Myths, idolatry, escape: Shrek

Last week, I talked about how A Bug's Life and Monsters Inc tried to teach kids about ideology.  The criticism of the power of myth is even stronger in the Shrek movies, where everyone becomes imprisoned in the idea of what they “should be.”  The  power of “should be,” defined in Shrek like a fairy tale or legend, is what the thinkers in the Frankfurt School call “ideology.”

When the movie narrates the rescue of Princess Fiona, it illustrates well the power of myth in a person’s life.  Fiona’s parents locked her up in a huge tower, guarded by a ferocious dragon, knowing that only her “true love’s first kiss” will break her spell.   She spends her time in the tower practicing martial arts and in reality, is a very very strong woman.  Nonetheless, when a knight in shining armor arrives to rescue her, she passively situates herself on the bed, with a flower on her chest, just like the Sleeping Beauty.  After confirming that the unconscious Shrek is okay, she runs to her bed to create a scene out of a Disney moive from the 1950s.  For her, the rescue scene has to be perfect: when Shrek wakes her up, she says, “This should be a marvelous, romantic moment”.  If reality conflicts with this Should, it is the Should that is going to prevail.

Princess Fiona talks a lot about destiny, understood as the force that transforms the world

Helena, dressed as Snow White.

from what it is to what it should be.    She explains that her destiny is to kiss her first love, free herself of the spell and marry the Prince that kissed her.  This obession with destiny makes it so that she can’t exercise her own free will, that she always chooses “what should be” instead of what she wants.  It is the same for the ogre, Shrek;  he’s ready to abandon his love for Fiona because he believes that world doesn’t work in this way, that he “should” be stronger than his desire.    When the princess goes to the palace to get married to the horrible Farquaad, Shrek returns to his bog and with perverse enjoyment says, “This is how it has to be.”  To abandon his own free will and conform with the absolute power of Should, becomes a pleasure.

Shrek uses other words to reflect on Should, especially “myth” and “fairy tale”.    It is the people who believe in it who give myth its power.   “The whole world knows what happens when you find your true love,” says Fiona, waiting to lose herself in the eyes of a lover, the Prince Charming who will rescue her from everything evil.    Waiting for the love that “the whole world knows”, she remains blind in the face of true love and chooses to abandon Shrek for the ridiculous Lord.   Lord Farquaad rides a horse-way better than an ogre who walks alongside a donkey!-therefore, this “should be” true love.  

As such, it’s important to distinguish between ethics as it is and the Should.  The Should stems from what “the whole world thinks”, which in reality, is not really what everyone thinks, but what I think others believe in or hope for.    Just like the “they” from “you know what they say”, the Should ought to be an empty category; probably no real person says what “they” say since we all know what “they” say.  It’s possible that no human being really wants to marry a man like Lord Farquaad, but “the whole world knows” that a princess “should” marry a prince, that’s why Fiona did it.    Shrek intentionally creates confusion between fairy tales and Should, because the two teach us how to behave and what to expect from the world, but without much reflection.  The poor and oppressed girl “should” be rescued Prince Charming;  it doesn’t matter if she is stronger than any prince, she should always be the victim.  It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t love the prince, she should always love the prince.  This is how the myth is established.

The ethical, in contrast, stems from reasoning, reflection, and love.   It is a decison that I make in dialogue with tradition, with the world, and other people, and it isn’t something that I passively receive.    In many cases, the ethical is the exact opposite of the “Should”.   Boy and girls live in this cross between the ethical and the Should, which is why children’s movies also raise the issue.  

Lord Farquaad embodies the opposition beween the Should and the ethical.   What the “whole world wants”-at least in the world of the Should-is power and prestige.    Lord Farquaad doesn’t love Fiona, but he will marry her because it is part of the path that will allow him to be King.    Nonetheless, it isn’t really clear if he wants to be King.  The Should teaches him that he should be King.    He thinks that everyone else thinks he wants to be King.  Because he should want to, he does.     And dominated by the Should, the Lord has very little time to consider the ethical.  He will make many people suffer and sacrifice themselves—this means he will oppose the ethical—because the Should makes him do it.

In the first scenes of the movie, there is a social cleansing campaign against magical creatures, which follows the same logic.  Lord Farquaad wants a “perfect” world, where perfection is understood in terms of Should.  What "the whole world" wants is cleanliness and prosperity, order and progress, but the kingdom that Farhquad creates is not viable, it is a place where no one wants to live.  No one is around when Shrek and the donkey arrive at the castle.  In reality, for all its perfection, it is an intolerable place.  The scene reminds me of my first trip to Brasilia, an ultramodern city created to be the capital of Brasil.  The government buildings surround a grand quadrangle, with perfect geometric proportions, green grass, and complete cleanliness, and there isn’t anyone there.  No one.  Even the government employees escape to other cities on the weekend.  It is a city that should be perfect, the incarnation of what the whole world wants and is a place where no one wants to live.  

