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Of all the pieces we've published this year, none has provoked as passionate a response as Eric Metaxas's review of Shrek, the summer hit that is now second only to The Lion King in the all-time box-office rankings for animated features ["Shrek: Happily Ever Ogre," July/August 2001]. CHRISTIANITY TODAY'S online Film Forum has been a particularly lively site, with responses to Metaxas from a host of readers, including film reviewer Peter Chattaway, who has frequently appeared in the pages of BOOKS & CULTURE. Leaving aside the specifics of agreement or disagreement, what's striking is not only the sheer volume of response-evidently an astonishing number of our readers saw Shrek almost as soon as it was released-but also the degree of engagement. Movies, for better or worse, are the lingua franca of our culture, or as close to a common language as we come. Here are three letters selected from the many we have received.

Eric Metaxas's preachy, indignant review of Shrek forgets that the rose-colorization of fairy tales is largely an invention of the twentieth century, and that in his quest to create palatable entertainment for large audiences Disney had to strip folklore of much of its moral and cultural authenticity. In the fairy tales of Grimm and countless others, moral frailty and bad taste figure just as prominently as Prince Charming and Snow White. Crude humanity can be the difference between an instructional tale that has relevance to the reader/viewer and one that is mere entertainment. Shrek is not high art, and as Metaxas rightly points out, it goes over the top at points. But the moral and aesthetic universe it operates in is far more interesting than that of the old Disney movies.

Italo Calvino, a great student of the genre, wrote: "Those who know how rare it is in popular (and nonpopular) poetry to fashion a dream without resorting to escapism will appreciate these instances of a self-awareness that does not deny the invention of a destiny, or the force of reality which bursts forth into fantasy. Folklore could teach us no better lesson, poetic or moral."

David Noll
New York, N.Y.

I read Eric Metaxas's review of Shrek with interest and appreciation. His argument that we should resist all such forms of what I have called metaphor-morphing was cogent and well-taken. But at the same time, his bio noted (and apparently without embarrassment) that he works for the very worst offenders in the world of metaphor-morphing, which is to say, the makers of VeggieTales. And then, in the same issue, another article [Otto Selles, "What's Cooking When Martha Stewart Meets the VeggieTales?"] undertakes to praise VeggieTales, despite a minor quibble here and there.

Let me see if I have your argument down. We should take great care not to twist or distort our ancient images of ogres, princesses, and the like, so as not to mess with our kids' heads. Scriptural metaphor and image, however, is fair game, so long as we are trying to impart "biblical values." Notice the implicit assumption that a scriptural, literate, aesthetic sense is not a biblical value to be imparted to children. King David as a broccoli, or whatever it is they have him as, changes nothing essential about the story-if you are an evangelical.

This issue shows, despite your name, that cultural soul and modern evangelicalism still go together like whiskey and ice cream.

Douglas Wilson
Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho

How do I hate this review? Let me count the ways. Shrek did not "dwell in the swamp happily alone," he struggled with bitterness and depression because of the xenophobic persecution forced on him by the "normal" world. Shrek is not "grotesque"; he's just a big, strong, homely guy with a sense of humor and loyalty-in other words, a catch for any woman with the maturity to overlook the "defect" of his failure to somehow endow himself with Chippendale good looks. And thank goodness Eddie Murphy is the donkey; for my money, he is light years funnier than Ms. Goldberg.

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