Shrek/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

* Okay, going back to the first film. I never got exactly was going on with Farquaad. I know in a satire a villain's motives can be two-dimensional, but I didn't get what was the ultimate goal. He tells Gingerbread Man that the fairy tale characters are a threat to his "perfect kingdom". No rationalization on that one. Everything is imperfect, but Farquaad picks on the fairy tale characters for some reason. So then we see scenes of fairy tale characters led off in chains, likely to prison camps and such. At least one character (Mama Bear) is put to death. Okay, it makes sense up until this point. Then we see that dozens of fairy tale folk have taken over Shrek's swamp, including Pinocchio, who was clearly seen being handed over to the guards earlier. (I guess he could have escaped during Donkey's distraction, but they could have mentioned that at some point) The pigs say that Farquaad was ''evicting'' them, which contradicts what we've seen up to this point. So Shrek goes to Duloch to complain. He tells Farquaad that his swamp is full of fairy tale folk, and Farquaad wears a pleased smile and says "Is it?" This ''should'' be an indication that Shrek has unwittingly betrayed them to certain doom, but nothing comes of this. After Shrek returns his swamp is cleared out and the fairy tale folk aren't seen until the wedding at the end, where they happily celebrate their best friend Shrek, who, um, betrayed their hideout (or refugee camp, or whatever) to an evil dictator and then was only indirectly involved in said dictator's death. Was there some stuff cut out of the movie, or am I missing something?

** I just assumed that Farquad put them in Shrek's swamp because he knows an Ogre lived there and assumed Shrek would eat them all.

** Gonna try and answer the original question here- 'Why Farquaad picks on the fairy-tale creatures?/What does he mean by perfect world?'- I'm of the opinion that he's pretty speciest and to go one step farther in the 'why' department, something of an adherent to order. Humans follow natural, physical laws and can be governed pretty tidily (in fairy tales, anyway). [[Du Loc]] is highly ordered- everything is regular, clean, and the introduction song at the info booth is all about how in [[Du Loc]], you follow the rules. Creatures from fairy tales break natural rules. Animals talk, various and sundry things fly (donkeys, fairies, little boys), you have magic and witchcraft, and that's not going into accounting for all the different cultures of these different species. Human mindsets and customs make sense to Farquaad and he can impose order on people who, on a sheer biological/general cultural level, thinks like he does. He can't necessarily make a unicorn or ogre or witch follow his rules, he interprets that as a threat to his bastion of order, and so he goes on a crusade to get rid of the beings that threaten his way of life. Alternatively/in conjunction with that, he sees other creatures as subhuman, and when 'subhumans' get uppity about silly little things like 'equal rights' and whatnot, trouble always happens... *cough*

** They were all on Shrek's swamp because Farquad dumped them there. When he says, "Is that so?" it doesn't mean he didn't know about it. Shrek is treated as a hero because all of the fairytale creatures were at the swamp under Farquad's orders when they didn't want to be. By rescuing Fiona, Shrek freed them from the swamp. I don't know where they went afterwards.