In the Shrek movies, the powerful myths have to do with love and power.  In other children’s movies, they also talk about money as a myth that imprisons people: in Robots, the bad guy is the head of Bigweld Industries, an executive who wants to kill all of the poor robots in order to increase his company’s value.  However, even his wickedness is ambiguous.  In reality, more than evil, he is insecure around his powerful mother and on several occassions it becomes apparent that he doesn’t even know what he wants.  He lacks a clear desire-and without a clear ethic—he easily falls prey to the enchantment of money.  He abandons good values—solidarity, creativity, affection—because “there is no profit in that,” but neither is it clear what he wants out of all of the money he gains from being evil.   Even among the worst people, it’s the Should that runs everything.

Liberation Theology made an important advance in the criticism of ideology, a critique that first that arose in Europe and the United States in between the wars.  For thinkers such as Juan Luis Segundo, Enrique Dussel, and Franz Hinkelammert, ideology has the structure like idolotry: meaning, to worship a false god.  Money has turned into our divinity, and capitalism, its cult.  

The evil head of Bigweld Industries in Robots expresses this reflection very well.  In the middle of an existential crisis, not knowing who he is, the boss returns to easy pieties, the religion of the whole world.  He doesn’t know which god he wants to worship, so he worships the god he “should” worship: money.  In reality, it’s not just the head of Bigweld Industries who takes the easy way: I remember my last year of college very well when all of my friends were looking for the next step in their lives.  Very few had a clear path, so they took jobs they thought they “should” want: banks, Wall Street, law firms.  Like the bad guy in Robots, they entered a passive idolotry.  It’s not that they really believed in the money god (Mammon, as the theologians would say), but it was easier to believe in it, rather than to challenge the  “whole world” who seems to believe in it (money god).

In Shrek, the power of ideology imprisons everyone, the oppressed as much as the oppressors.  Lord Farquaad makes a “perfect” world instead of reflecting upon his own desire; Fiona marries Farquaad because that’s what a princess “should” do; Shrek thinks that he only deserves to live in his bog.  Nonetheless, there are some people who know how to manipulate myth for their own benefit, as the Fairy Godmother shows us in Shrek 2.  She – perhaps enchanted by her own Should of money and power—wants her son, Prince Charming, to marry Fiona.  In this way, her son will become the King of the Kingdom of Far Far Away.  Knowing that Shrek gets in the way of this goal, the Fairy Godmother starts a campaign against him, doing everything possible so that her son seduces the princess.

Shrek, oblivious of the Fairy Godmother’s scheme, goes to the magic factory to buy a potion that will resolve the conflicto with Fiona’s father, who doesn’t want his daughter to marry an ogre.  The Fairy Godmother, furious, searches through all of her fairy tales, showing that neither in Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, nor in any of the others, is there an ogre who lives “happily ever after.”  In the world of Should, ogres are not happy.  

In her first argument, the Fairy Godmothehr appeals to a Should for Shrek—that an ogre shouldn’t have a “happily ever after”-but doesn’t convince him.  The ogre already learned how to escape the Should in the first Shrek movie.  But later on, when Shrek sees the princess with Prince Charming for the first time, the Fairy Godmother presents another argument.

"I only wanted her to be happy", says Shrek.
"And now, she can be," responds the Fairy Godmother.  "She has finally met the prince of her dreams...it’s time for you to let her live her fairy tale.  She is a princess and you are an ogre.  And this is somthing that no potion will change."
"But I love her."
"If you truly love her, you will let her go."

Now that the argument that Shrek himself should or shouldn’t be happy has failed, the Fairy Godmother talks about what a princess “should have” in order to be happy.   Shrek enters this scene very insecure.  He has already seen bits of Fiona’s childhood-diaries where  she pictures herself as Prince Charming’s wife, dolls of wandering knights—dreams she had of her future.  He had met her parents, and the King had made it very clear that a princess should not marry an ogre.  With this sadness in the background, the Fairy Godmother’s argument is powerful: it’s impossible for a princess to be happy with an ogre, so if he wants her to be happy, he has to abandon her.  In the first Shrek movie, the Should makes Shrek deny his own desire.  In the second, the Should makes him deny his desire for Fiona.

With this critique of ideology, neither the movies nor I are saying anything new.  These are the same lessons that any mom would teach her sons and daughters: “It doesn’t matter what others think or do,” “Be faithful to yourself,” “It’s more important to be good than it is to be rich” and other simple and true lessons.   However, these are lessons that many adults only remember during encounters with their children.  In other moments, we are prisoners of the false gods of money, prestige, power, and myth… precisely the gods we don’t want for our children.  Because of this, it is worth it to re-examine the criticism of ideology with our kids, because  it also helps us be more honest.