Good morning 🐣

And so we come to the close of SHREK WEEK 2022 with surprisingly no hate mail.

Well maybe not so surprising considering “Shrek” has such a huge fanbase. In fact there’s an entire Wikipedia entry devoted solely to Shrek fandom. That’s how much this cartoon character has permeated culture. Like all (un)healthy fanbases, it provides a foundation on which to build fan art, stories, and memes. And like all things on the Internet, irony and cynicism overtook it.

Some of it has a weird obsession with Shrek’s body, even sexualization, and some of it is just plain disturbing, while one video in particular combines all of the above: the “Shrek is love, Shrek is life” video. The funny thing is I kind of love that title because it really is so true. Shrek IS love. Shrek IS life. The original film acknowledges that we’re all suffering in some way. We’ve all felt like monsters at one point or another and we’d all be a little better off if we could give each other a helping hand to ease our suffering, to make each other feel seen and loved. But this fan-made video goes a few steps beyond into a surreal, perverse outsider art that is fascinating and hard to look away from.

Other animators have made wild and crazy short videos devoted to Shrek, including “Shrek It Ralph” (“I’m gonna shrek it”) and a “Goosebumps” crossover titled “Shrek gets spooked.” Some go even further out there, working solely with tangential references to the song “All Star” by Smash Mouth, which makes an appearance in the film. As one artist recently described their mash-up of the song with Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” from “Titanic,” this is “one of the most cursed things I’ve ever made. I’m so sorry.”

But there is clearly a love for “Shrek” that makes it more than just a “bit.” The YouTube channel 3GI, organizer of the annual Shrekfest (yes, the annual Shrekfest), put together a shot-for-shot feature-length remake of the original film titled “Shrek Retold.” Over 200 people from around the world were each assigned a scene, culminating in a patchwork quilt of various live-action and animation styles and techniques. They’re now working on a “Shrek 2” project and released a teaser trailer for it about a year ago. It looks crazy and fun.

And that’s fitting for such a weird big-budget movie. “Shrek” pokes fun at itself and the industry it’s a part of, while also telling people it’s OK to be different and that farting is perfectly normal.

Look I don’t really know what else to say here… Let’s just end it on some pretty landscapes from the movie and call it a SHREK WEEK…

Until next time! 💚