Is Everything Really Awesome? The Lego Movie as a Dystopian Parody

By Lj. Matek, V. Markasović, J. Pataki and Z. Prtenjača (University of Osijek)

The authors’ poster presented at Science Week, February 2002, Osijek.

The Lego Movie (2014, dir.  Christopher Miller and Phil Lord) is a film adaptation based on the mega-popular children’s toy. A brand in its own right and an ever-developing franchise that incorporates other popular media (e.g. the Marvel Universe, Disney, Barbie Doll, and Frozen), the Legos have become synonymous with popular culture. The poster focuses on the multi-layered nature of the film, suggesting that the cartoon is both a dystopia and a parody. It uncovers the dystopian quality of Western consumerist society and parodies a number of both canonical and pop-cultural works.

Dystopia is defined as an “unpleasant imaginary world in which ominous tendencies of . . . social, political, and technological order are projected into a disastrous future culmination” (Abrams and Harpham 378). It mainly operates on rigid mechanisms that strip individuals of all kinds of freedom, but its structure is often disguised as utopian, highlighting conformity and communal spirit through consumerism as the only way to live happily and successfully. 

As such, the film employs several dichotomies that make up the contemporary/postmodern world. Namely, individualism vs. ideology, art vs. consumerism, play vs. work, and children vs. adults. These dichotomies permeate both narrative arcs, the seemingly self-operating Lego world and the superimposed real world, mimicking the helpless-protagonist-turned-hero and the controlling antagonist in the form of a playful, imaginative boy and the father who restricts him the access to his Lego world.

The events in the world of Legos are a result of the boy’s playful imagination, but his play is a recreation of a real-life situation, which troubles him. In this way, play functions as a straightforward confirmation of his immersion into consumerist ideology, which is “the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (Althusser 162). At the same time, the imagined ideology exists in the material world (Althusser 165) and is embodied in the coveted toy. However strongly the boy or the viewer may desire (and receive) a “happy” resolution of the film plot, it does not offer any kind of freedom for the hero(es), but rather reinforces both the ideology’s stance and the protagonists’ place within it. The film plays with this idea by means of dystopian mottos that reveal the characters’ lack of freedom and individuality, such as: “President: because I said so” and “Conform! It's the norm!” (00:19:54). Instruction manuals on how to “fit in, have everybody like you, and always be happy” (00:02:50-00:02:53) highlight the importance of a uniform, single-minded society. In addition to the manuals, the society's official publications also include censored history books. The oppressive power also permeates the lives of Legos through the control of the public vote, and the surveillance system. Not only are there cameras placed in both public and private spheres, but there is also a prominent poster featuring President Business that reads “I’ve got my eye on you” (00:03:10). Thus, the society is subjected to a system of control evocative of the tenets of Foucault and Orwell. Additionally, the “Colour inside the lines” motto subverts the rebellious ideas available in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 epigraphed by Juan Ramón Jiménez’s challenge: “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”

The parodic intention of The Lego Movie’s dystopian subtext is delivered through what Jean Pfaelzer has summarised as a triad of narrative mechanisms. The first of these, “the perspective of the narrator” (Pfaelzer 62), Emmet Brickowski, an everyman and but a cog in a larger machinery, acquaints the viewer with Bricksburg’s seemingly perfect society. However, as it is ultimately revealed to operate on Lord Business’s eradication of creativity (his pogrom of the Master Builders), authenticity (his brainwashing of the Bad Cop and the obliteration of his split, albeit normal persona, the Good Cop, via Fleece Crested Scepter of Q-Teep and the Poh-leesh Reemover of Nah’yil), and improvisation (the routinization of Bricksburg’s residents through mass-mediated and recurrent entertainment shows and hymnal performances, such as “Where are my pants?” and “Everything is Awesome,” or even Larry the Barista’s strictly by-the-book, overpriced coffee), the text calls for a closer inspection. Namely, “Everything is Awesome” is a song that speaks out against individualism and free-thinking, whereas the repetitiveness of the “Where are my Pants?” TV show brings comfort to the Legos and distracts them from analysing the society and from any potential introspection, as happens to Emmet in the opening sequence. All of the above succeeds in creating “prodigiously empty” (00:31:11-00:31:14) minds in the Legos, to the extent that Emmet is incapable of conducting everyday activities without instructions or ever thinking an original thought, again evoking Fahrenheit 451 where TV screens serve to empty the minds of the viewers and placate them.

In fact, it is through the previously mentioned pacifications of the masses, resemblant of the apparatuses utilised by the governments of George Orwell’s 1984 or Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, that the film unveils its creators’ “ironic stance” (Pfaelzer 62) towards the contemporary society in which it was produced in the first place. As Phil Lord and Chris Miller employ the parodic techniques of “inversion and exaggeration” (Pfaelzer 65), their film ends up critiquing the twenty-first century surveillance culture, the singularity of a corporate entity, the stifling of creativity at the expense of practicality, and even police brutality. This is aptly exemplified in the scene during which Emmet abandons the fictional world of Bricksburg and enters the film’s “reality.” Lord Business, who is actually “The Man Upstairs,” is then shown as the overbearing, perfection-obsessed father of a playfully imaginative boy, Finn, chastising his son for ruining his “creations” by creating hodge-podges of several LEGO sets. 
Finally, as the first two narrative mechanisms conjoin to warn the viewers of the dangers of the Bricksburgian society, additionally highlighting the message never to upend or usurp one’s creativity, The Lego Movie becomes “the parody of a closely related genre” (Pfaelzer 62), utopia, and the third narrative mechanism itself.

Due to its multi-faceted nature and rich narrative, The Lego Movie represents a complex (pop)cultural artefact. It both builds on and subverts the consumerist ideology permeating the globalized Western society. The official policy works hand in hand with popular culture. Cultural products – entertainment, media, food, and drinks, instil the desired values on a more subconscious level. Highlighting children as the supposed (but not exclusive) target audience, the film epitomizes Althusser’s claim that ideology interpellates all individuals as subjects simply by making them recognize and accept the ideology’s hail (170-75). The Legos are simultaneously an expression of creativity (endless possibilities of combining the blocks while building) and uni/conformity. In representing the Lord Business is a villain, the hard-working Emmet (ant!) as a working class hero, and the Wizard Vitruvius as an embodiment of the artist, the film suggests that people – however free-thinking and freedom-loving they may be – dutifully embody ideological archetypes, answering again and again the consumerism’s call.  


Works Cited
Abrams, M. H., and Geoffrey Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 9th ed., Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009.
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. (Notes towards an Investigation).” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Translated by Ben Brewster. Monthly Review P, 1971, pp. 127-86.
The Lego Movie. Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2014.
Pfaelzer, Jean. “Parody and Satire in American Dystopian Fiction of the Nineteenth Century.”  Science Fiction Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, 1980, pp. 61-72.