Friday, July 12, 2013

Princess Fiona: I'm a Believer





 This is the summer of Shrek. Ella is delightedly involved in Summer Musical Enterprise's production of Shrek the Musical, and has fully metamorphosed into a swamp dweller. When she is not singing the Duloc ditty, she is reciting lines from the play, offering her best Donkey impression. So it came as no surprise that I was called upon to view both Shrek and Shrek II last weekend. Although I am a longtime fan of the not so jolly green guy, and a definite subscriber to the theory that the sequel rarely lives up to its predecessor, it is Shrek II that makes me a believer. In Fiona. For as the story of Shrek II unfolds,  Fiona casts off the mold of the Disney princess and emerges as an excellent model for tween and teen girls alike of self-acceptance, dealing with the transition from her father's daughter to her own woman, and of the essential ingredient of forgoing the future of which you've dreamed for most of your childhood to seize the reality that awaits you when you reach adulthood.

There are a myriad of issues to confront as a young girl navigates those tumultuous years between 10 and 20, and self- acceptance is at the top of this seemingly endless list. Fiona's fictional struggle to accept her ogreish nature is not far removed from the very real effort required by a young woman to deal with the sprouting of hair in novel places, the growth of breasts and the looming onset of menstruation, all of which, to her, seem to appear overnight, much like the verdant hue of Fiona's skin (can we say acne?), her broad nose and her oversized ears. Like Fiona's parents, tween moms and dads spot these changes coming a mile away. We may cringe at Harold and Lillian's decision to lock their princess away in the obligatory tower with only a dragon for company, but is it really that far a  cry from the manner in which parents often envelop their daughters in a cocoon of silence accompanied only by their own confused musings or the images presented by today's media (Miley could very well be the new dragon- recent haircut choices make me wonder). Both choices are motivated by an honest fear, with the unpredictable ogre whose size and appearance make her difficult to manage mirroring a burgeoning sexuality that is at times seemingly impossible to subdue. But the effects of both are equally damaging.

Unable to process her struggle with the aid of her parents, Fiona turns to Donkey, whose advice eventually helps her to accept herself. I suspect her ability to do so has more to do with the outcome of true love's first kiss than the dictates of the spell. Today's girl would do well to surround herself with such pals, preferably with better table manners and a stronger intuition regarding her need for occasional privacy. Excepting involved parents unafraid to confront the realities of her transformation from girl to woman, a strong circle of trusted friends is a girl's strongest asset in her sojourn from childhood to adulthood, and while she can do without either of the two if absolutely required to do so, one can not be foregone in the absence of the other.


To be fair, had Snow White or Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty been given a sequel, perhaps one of them would have moved beyond the wedding with the promise of a problem-free happily ever after to become a suitable millennial heroine. Without the sequel, Fiona would not have the opportunity to model so beautifully the handling of the dichotomous existence that is teenage life and tweendom. Fiona is most herself in the swamp, happily splashing in a mud bath with Shrek or goofing around with Donkey without concern for social convention or parental approval. Yet when the invitation to Far Far Away comes, she does not hesitate, knowing that her acceptance of herself remains inauthentic until she returns home and presents society and her parents with the choice to accept her as she is. Her nervous gestures as she and her less than charming prince make the trek from carriage to palace steps belie her uncertainty as to how they will choose despite her earlier assertions to Shrek that of course her parents would accept her because she was their own. Oh, that all adolescents, particularly those struggling with matters of sexual identity, could truly have such confidence. The inclusion of this uncertainty, aside from its obvious comic effect, guarantees that young viewers will identify with a figure confronting her inability to remain the little girl her parents and community want her to be if she is to truly inhabit the person of the individual she is meant to be.

In the pages of  Fiona's diary Shrek learns of the future for which his bride once longed, an easy existence complete with an idealized mate whom her parents accept unreservedly and a flawless beauty that is the talk of all of Far Far Away. When Shrek imbibes the potion that restores Fiona to human form, Fiona is confronted with the opportunity to have her childhood dream come true. She can  bestow the requisite kiss on her "new and improved" husband, retain the blessing of her parents, and enjoy the spoils of her inheritance. She has had a foretaste of this in that painfully awkward interlude when Charming masquerades as Shrek. It is fitting in the end that he is revealed as the true ogre, as the boys of our adolescent fantasies almost invariably are. But in the final analysis Fiona realizes what the audience has known from the opening credits- that to ask Shrek to relinquish his true nature for her will ultimately render him something less than what she wants and a diminished version of what she truly needs to achieve happiness. it is not an accident that her father is exposed as a frog, yet another point of relatability for a young audience. Her realization that he is less than the kingly figure she doubtless worshipped as a child emboldens her to let go of her childish vision of her future to embrace a mature perspective and gain true love, a love that has not sprung to life as if by magic but has been conceived in the crucible of crisis, sorely tested by forces both external and internal, and found to be the real thing.

And so in this summer of swamp creatures and singing pigs, we find a timely guide for what gives every appearance of being an interesting few years. And yes, I am a believer. I can hardly afford not to be.

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