Visual theme: A jolly silly Shrek visiting a tavern after having developed a rich and profound personality virtues (he'll be back to his disgusting swarm home soon, no worries) vs a gamer addict shrek who has developed a delusional system of excuses that reinforce his self harm despite that he thus harms his wife and children as well. (it isn't necessarily gaming, could be other forms of escape by selling ones soul to do meaningless things for the sake of consumerism, often in the form of money. Corpo enslavement is a consequence of being devoid of values, personality and dreams. (Here an applicable reading)
The motto that he lives by is:
“This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time. Make it fun."

Shrek is a story about an ordinary person who finds meaning and value in living on a farm with his wife, kinds and one neighbor.
It’s roughly outlined in a video by a channel often critiqued by me, Nie Wiem Ale Się Dowiem.

However, Shrek already lives on said farm before all the adventures. So he is capable of attaining that meaning later on, because of going through the heroes journey, that requires him to attain intrinsic values and develop his character.

The lie is, that Shrek is presented as an ordinary, uneducated person with no ambitions, who effortlessly goes through high-stake challenges that even most capable people failed at. It is a lie that it's all so cute to see the hidden value in Shrek, through all the layers of superficiality, like his appearance, for ogres are like onions. Because Shrek is actually not an ordinary person. He has an overwhelming military power, more dreaded than that of Clegane the Mountain from Game of Thrones. He's like the Hulk but without the handicap, low intelligence, that balances out the strength superpower. Without it, he'd fail at everything, he wouldn't develop any personality, and all the onion layers would be dull and petty - so abusing other people's innate sensitivity or empathy to make them see through the layers is in fact not so cute at all.

And then, in real life such an overwhelming strength would make him an athlete or a bodyguard at best, assuming it's a superpower that in itself doesn't require much effort of him, however getting to higher positions of competence actually would - so the lie is, that eventually ending up having found meaning is due to some innate quality, an unique quirk, that everyone has, just due to existing somewhere within culture.

Millions of people soak in those cute pleasant lies since childhood, then clash with the complexity of the reality and suffer mental health issues which prevent them from standing up to the reality, making them cover in fear before those lies. Which is clearly visible in the statistics of generational antidepressants usage and life situation.

Now, I don't have issue with the movie itself. I love Shrek and I haven't read that much into it as a kid, it didn't affect me. What I take issue with is, when my close friend choses to live the Shrek lie, then butchering and abandoning me, who tried to show a different perspective on that lie.

Visual theme: A jolly silly Shrek visiting a tavern after having developed a rich and profound personality virtues (he'll be back to his disgusting swarm home soon, no worries) vs a gamer addict shrek who has developed a delusional system of excuses that reinforce his self harm despite that he thus harms his wife and children as well. (it isn't necessarily gaming, could be other forms of escape by selling ones soul to do meaningless things for the sake of consumerism, often in the form of money. Corpo enslavement is a consequence of being devoid of values, personality and dreams. (Here an applicable reading)
The motto that he lives by is:
“This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time. Make it fun."

Shrek is a story about an ordinary person who finds meaning and value in living on a farm with his wife, kinds and one neighbor.
It’s roughly outlined in a video by a channel often critiqued by me, Nie Wiem Ale Się Dowiem.

However, Shrek already lives on said farm before all the adventures. So he is capable of attaining that meaning later on, because of going through the heroes journey, that requires him to attain intrinsic values and develop his character.

The lie is, that Shrek is presented as an ordinary, uneducated person with no ambitions, who effortlessly goes through high-stake challenges that even most capable people failed at. It is a lie that it's all so cute to see the hidden value in Shrek, through all the layers of superficiality, like his appearance, for ogres are like onions. Because Shrek is actually not an ordinary person. He has an overwhelming military power, more dreaded than that of Clegane the Mountain from Game of Thrones. He's like the Hulk but without the handicap, low intelligence, that balances out the strength superpower. Without it, he'd fail at everything, he wouldn't develop any personality, and all the onion layers would be dull and petty - so abusing other people's innate sensitivity or empathy to make them see through the layers is in fact not so cute at all.

And then, in real life such an overwhelming strength would make him an athlete or a bodyguard at best, assuming it's a superpower that in itself doesn't require much effort of him, however getting to higher positions of competence actually would - so the lie is, that eventually ending up having found meaning is due to some innate quality, an unique quirk, that everyone has, just due to existing somewhere within culture.

Millions of people soak in those cute pleasant lies since childhood, then clash with the complexity of the reality and suffer mental health issues which prevent them from standing up to the reality, making them cover in fear before those lies. Which is clearly visible in the statistics of generational antidepressants usage and life situation.

Now, I don't have issue with the movie itself. I love Shrek and I haven't read that much into it as a kid, it didn't affect me. What I take issue with is, when my close friend choses to live the Shrek lie, then butchering and abandoning me, who tried to show a different perspective on that lie.