Recently, when I was scrolling online, I stumbled upon a video arguing that Shrek is a cautionary tale of “how a woman cannot turn an ogre into a man, but he can make an ogre out of you.” The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this so-called ‘feminist’ take only makes sense if you completely disregard everything that happens in the movies. By repeatedly calling him unemployed, a loser, and an outcast, this Tiktoker crucially misunderstands the characters and their story under the guise of making a feminist take.
There are so many things that are blatantly wrong with this video, so I’m going to go through each point one by one.
1. Fiona could have had generational wealth but gave it up for Shrek.
Fiona wasn’t disowned by her family. Although her parents, particularly her father, dislike Shrek, they never go so far as to say that any of their wealth is no longer hers. In fact, in the third movie, the entire premise is that both Shrek and Fiona decide that they don’t want to take the throne after her father dies, sending Shrek on a quest to find Fiona’s cousin, who is next in line for the throne. Throughout all of the films, Fiona knows what she wants. Initially, she desires a conventional fairy tale ending, complete with the castle and the riches, but after accepting herself, all she desires is to be happy with her family.
2. Fiona could have had a pet dragon.
This point is ridiculous because in order to believe this, you have to fully forget that the dragon was the one actively keeping her in that tower and killing every suitor that tried to rescue Fiona. There is no universe where Dragon would ever have been Fiona’s pet. This is also completely irrelevant to her argument.
3. Shrek “negs” Fiona causing her to feel like she needs to make him love her
It’s really important to remember that Shrek only goes to rescue Fiona because he makes a deal with Lord Farquaad in order to get his swamp back. He doesn’t go there in hopes that he’ll somehow find himself a princess. As he repeatedly mentions throughout the film, all he wants is his swamp back.
Fiona doesn’t like Shrek at first; she finds him abrasive and unrefined, but she doesn’t take this as a sign to get him to like her. In fact, what gets their relationship to develop is their spending time together, which gets her to embrace her ogre-ish qualities, bringing them closer together.
4. Shrek alienates Fiona from her family and baby-traps her.
In the video, the creator states that by taking Fiona to live in his swamp, Shrek effectively alienates and isolates her from her family. However, this is wholly untrue because it neglects the fact that Fiona has been alienated from her family by her own family for years. Her parents were the ones who locked her away in the tower. That’s arguably a more isolating experience than living in a swamp with your husband.
Additionally, by the time Fiona gets pregnant, they are married and have been married for a while. That’s not to say that it’s impossible to baby-trap someone you’re already married to, but it doesn’t make sense in this context because Shrek and Fiona are clearly very happy in their marriage. If anything, Fiona wants those babies more than Shrek does, as he is very explicitly shown to have nightmares about being a father.
5. “If you don’t have a hobby and some friends, you’ll end up an ogre in a swamp”
She ends off the video with this point. A statement that could ring true if applied to any other context; the idea that without friends or hobbies, you might end up in some bad relationships. However, because she is applying it to Shrek, this argument once again falls flat. Aside from the fact that Fiona clearly does martial arts as a hobby and later does become friends with other princesses who don’t care that she’s an ogre, this point has no correlation. Fiona doesn’t end up an ogre because of a lack of friends or hobbies but due to accepting the part of her that was always there.
So what?
This whole argument hinges on the idea that Shrek somehow managed to get a princess to settle for him, as if Fiona didn’t actually fall in love with him or was somehow manipulated into it, making her a victim rather than a willing participant in her own relationship. It largely focuses on how Shrek isn’t a typical fairy tale prince and argues that because of this, Fiona should have ended up with someone “better” rather than acknowledging that a large part of both Fiona and Shrek’s character development is realizing that they don’t need to change for anyone and that they are deserving of love, even as ogres.
Fiona remaining an ogre at the end of the movie signifies her acceptance of that part of herself, which she had been ashamed of for so long. Refusing to acknowledge this doesn’t negate the fact that in each movie, Fiona chooses to be an ogre in the swamp. In the first, she chooses Shrek, in the second, she chooses not to take the potion that would keep them both human, in the third, she decides not to take the throne, opting to return to their swamp at the end of the movie, and in the fourth movie, even when Shrek wishes them into a different timeline, Fiona is still an ogre, meaning that even without Shrek being there, she still finds that that is who she truly is.
Takes like this fall into a larger issue that I’ve been noticing lately in which people fully misinterpret specific media in order to make a ‘feminist’ take about why that media is actually problematic or to justify their like/dislike for certain characters. These pseudo-feminist takes, rather than creating any meaningful discussion about the media or its impacts, instead just spreads wild misinformation and dilutes the meaning of the original material.
As a whole, this argument ultimately works to victimize Fiona in a situation that misidentifies the central issue. Fiona is not the victim of Shrek or an abusive relationship. She is a victim of her circumstances (having been cursed and imprisoned) and societal conditioning (thinking that all she should want in life is to break the curse and live happily ever after in the typical way).
To say that Fiona settled, or that Shrek somehow manipulated her is to fundamentally misunderstand the film’s overall message of self-acceptance. Fiona is not a conventional princess and the whole point of the movie is that she doesn’t need to be in order to be happy and loved.
At the end of the day, there are so many things that you can say about the Shrek franchise, both good and bad, but Shrek and Fiona’s relationship being a cautionary tale for women is not one of them.