Cheesecake-crisis - Disaster In Progress

Under 'memories I sometimes think I imagined': one time I was being babysat at a family friend's house, I think I was about 10.

My aunty (not actually a relation) puts on Shrek, on a burned DVD. I mention that it's burned because it's relevant to this story. I think it was just a plain disc, silver probably, with 'Shrek' written on it in marker. (Not relevant: I also saw 'Meet the Fockers' next to it in the CD album and felt vaguely scandalised for some reason?? Just by the name... I mean, to this day I would avoid saying it out loud.)

This is not my first time watching Shrek. I have enjoyed it many times before this particular day. I would notice if anything was amiss (foreshadowing!).

Some time passes. I am sitting on the sofa enjoying what is a standard viewing of Shrek, except for one thing. She comes back into the room to check on me. Is everything fine? Yes, I answer. Except I think there's a scene missing from the DVD.

By now, we're well past the point where it should have played (it's the Merry Men scene). I don't think I even get to finish my sentence before I realise she is glowering at me. This is surreal (to me). I was a very meek child and almost never got in trouble for anything, outside of my own family. She's frowning like I am saying something wrong, so I just backtrack and say it's a good movie and I'm enjoying it, no missing scenes at all, everything's Very Normal Actually.

She walks away and in my head I am left wondering what I did wrong. Perhaps she owns a defective copy of Shrek and this is a sore point for her. I don't know much about DVDs at this point in life-- maybe scenes can randomly cut out, she has never experienced the scene-skip I am describing, and I sound crazy to her. Maybe she just expected nothing to be wrong when she came to check on me, and the presentation of an obstacle upset her.

In the intervening years, I have managed to come up with the following semblance of an explanation: (1) she's very devoutly Christian*, (2) she purposefully had a cut of Shrek made without the blasphemy that was the Merry Men scene, thus enabling guilt-free viewings of Shrek, and (3) she wasn't counting on my existing memory of Shrek to be strong enough to detect any difference in this version, and was displeased when I called it out. Actually, on (2), it's not necessarily a religious thing now that I think about it, but there's precedent of religious nutjobs holding a very surface-level 'won't they think of the children!' attitude, the kind that might drive you to commission a 'clean' version of what is already a kid-appropriate movie. To omit exactly one dirty joke, because there are many others that cannot be censored without just... completely destroying the flow of the movie. (And I do think it's a great movie, a rare movie that grownups and kids can enjoy on different levels! It's a really special movie, beyond all the memeing it's so prone to.)

Anyway, I don't think I've ever typed this out in full before. I don't really expect anybody to read it. What's one more weird story on the internet?

I found this mildly unsettling at the time, like having tripped into an alternate reality. Now it's just bizarre. You're really going to stare down a child because they remember Shrek too well?? You're gonna cut out a whole choreographed musical number and then gaslight me into agreeing it was never there?? Wild. Formative experience for sure.

*she gifted me a 'My First Bible' when I was 5, and my immediate family isn't Christian. The imagery of the crucifixion scared me a little. But I think culturally, it kicked off a kind of outsider fascination with biblical stories and creation myths for me, so I guess that's cool?

Rockapella promotional video, 1997-98.

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i m m e d i a t e l y

Rockapella performing on Japanese TV in 1992. Looks to be some kind of musical guessing-gameshow?