Not to have Thoughts about Shrek the Musical, but I think one of my favorite moments is in Donkey’s solo “don’t let me go” when Donkey tells Shrek, “You don’t know what it’s like to be considered a freak! … well, maybe you do.”
For one thing it’s just funny. When delivered well it makes the whole audience laugh.
But ALSO the whole musical is not so subtly about being marginalized and all the different ways people can be oppressed. Donkey is a talking donkey, Pinocchio is a walking talking puppet, Gingy is a talking gingerbread cookie. “I did some time in jail, I smell like sauerkraut,” and of course, Shrek is an ogre and Fiona is cursed to turn into one at sunset every day. There are SO many different fairy tale creatures that Farquaad has kicked out of Duloc, all for different reasons that ultimately add up to You Do Not Look And Act The Way I, The Person In Power, Want You To.
There are characters who are analogs for being queer, Jewish, disabled, and people of color, and there are characters that I can’t seem to tie to any one experience because they’re just there to show that people think being different is bad.
And Donkey says to Shrek, “You don’t know what it’s like to be considered a freak!” And it’s FUNNY because Shrek is an ogre, of COURSE he knows what it’s like—but it’s also kinda deep because sometimes, especially if you don’t have intersectional identities, we can forget that other people with identities we don’t have ARE considered “freaks” in modern society, although usually people don’t word it that way. As a white Christian, I don’t know what it’s like to be a person of color or to be Jewish, Muslim, or any other non-Christian—and Shrek doesn’t know what it’s like to be a talking donkey—but as a queer disabled AFAB person, I do know what it’s like to be oppressed in those ways—and Shrek knows what it’s like to be an ogre.
And I love that Donkey immediately realizes what he’s said and backtracks. He doesn’t apologize (because I think that would ruin the comedy and MOSTLY Shrek is a comedy), but he goes, “well, maybe you do!” Maybe even though you do not have MY experience of being a Freak™️ and I do not have YOUR experience of being a Freak™️, we are still both Freaks™️ together.
Like. This is why intersectionality is so important! This, and the fact that everything is linked and our oppression is designed to keep the people in power where they are, and also the fact that some people are at the intersection of different marginalized identities, like queer Jews or Muslims, or disabled people of color, or any other combination.