“ every thing is AWesoMe.” spreAdibilit y And THE LEGO MOVIE
193
points out, 39 there has been an astonishing proliferation of cute aesthetics
over the last few decades; an aesthetic and affective agent that was
f irst taken seriously by ethologist Konrad Lorenz in his 1943 study, “The
Innate Forms of Possible Experience” [Die angeborenen Formen möglicher
Erfahrung] (1943). Here Lorenz advanced the Darwinian notion that, as
a result of natural selection, most infants have an innate quality that
prompts caring in adults. Lorenz then broke this quality down into an
“inborn schema of the infant [das Kindchenschema],” with which he
mapped out a number of cute [herzig] characteristics that act as innate
releasing mechanisms in adults, including smallness as well as a “large
head, predominance of the brain capsule, large and low-lying eyes, bulging
cheek region, short, thick extremities, a springy elastic consistency, and
clumsy movements”. 40
While quite obviously not all LEGO products tick all of these boxes, it
is equally evident that the company has both promoted and profited from
cuteness since its beginnings, trading on cute aesthetics and affects, just
as cuteness has come to sugarcoat increasingly vast expanses of our daily
lives. 41 Cute aesthetics are then supposed to induce profitably cuddly affects
from emotionally and psychically self-regulating subjects always caught
in the labor of self-improvement like Emmet, beginning every morning
with the 21 steps to happiness. Cuteness aids in co-opting resistance by
rebranding various forms of disappointment (i.e. loss of employment and
opportunity) as success, and then acts as an affective veneer that insulates
us as precarious, financialized subjects with puppies, kittens, and emoji as
emotional anchors. In other words, we are invited to “amuse ourselves to
death,” to borrow Neil Postman’s felicitous phrase, and to consume cute
products as we witness the constant erosion of social safety nets, shrinking
opportunities for youth, increased precarity in the work place, and so on.
Importantly, all the fun and cuteness of LEGO also inspires or encourages
“playbor,” a term coined to describe the increasing trend to “gamify” labor
with the goal of fooling workers (as in “Taco Tuesday”) into believing that
they are having fun. The term playbor refers to labor performed, most often
free of charge, by fans, bloggers, and other interactive media users who
39 Examples include Sianne Ngai’s Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Harvard:
Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Christine Yano’s Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek
across the Pacific (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013).
40 Lorenz, 276–277.
41 Many of these problematics are explored in Joshua Paul Dale, Joyce Goggin, Julia Leyda,
Anthony P. McIntire, and Diane Negra, The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness (New York and
London: Routledge, 2016).
193
points out, 39 there has been an astonishing proliferation of cute aesthetics
over the last few decades; an aesthetic and affective agent that was
f irst taken seriously by ethologist Konrad Lorenz in his 1943 study, “The
Innate Forms of Possible Experience” [Die angeborenen Formen möglicher
Erfahrung] (1943). Here Lorenz advanced the Darwinian notion that, as
a result of natural selection, most infants have an innate quality that
prompts caring in adults. Lorenz then broke this quality down into an
“inborn schema of the infant [das Kindchenschema],” with which he
mapped out a number of cute [herzig] characteristics that act as innate
releasing mechanisms in adults, including smallness as well as a “large
head, predominance of the brain capsule, large and low-lying eyes, bulging
cheek region, short, thick extremities, a springy elastic consistency, and
clumsy movements”. 40
While quite obviously not all LEGO products tick all of these boxes, it
is equally evident that the company has both promoted and profited from
cuteness since its beginnings, trading on cute aesthetics and affects, just
as cuteness has come to sugarcoat increasingly vast expanses of our daily
lives. 41 Cute aesthetics are then supposed to induce profitably cuddly affects
from emotionally and psychically self-regulating subjects always caught
in the labor of self-improvement like Emmet, beginning every morning
with the 21 steps to happiness. Cuteness aids in co-opting resistance by
rebranding various forms of disappointment (i.e. loss of employment and
opportunity) as success, and then acts as an affective veneer that insulates
us as precarious, financialized subjects with puppies, kittens, and emoji as
emotional anchors. In other words, we are invited to “amuse ourselves to
death,” to borrow Neil Postman’s felicitous phrase, and to consume cute
products as we witness the constant erosion of social safety nets, shrinking
opportunities for youth, increased precarity in the work place, and so on.
Importantly, all the fun and cuteness of LEGO also inspires or encourages
“playbor,” a term coined to describe the increasing trend to “gamify” labor
with the goal of fooling workers (as in “Taco Tuesday”) into believing that
they are having fun. The term playbor refers to labor performed, most often
free of charge, by fans, bloggers, and other interactive media users who
39 Examples include Sianne Ngai’s Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Harvard:
Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Christine Yano’s Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek
across the Pacific (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013).
40 Lorenz, 276–277.
41 Many of these problematics are explored in Joshua Paul Dale, Joyce Goggin, Julia Leyda,
Anthony P. McIntire, and Diane Negra, The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness (New York and
London: Routledge, 2016).