Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T01:36:57.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Everything is awesome’: The LEGO movie and the affective politics of security

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2023

Joyce Goggin
Joyce Goggin*
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
*
Corresponding author: Joyce Goggin, University of Amsterdam, Spuistraat 134, Kamer 526, 1012 VB Amsterdam, Netherlands. Email: j.goggin@uva.nl
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Scholarship on the finance-security nexus has typically been concerned with ‘first order’ phenomena, such as the interpenetration of the finance and security sectors. This article contributes to the debate by turning to an apparent epiphenomenon, namely The LEGO Movie, and using it to address some overlooked intersections between popular culture and the finance-security complex. The analysis first focuses on how finance and security are represented in the film, through the plot and the fictional company at the centre of the film's conflict, to its LEGO minifigure characters and the playsets featured therein. The focus then shifts to how the LEGO Group's business model informs the film in significant ways, from the plot's motivation and structure, and the mise-en-scène, to how the film was produced. My argument throughout is that a seemingly innocent or insignificant film in fact participates in the financialization and securitization of daily life through its very style and status as a cultural product. Key here is how The LEGO Movie does this in ways that confound possible critique through the use of irony and cute aesthetics, as well as through its own supposed triviality.

Keywords

LEGOaffectfinancesecuritizationcreativitysurveillance
Type
Article
Information
Finance and Society , Volume 3 , Issue 2: Finance and security , 2017 , pp. 143 - 158
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017

