Holding Space is a joint column by Anne T. Donahue and Peter Knegt that “holds space” for something or someone in popular culture.
Anne: Peter, I have been waiting for this day for 25 years. For a quarter-century. For two decades plus another five years. Since the Year of Our Lord 2001, I have been counting down to when I could finally celebrate accordingly.
Peter, do you know what I’m talking about?
Peter: I’m trying to time travel my brain back to the pop culture of 2001 and everything I’m finding has me concerned for where this is going. Is it … Survivor: The Australian Outback? Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me? The rise of the midriff?
Anne: Close. It’s the 25th anniversary of Shrek.
Peter: Ok, that’s not exactly a relief but I’m willing to hear you out, Anne.
Anne: Like most millennials, Shrek has a hold on me. The first time I saw it, I was 16 and at my best friend Alana’s house. We became immediately obsessed, and began quoting the Gingerbread Man interrogation to the point of excess, using it like cultural currency to determine who could gain admittance to our inner circle (those who also knew the scene verbatim) and those who could not (those who responded by asking what we were talking about).
And we weren’t alone! Shrek — with its fifth feature-length movie coming out next year, 15 years after the fourth instalment (which I honestly think is strange and will probably not see) — has a hold on culture. But here’s where I want to break from merely singing its praises to holding space for a question I think we need to answer: why?
What is it about Shrek that brings out our best and worst? Why did Bad Bunny and Please Don’t Destroy make me actively crave a live-action Shrek film which culminated in a self-sacrifice into the sun? Why does the Scottish ogre live in infamy; indelibly memed, often to the point of concern? What is it about this children’s movie that peaked and has maintained our interest? And please, I beg you, be honest with me: I don’t have Lord Farquat’s haircut, do I?
Peter: The fact that I had to search for an image of Lord Farquat to be able to tell you that no, you do not, shows about how much of a hold Shrek has on me. I think my being two years your senior really shows itself in this particular case, because my primary memory of Shrek’s release was being an 18 year old absolutely bewildered that it was in competition at the (extremely selective and generally quite “high brow”) Cannes Film Festival, alongside the likes of Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Which still blows my mind, though not as much as the fact that three years later Shrek 2 was *also* in competition. The French loved Shrek just as much as you, apparently!
All of this to say, my relationship with Shrek is a bit limited. What can I say, I was a Pixar guy! Though that said, I am absolutely fascinated by the cult-like vibe of how Shrek has endured over the past quarter century, but my ability to help you with the “why” of that situation is not exceptional. Which basically me throwing it back at you, in sincere curiosity, to teach me of this obsession the culture still has with that green ogre. Including people who were absolutely not born yet 25 years ago. Like, what are these Shrek raves I vaguely hear of?
A scene from Shrek. (Dreamworks)
Anne: OK, for the record, there is an actual Reddit thread that addresses your question because the way Shrek has made such a lasting impact on the Y2K generation is baffling to our successors. So read up in case you or anybody else wants a crash course in the way it has transcended time and space to maintain relevance across generations.
To begin, the message of the original movie — and I am only referring to the original movie for the purpose of this column — is actually pretty beautiful, especially since it came along at a time when thinness and a very, narrow definition of beauty were all the rage. Unlike the Disney movies we were raised on, Fiona doesn’t change to appease a man: she’s an ogre, too! And she realizes how beautiful that makes her!
Maybe this is why another sequel is being released: we’ve harkened back to the thin-is-in standards of our youth and desperately need to be reminded that this is dangerous, depressing, and overall very bad.
Secondly, it’s funny. Shrek is a very funny movie! Mike Myers does a great job being a Scottish ogre. Eddie Murphy is the perfect sidekick as Donkey; he is a testament to true-blue friends who annoy the hell out of you, but who you desperately need and love. John Lithgow as Lord Farquat? Perfection. So self-serious! So wee! Plus, there’s self-awareness to this film. Shrek sends up the fairytales we were raised to see as aspirational. It challenges this romanticized notion of love and of beauty and of happily ever after, and it illuminates the ridiculousness through which those fables function. Watching it as a teen, it felt great for an actual Hollywood movie to make fun of Hollywood movies. When you’re a teen, you feel like a Scottish ogre on your best days. Not to sound overly Hallmarkian, but it made audiences feel like they were in on the joke instead of the story being yet another Cinderella tale. I mean, it kind of is. But reversed. And without the glass slipper fetish.
Peter: These are some very convincing arguments, Anne. I think I get it now: Shrek freed you and so many other Millennials by subverting the problematic tropes of the Disney movies that raised us! That makes me both take back my reluctance to celebrate Shrek, and want to buy tickets to its current theatrical re-release. (An aside: I can’t tell you how happy I am that theatrical re-releases are back in fashion, even if that came out of a pandemic-era lack of movies for cinemas to play).
I suspect some of the resentment I suggested I had about Shrek had less to do with the film itself and what it kind of has come to represent for me: the beginning of an era when every summer was filled with 20 mostly uninspired animated films, often sequels, that water down the experience of going and seeing one. Which is to say, Shrek was a massive hit, and its first sequel even more so, and that kind of paved the way for every studio in Hollywood to try and recreate that success with their own franchises (Despicable Me, How To Train Your Dragon, Ice Age, Madagascar, etc). All franchises I have no opinion on because I haven’t seen any movies from any of them, but something tells me they are mostly inferior to what the original Shrek had to offer.
I do wonder if the nostalgia for it also has something to do with how manufactured mainstream animated films have come to feel ever since? Like I took my five-year-old nephew to see The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and I was genuinely upset by how bad it was, and how this is what the kids are being told is a movie worth seeing. But I also sound like such a grumpy old man screaming “back in my day, the movies for kids were good!” right now, so perhaps I should stop.
Shrek. (Dreamworks)
Anne: Oh, your knee-jerk reaction is totally understandable, especially since Shrek also upheld the longstanding and terrible tradition of mistaking the act of quoting a funny film with actually being funny. (Think: Anchorman, Pineapple Express, Superbad, and Old School.) This was an epidemic in the ‘00s, especially since it was co-opted by the bro squad. AKA: very loud boys who’d shout quotes at you as a means of… I’m not quite sure what. But for at least three years it was a legal requirement for that demographic to claim they had “many leather-bound books” in their Facebook profiles.
Shrek, however, outlived all of this because any and all tributes are so goddamn weird. The other animated movies you mentioned that followed were charming — for kids, because ultimately, this is who these movies are for — but weren’t straight-up mocking the establishment they purported to belong to.
But my brother in Shrek, I’m on your side with the tidal wave of kids movies that don’t offer something for attending parents/guardians. Not one inch of my soul wants to see The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and not only because of my storied dislike of my nemesis, Chris Pratt. (He voices Mario.) I can say that for the record, my parents also loved Shrek. Most adults loved Shrek! In that way, it’s less Madagascar than it is Toy Story or A Bug’s Life — which is perfect movie — or The Emperor’s New Groove. (Which is my favourite Disney movie of all time, fight me). These are movies that won’t traumatize young viewers, will make adults laugh, and act as a balm for weirdo teenagers (hi!) who know they love comedy and good writing but just can’t vibe with Old School.
Peter: I will save my fighting you on The Emperor’s New Groove being the best Disney movie of all time for another day, Anne, and leave it instead with this: you have wholly convinced me that Shrek is worthy of its cult. Long live Shrek!