182
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
uncomfortable, or perhaps knowing and self-satisfied, smirks aroused by the
film’s promotion of something like Derridean “free play,” while really offering
a way to construct yet one more predictable, themed mini-environment. 11
At the same time, on what one might call the macro-scale of meaning,
the film follows the logic of a market in which it is important to hail as
many viewers as possible, hence the film’s short-circuiting of a number
of the most plausible critiques of itself. 12 This is to say that the film seems
to criticize and satirize LEGO’s own market-driven propensity to claim
that the bricks offer children unlimited creative potential and a workout
for their young imaginations, while marketing their products in themed
sets, with instructions that also act as affective scripts for directing play.
Given that modern media companies, like those that produced The LEGO
Movie, “are horizontally integrated [and] hold interests across a range of
what were once distinct media industries,” media conglomerates have “an
incentive to spread [their] brand[s] or expand [their] franchises across as
many different media platforms as possible” (Jenkins 2007, “Transmedia
101”). 13 Moreover, this is accomplished, at least in part, by maintaining
11 See Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, trans.
Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), passim. This contradiction has been
commented on in the area of video games by many, including Jenkins, who is cautiously optimistic
about the claim to “complete freedom of movement” made by Die by the Sword in 1998 (Henry
Jenkins, “‘Complete Freedom of Movement’: Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces” in From Barbie
to Mortal Combat: Gender and Computer Games, ed. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Boston:
MIT Press, 2000), passim). Martti Lahti (“As We Became Machines: Corporealized Pleasures in
Video Games” in The Video Game Theory Reader, ed. Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perron (New
York and London: Routledge, 2003), 157–171) and James Newman (Video Games (London and
New York: Routledge, 2004), 120–130) have been much more critical about such radical claims.
12 Much of my argument here resembles “E Unibus Pluram,” David Foster Wallace’s 1993
critique of television and US fiction, particularly when he writes that “[t]elevision’s managed
to become its own most prof itable critic” (157), or that television “must somehow undercut
television-watching in theory […] while reinforcing television-watching in practice” (164), or again
how TV “has become able to capture and neutralize any attempt to change or even protest the
attitudes” (171) that it requires to continue passively viewing (David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus
Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” Review of Contemporary Fiction, 13:2 (Summer 1993)). That
said, Wallace’s essay deals specifically with TV and American fiction of over two decades ago
and I believe that The LEGO Movie has raised the ante somewhat in the various ways that the
present essay seeks to illuminate.
13 On this point see also Parody, who writes that franchise-based storyworlds are “fundamentally driven by corporate desires to colonize and capitalize upon media outlets,” and furthermore
that “what franchise adaptations adapt can […] be conceptualized as a brand identity, the
intellectual property, advertising language, and presentational devices that cohere, authorize,
and market the range of media products that together comprise the franchise experience”
(Parody, 213, 214).
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
uncomfortable, or perhaps knowing and self-satisfied, smirks aroused by the
film’s promotion of something like Derridean “free play,” while really offering
a way to construct yet one more predictable, themed mini-environment. 11
At the same time, on what one might call the macro-scale of meaning,
the film follows the logic of a market in which it is important to hail as
many viewers as possible, hence the film’s short-circuiting of a number
of the most plausible critiques of itself. 12 This is to say that the film seems
to criticize and satirize LEGO’s own market-driven propensity to claim
that the bricks offer children unlimited creative potential and a workout
for their young imaginations, while marketing their products in themed
sets, with instructions that also act as affective scripts for directing play.
Given that modern media companies, like those that produced The LEGO
Movie, “are horizontally integrated [and] hold interests across a range of
what were once distinct media industries,” media conglomerates have “an
incentive to spread [their] brand[s] or expand [their] franchises across as
many different media platforms as possible” (Jenkins 2007, “Transmedia
101”). 13 Moreover, this is accomplished, at least in part, by maintaining
11 See Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, trans.
Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), passim. This contradiction has been
commented on in the area of video games by many, including Jenkins, who is cautiously optimistic
about the claim to “complete freedom of movement” made by Die by the Sword in 1998 (Henry
Jenkins, “‘Complete Freedom of Movement’: Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces” in From Barbie
to Mortal Combat: Gender and Computer Games, ed. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Boston:
MIT Press, 2000), passim). Martti Lahti (“As We Became Machines: Corporealized Pleasures in
Video Games” in The Video Game Theory Reader, ed. Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perron (New
York and London: Routledge, 2003), 157–171) and James Newman (Video Games (London and
New York: Routledge, 2004), 120–130) have been much more critical about such radical claims.
12 Much of my argument here resembles “E Unibus Pluram,” David Foster Wallace’s 1993
critique of television and US fiction, particularly when he writes that “[t]elevision’s managed
to become its own most prof itable critic” (157), or that television “must somehow undercut
television-watching in theory […] while reinforcing television-watching in practice” (164), or again
how TV “has become able to capture and neutralize any attempt to change or even protest the
attitudes” (171) that it requires to continue passively viewing (David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus
Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” Review of Contemporary Fiction, 13:2 (Summer 1993)). That
said, Wallace’s essay deals specifically with TV and American fiction of over two decades ago
and I believe that The LEGO Movie has raised the ante somewhat in the various ways that the
present essay seeks to illuminate.
13 On this point see also Parody, who writes that franchise-based storyworlds are “fundamentally driven by corporate desires to colonize and capitalize upon media outlets,” and furthermore
that “what franchise adaptations adapt can […] be conceptualized as a brand identity, the
intellectual property, advertising language, and presentational devices that cohere, authorize,
and market the range of media products that together comprise the franchise experience”
(Parody, 213, 214).