“ every thing is AWesoMe.” spreAdibilit y And THE LEGO MOVIE
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any setting could be inserted (“place name”) from any other story or medium,
and indeed the characters move seamlessly from one playset mise-en-scène
to the next throughout the movie. “Backstory stuff” similarly alerts viewers
to the notion that the storyline will contain generic plot elements that can
be substituted for one another at will, like so many LEGO bricks. Moreover,
Wyldstyle’s voiceover (focalized through Emmet), signifies that she is angry
with Emmet “for some reason,” which is irrelevant because, as viewers will
know based on their familiarity with Hollywood conventions, the story
will find its resolution in the formation of a heterosexual couple after many
misunderstandings and misadventures. Likewise, the inclusion of cues in the
form of intertitles with temporal indicators (“10 seconds later”) presumes that
viewers are knowledgeable about historic cinematic conventions. 4
As Stephen Keane has noted, albeit in the context of disaster movies,
generic story elements such as those just mentioned signal large quantities
of information to viewers, making it possible to produce films with minimal
backstory, while (partially) eliminating the need to develop characters. 5
Hence, in the present case, much of the Batman humor in the film presupposes previous knowledge of at least one of the many outings of the character
across multiple media platforms (the comic books, the 1960s TV show, the
movies, and so on). Familiarity with the worlds of Batman is therefore
what sparks viewers’ knowing chuckles when his alter ego, “Bruce Wayne,
CEO of Wayne Enterprises” arrives on the scene and the Caped Crusader
the seven spheres of action and character identified in Vladimir Propp’s Morphologie du conte,
a systematic study of folk tales. Greimas distilled Propp’s breakdown into categories of actants,
which form what is known as the actantial model. These categories are (1) the subject, (2) the
object, (3) the sender or instigator, (4) the receiver, (5) the helper, and (6) the opponent. These are
then the basic story actants and may be fleshed out and interchanged as the storyteller chooses.
4 While it is tempting to cite many such moments at which the movie anticipates viewers’
familiarity with narrative conventions, and particularly industrialized narrative conventions,
the scene in which Wyldstyle concludes the monotonous, formulaic, in-movie TV Series Where
Are My Pants? is quite remarkable. Here she manages to turn the one gag that informs the
entire show into the final episode, by walking onto the set and exclaiming, “Hey! Guess what?
Found your pants! Series is over!” which points to viewer fatigue, while foregrounding precisely
those conventions that produce jaded viewers. Although there are labels to describe various
sorts of irony (i.e. flat hyper-aware irony or de-historicized nostalgic parody or pastiche) my
purpose here is not to try to pin down exactly what kind of self-conscious irony is operative
in The LEGO Movie. While there are indeed many forms of irony in this film, my intention is
to discuss how irony works together with transmedial storytelling in this particular case. The
irony presented in the film does however have much in common with David Foster Wallace’s
notion of the debilitating effects of “postmodern irony and cynicism” that typifies TV shows
and commercials since the 1980s (171). On this point, more below.
5 Stephen Keane, Disaster Movies: The cinema of catastrophe (London: Wallflower, 2001), 5.
179
any setting could be inserted (“place name”) from any other story or medium,
and indeed the characters move seamlessly from one playset mise-en-scène
to the next throughout the movie. “Backstory stuff” similarly alerts viewers
to the notion that the storyline will contain generic plot elements that can
be substituted for one another at will, like so many LEGO bricks. Moreover,
Wyldstyle’s voiceover (focalized through Emmet), signifies that she is angry
with Emmet “for some reason,” which is irrelevant because, as viewers will
know based on their familiarity with Hollywood conventions, the story
will find its resolution in the formation of a heterosexual couple after many
misunderstandings and misadventures. Likewise, the inclusion of cues in the
form of intertitles with temporal indicators (“10 seconds later”) presumes that
viewers are knowledgeable about historic cinematic conventions. 4
As Stephen Keane has noted, albeit in the context of disaster movies,
generic story elements such as those just mentioned signal large quantities
of information to viewers, making it possible to produce films with minimal
backstory, while (partially) eliminating the need to develop characters. 5
Hence, in the present case, much of the Batman humor in the film presupposes previous knowledge of at least one of the many outings of the character
across multiple media platforms (the comic books, the 1960s TV show, the
movies, and so on). Familiarity with the worlds of Batman is therefore
what sparks viewers’ knowing chuckles when his alter ego, “Bruce Wayne,
CEO of Wayne Enterprises” arrives on the scene and the Caped Crusader
the seven spheres of action and character identified in Vladimir Propp’s Morphologie du conte,
a systematic study of folk tales. Greimas distilled Propp’s breakdown into categories of actants,
which form what is known as the actantial model. These categories are (1) the subject, (2) the
object, (3) the sender or instigator, (4) the receiver, (5) the helper, and (6) the opponent. These are
then the basic story actants and may be fleshed out and interchanged as the storyteller chooses.
4 While it is tempting to cite many such moments at which the movie anticipates viewers’
familiarity with narrative conventions, and particularly industrialized narrative conventions,
the scene in which Wyldstyle concludes the monotonous, formulaic, in-movie TV Series Where
Are My Pants? is quite remarkable. Here she manages to turn the one gag that informs the
entire show into the final episode, by walking onto the set and exclaiming, “Hey! Guess what?
Found your pants! Series is over!” which points to viewer fatigue, while foregrounding precisely
those conventions that produce jaded viewers. Although there are labels to describe various
sorts of irony (i.e. flat hyper-aware irony or de-historicized nostalgic parody or pastiche) my
purpose here is not to try to pin down exactly what kind of self-conscious irony is operative
in The LEGO Movie. While there are indeed many forms of irony in this film, my intention is
to discuss how irony works together with transmedial storytelling in this particular case. The
irony presented in the film does however have much in common with David Foster Wallace’s
notion of the debilitating effects of “postmodern irony and cynicism” that typifies TV shows
and commercials since the 1980s (171). On this point, more below.
5 Stephen Keane, Disaster Movies: The cinema of catastrophe (London: Wallflower, 2001), 5.