is simultaneously supposed to be treated as unimportant to Belle (in lieu of the Beast’s other traits) and treated as a reward for the Beast, for once he finds love. In both of these stories, characters the audience is supposed to sympathize with end up acquiring the beauty they seek. 

Shrek is a film that does not give beauty out as a reward. In the movie, Fiona stays an ogress. It is treated as a plot twist, and in first viewings, the audience might wonder what still needs to be done for her to get the ending she wants. But then something happens: Even while the public at large mocks Fiona, and treats her as ugly, Shrek says she is beautiful anyways.

And while Shrek’s idealization of Fiona as a beautiful person does not match the masses’ interpretation of her appearance as ugly, the film does not frame it as incorrect. Instead, the film frames the masses as wrong. 

A socially-acceptable standard of beauty is rejected by the film’s core message, rather than the prize for the female protagonist. 

Fiona is beautiful. 

Not because she is eventually going to turn back into a thin, white princess.

Not because she has a heart of gold, and that’s more important than beauty.

She is beautiful because she simply is. 

Fiona is big, and she is different, and damn it, she is green. But she is beautiful, and the movie Shrek says that if the public can’t see that, fuck the public.

The interpretation of Fiona’s ogreness as allegory for being a person of color strengthens this message. Ogreness is beautiful, just as black is beautiful, and brown is beautiful, and fat is beautiful. 

We are encouraged as a society to reject these features, and Shrek encourages us to reject that rejection.

Conclusion

While many subversions of fairy tales find themselves taking a classic story aimed toward young girls and parodizing it for the sake of an older audience, Shrek delivers a comedic and subversive experience while still maintaining feminist themes and a surprisingly nuanced take on the way those different than the governing group can find themselves ostracized and assumed to be dangerous. 

Shrek is not a story for edgy teenage boys.

Shrek is a story for anyone who has felt like they could not find acceptance because of who they are.

Shrek is a story for the All Stars.

I have to say I hadn’t thought of this idea before. The stereotypes and treatment of ogres in the film definitely parallel people of color within life and alternatively people that differ from what is seen as the norm in varying degrees. Seeing the connection now it’s hard not to see ogres as a metaphor for people of color. I’m not sure what that means entirely for Fiona as her transformation into an ogre could be at least a couple different things from what I first thought. It could be symbolic of people with mixed features, people of color that use certain beauty methods to replicate the standard white beauty, or something entirely different. 

I hadn’t really considered to examine the movie before, mostly because of its effect on my daily life, but this is interesting. 

[I feel like, though Arash can be very affectionate and kind like holding someone's hand and the like, when affection is given to him without warning it really takes him aback and he needs a moment to process it. He had plenty of affection and the like growing up because his village was very close and his mother loved him dearly, but then he went off to war, became somewhat 'separate' from others over time due to his godly abilities, and then from there he just kinda became solitary despite being around other people. There's a reason in his Interlude that he's taken aback by the care Ritsuka shows towards him as well as Mash because he is a "Lonely Lion" (there’s also a nice comic strip titled this too that delves into his feelings while at war and its good content -chef kiss meme-) as Serenity painted him as in the tale she shared with Ritsuka.