I re-watched the movie Shrek the other day and I came away with the same feelings. It's a nice fairytale, but damn some of the storyline grates on me.
The worst of which is racism. I've seen many say the film is a lifter for the 'ugly' in the world, that beauty is only skin deep. The same sort of crap they spin about Beauty And The Beast. But it's all a horrible lie.
In Beauty And The Beast the hero (Beauty) falls in love with the "Beast" at the end, and magically the Beast turns into a handsome man and "all is good". She fell in love with the person inside the Beast, a good thing. But she's then rewarded with having him turn into something else, something more loveable, because we all know that a woman could never actually love a beast unless he transforms into a man.
Shrek is presented as the twist on this theme. At the end, Fiona, having found love in Shrek turns into "love's turn form", an Ogre, just like Shrek. There is no twist at all! It performs the same unsubtle racism as Beauty And The Beast. There is no way an Ogre and a woman could truely be a couple, she must first turn into an Ogre.
I've been so preoccupied with that particular wrong in the movie that I failed to notice another that my dad pointed out to me on the side. "It's not very nice to short arses is it?" And no, it's majorly harsh to Lord Farquaad because of his short stature (and because he's a prick but that's not the point).
Here I was thinking I was taking a high moral ground when I hadn't even noticed that little prejudece.
* I removed a rant that followed on from here but didn't really make sense. It followed on that I didn't think we'd ever find true equality while we labelled people for their differences. This person is a man, this person is a woman, this person is gay, this person is disabled, this person is white. I'd have gone on to say that men and women will never be equal while they are segregated as they are on modern society. It stunk of "we can't be equal until we are all the same". I have to think of a beter way of saying it, if ever at all.