3. Learning How to Build Community Without Following the Instructions

ELISSA ODGREN

3. LEARNING HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY WITHOUT FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS

Finding Pieces of Resistance in The Lego Movie

INTRODUCTION

My sole intention in watching The Lego Movie (Lin, Lee, Lord, & Miller, 2014) trailer was to find out why everyone else liked it so much. When the trailer began, I immediately recognized the song “Everything is AWESOME!!!” (Patterson, Bartholomew, Harriton, & The Lonely Island, 2014) that my colleagues had been singing for months. Although the musical familiarity was unexpected, it matched my preconceived notions of the film as a marketing tool to encourage consumption and conformity. The rest of the trailer, however, was nothing like what I expected. When the film’s antagonist introduced himself as President Business, I was amazed that a children’s movie would be bold enough to implicate politics in big business by amalgamating them together into the name of one villain. Impressed by its counter- hegemonic undertones, I realized that the film was actually a sociopolitical satire. It could have been a generic children’s movie, putting minimal effort into script- writing and maximal investment into spin-off merchandising, but instead it took a major risk in Hollywood storytelling by not following the rules. The juxtaposition of resistance and reinforcement of consumer culture intrigued me, so I decided to watch the entire film through a critical lens. I was motivated to engage in this analysis by a Master’s course that I was completing. One option for the final assignment was to conduct a textual analysis of a film or a novel. I thought about The Lego Movie, which I had seen recently, and how much it illustrates concepts that had been covered in the course. I used ideas about the methodological approach of textual analysis presented by McKee (2003). As he explains, “Textual analysis is about making educated guesses about how audiences interpret texts” (p. 27). As McKee and other scholars who use textual analysis clarify, there is no single way to interpret any text, and all texts are “read” (or viewed) intertextually, together with other texts. In recognizing that point, I also recognize that, in the end, The Lego Movie, like any text, will always be associated with a range of possible meanings. Still, as McKee (2003) explains,

There are limits on what seems reasonable in a given culture at a given time. Ways of making sense of the world aren’t completely arbitrary; they don’t change from moment to moment. They’re not infinite, and they’re not completely individual. (p. 18) Using a careful, analytical reading of both The Lego Movie and relevant scholarship, I outline one possible, and conceptually grounded, interpretation of this film. This chapter first touches on the significance of using popular media as a tool for sociological analysis and outlines my guiding questions and perspective. I then explore three major themes related to informal adult learning: transformative learning, communities of practice, and citizenship. In my discussion, I summarize recent research on popular media in adult education, and delve into the potentially transformative nature of public pedagogy. I then discuss criticisms of the film’s gender representation and product placement in order to emphasize the importance of critical media literacy.

EXAMINING POPULAR MEDIA AS PEDAGOGY Along with television, music, and social media, movies are an extremely influential component of popular culture, shaping understandings of the world and affecting the way in which people relate to one another. Giroux (2008) cautions that by branding itself as mere entertainment “the movie industry conceals the political and ideological nature of the pedagogical work it performs” (p. 7). Although interest in popular culture is growing, it is still an underdeveloped topic within the field of adult education (Sandlin, Wright, & Clark, 2013; Wright & Sandlin, 2009). Much of the existing literature focuses on the use of popular media in the classroom, leaving the question of how popular culture operates pedagogically outside formal education (Burdick & Sandlin, 2013). Jubas (2013) calls attention to the impact that fictional television characters have on viewers’ lives, identities, “and, perhaps more importantly, their aspirations” (p. 130). Cultural consumption, then, becomes a form of informal and incidental learning, which “is at the heart of adult education because of its learner-centred focus and the lessons that can be learned from life experience” (Marsick & Watkins, 2001, p. 25). Although Brookfield (2004) highlights the potential of popular media to offer counter-hegemonic messages, others discuss popular culture as “a device of inculcation and domination” (Burdick & Sandlin, 2013, p. 146), existing only to reinforce the dominant hegemony. Fürsich (2009) takes this idea one step further, noting that it is important “to analyze which spectrum of facts is permitted by this mediated reality and what is silenced” (p. 246). Furthermore, because cultural consumption is often so emotionally, rather than intellectually, oriented, it is able to educate as well as “miseducate” consumers in important ways (Tisdell, 2007). For this reason, Tisdell concludes that there are advantages to bringing popular culture