192
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
Such strategies and models were first referred to by Hardt and Negri as
“affective labour,” that is, labor that is immaterial “even if it is corporeal
and affective, in the sense that its products are intangible: a feeling of ease,
well-being, satisfaction, excitement, passion – even a sense of connectedness
or community.” 37 Affective labor feeds into “affective capitalism,” through
which sensational and sensorial products and services are produced that
distract us from the real, serious problems entailed in the neoliberal economic order in which we must now operate. Affective practices (including
everything from cute company mascots to wellness initiatives and office
fun, to various kinds of commercial coping strategies for customers of
various services and venues such as comfort animals) embrace subjects
who have been rendered precarious through operations such as downsizing
or generalized economic attrition, with manufactured warmth and care
in order to extract more labor and mental resources from an increasingly
exhausted work force. One excellent example of this kind of affective
strategy is President Business’ Taco Tuesday. As he tells the multitudes
of LEGO workers, “don’t forget Taco Tuesday’s coming next week! That’s
the day every rule-following citizen gets a free taco and my love! Have
a great day everybody!” Indeed, affective strategies including Emmet’s
company-supplied, self-help manual are presented throughout The LEGO
Movie with such overwhelming cynicism that even Vitruvius blithely
admits that the film’s central, heart-warming message was just made up,
“because the only thing anyone needs to be special is to believe that you
can be.” This is immediately followed by the wizard’s admission that he
knows “that sounds like a cat poster,” at which moment we see just such
a motivational poster in the background featuring a kitten and a single
word: “Believe.” 38
The LEGO Movie’s motivational cat poster brings me to one last aspect
of the current economic paradigm that I have been endeavoring to sketch
out, and which is a key feature of the film, namely the enormous role that
cuteness has come to play in our daily lives, particularly in the form of
cute cats, from the endless cute cat videos that infest our waking lives
as we tap into social media, to Princess Unikitty of the f ilm, who recalls
Kitty White of Hello Kitty fame. As recent work on cuteness invariably
37 Hardt, 96.
38 Note that The LEGO Movie “Commitment Hanging Kitten Motivational Poster” is also
available for purchase at many outlets, including amazon.com. While the film’s cat poster may
be a parody of Fox Mulder’s famous, “I Want to Believe” poster, it also reiterates the cynically
fake moral of this story, namely that even an ordinary person like Emmet can be a hero if only
he believes in himself.
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
Such strategies and models were first referred to by Hardt and Negri as
“affective labour,” that is, labor that is immaterial “even if it is corporeal
and affective, in the sense that its products are intangible: a feeling of ease,
well-being, satisfaction, excitement, passion – even a sense of connectedness
or community.” 37 Affective labor feeds into “affective capitalism,” through
which sensational and sensorial products and services are produced that
distract us from the real, serious problems entailed in the neoliberal economic order in which we must now operate. Affective practices (including
everything from cute company mascots to wellness initiatives and office
fun, to various kinds of commercial coping strategies for customers of
various services and venues such as comfort animals) embrace subjects
who have been rendered precarious through operations such as downsizing
or generalized economic attrition, with manufactured warmth and care
in order to extract more labor and mental resources from an increasingly
exhausted work force. One excellent example of this kind of affective
strategy is President Business’ Taco Tuesday. As he tells the multitudes
of LEGO workers, “don’t forget Taco Tuesday’s coming next week! That’s
the day every rule-following citizen gets a free taco and my love! Have
a great day everybody!” Indeed, affective strategies including Emmet’s
company-supplied, self-help manual are presented throughout The LEGO
Movie with such overwhelming cynicism that even Vitruvius blithely
admits that the film’s central, heart-warming message was just made up,
“because the only thing anyone needs to be special is to believe that you
can be.” This is immediately followed by the wizard’s admission that he
knows “that sounds like a cat poster,” at which moment we see just such
a motivational poster in the background featuring a kitten and a single
word: “Believe.” 38
The LEGO Movie’s motivational cat poster brings me to one last aspect
of the current economic paradigm that I have been endeavoring to sketch
out, and which is a key feature of the film, namely the enormous role that
cuteness has come to play in our daily lives, particularly in the form of
cute cats, from the endless cute cat videos that infest our waking lives
as we tap into social media, to Princess Unikitty of the f ilm, who recalls
Kitty White of Hello Kitty fame. As recent work on cuteness invariably
37 Hardt, 96.
38 Note that The LEGO Movie “Commitment Hanging Kitten Motivational Poster” is also
available for purchase at many outlets, including amazon.com. While the film’s cat poster may
be a parody of Fox Mulder’s famous, “I Want to Believe” poster, it also reiterates the cynically
fake moral of this story, namely that even an ordinary person like Emmet can be a hero if only
he believes in himself.