References

Amicelle, A. (2011) Towards a ‘new’ political anatomy of financial surveillance. Security Dialogue, 42(2): 161–77.Google Scholar
Amoore, L. (2011) Data derivatives: On the emergence of a security risk calculus for our times. Theory, Culture & Society, 28(6): 24–43.Google Scholar
Amoore, L. and de Goede, M. (eds.) (2008) Risk and the War on Terror. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Anderson, B. (2010) Modulating the excess of affect. In: Gregg, M. and. Seigworth, G. (eds.) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 161–86.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. (2016) Banking on Words: The Failure of Language in the Age of Derivative Finance. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
BBC (2016) Lego changes bulk buy policy after Ai Weiwei backlash. BBC News [Online], 13 January. Available at: <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-35299069>. Accessed 29 November 2017..+Accessed+29+November+2017.>Google Scholar
Bolton, S.C. and Houlihan, M. (2009) Are we having fun yet? A consideration of workplace fun and engagement. Employee Relations, 31(6): 556–68.Google Scholar
Boy, N. (2015) Sovereign safety. Security Dialogue, 46(6): 530–47.Google Scholar
CNN (2016) Everything awesome again? LEGO changes guidelines for bulk orders. CNN [Online], 14 January. Available at: <http://edition.cnn.com/style/article/lego-changes-guidelines-for-bulk-orders/index.html>. Accessed 1 December 2017..+Accessed+1+December+2017.>Google Scholar
Daily Mash, The (2015) LEGO ‘promoting unrealistic body image’. The Daily Mash [Online], 18 June. Available at: <http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/lego-promoting-unrealistic-body-image-2015061899397>. Accessed 28 November 2017..+Accessed+28+November+2017.>Google Scholar
Dale, J.P. et al. (2017) The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Davies, W. (2015) The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being. London: Verso.Google Scholar
de Goede, M. (2010) Financial security. In: Burgess, J.P. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of New Security Studies. London: Routledge, 100–109.Google Scholar
Derrida, J. (1978) Structure, sign, and play in the discourse of the human sciences. In: Writing and Difference. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 278–95.Google Scholar
Ehrenreich, B. (2009) Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. London: Granta.Google Scholar
Giddings, S. (2014) Bright bricks, dark play: On the impossibility of studying LEGO. In: Wolf, M.J.P. (ed.) LEGO Studies: Examining the Building Blocks of a Transmedial Phenomenon. London: Routledge, 241–68.Google Scholar
Goggin, J. (2012) Regulating virtual subjects: Finance, fun and games. Journal of Cultural Economy, 5(4): 441–56.Google Scholar
Goggin, J. (2016) Playbour, farming and leisure. ephemera: theory and politics in organization, 11(4): 357–68.Google Scholar
Hardt, M. (1999) Affective labor. Boundary 2, 26(2): 89–100.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. (1991) Time-space compression and the postmodern condition. In: The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 284–308.Google Scholar
Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins, H. (2007) Transmedia storytelling 101. HenryJenkins.org, 22 March. Available at: <http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html>. Accessed 21 November 2017..+Accessed+21+November+2017.>Google Scholar
Klein, N. (2007) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Kücklich, J. (2005) Precarious playbour: Modders and the digital games industry. The Fibreculture Journal, 5: FCJ-025. Available at: <http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-025-precarious-playbour-modders-and-the-digital-games-industry/>. Accessed 2 March 2016.Google Scholar
Langley, P. (2010) The ethical investor and embodied economies. In: Abdelal, R., Blyth, M. and Parsons, C. (eds.) Constructing the International Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 211–27.Google Scholar
Langley, P. (2015) Liquidity Lost: The Governance of the Global Financial Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lauwaert, M. (2009) The Place of Play: Toys and Digital Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
The LEGO Movie (2014) Dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Warner Bros.Google Scholar
The LEGO Movie: Fan Made Films (2014) Official Warner Bros. UK YouTube Channel. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSSZJxDsjew>. Accessed 28 November 2017..+Accessed+28+November+2017.>Google Scholar
Lightfoot, G. and Lilley, S. (2017) Organising destruction: A derivative logic? Organization, 24(4): 534–48.Google Scholar
Lobo-Guerrero, L. (2011) Insuring Security: Biopolitics, Security and Risk. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lorenz, K. (1943) Die angeborenen Formen möglichen Erfahrung. Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 5: 245–409.Google Scholar
Martin, R. (2002) Financialization of Daily Life. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, R. (2007) An Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk Management. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, R. (2013) After economy? Social logics of the derivative. Social Text, 31(1): 83–106.Google Scholar
Monaghan, A. (2017) Lego to axe 1,400 jobs. The Guardian [Online], 5 September. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/sep/05/lego-to-axe-1400-jobs>. Accessed 28 November 2017..+Accessed+28+November+2017.>Google Scholar
Ngai, S. (2012) Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
ObjectSharp (2012) The legofication of business. ObjectSharp Blog [Online], 13 August. Available at: <http://blogs.objectsharp.com/post/2012/08/13/The-Legofication-Of-Business.aspx>. Accessed 29 November 2017..+Accessed+29+November+2017.>Google Scholar
Pomerantz, D. (2014) What Hollywood can learn from the success of The LEGO Movie. Forbes [Online], 11 February. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/dorothypomerantz/2014/02/11/what-hollywood-can-learn-from-the-success-of-the-lego-movie/#533873563f05>. Accessed 1 December 2017..+Accessed+1+December+2017.>Google Scholar
Rettberg, S. (2008) Corporate ideology in World of Warcraft. In: Corneliussen, H. and Rettberg, J.W. (eds.) Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader. Boston, MA: MIT Press, 19–39.Google Scholar
Sanders, J. (2006) Adaptation and Appropriation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Simmel, G. (2004) The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Simons, J.W. (2015) Opinion: Why LEGO is ruining our kids’ imaginations. CNN [Online], 1 December. Available at: <http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/01/opinion/lego-imagination-opinion/index.html>. Accessed 2 March 2016..+Accessed+2+March+2016.>Google Scholar
Taylor, M.C. (2004) Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World without Redemption. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
TV Tropes Wiki (n.d.) Western animation/The LEGO Movie. TV Tropes Wiki [Online]. Available at: <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie>. Accessed 1 December 2017..+Accessed+1+December+2017.>Google Scholar
Vogl, J. (2017) The Ascendancy of Finance. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Wallace, D.F. (1993) E unibus pluram: Television and U.S. fiction. Review of Contemporary Fiction, 13(2): 151–94.Google Scholar