Deconstructing LEGO

Deconstructing LEGO “In this insightful and engaging analysis of LEGO and its culture, Jonathan Rey Lee (de)constructs the ‘brick’ as a site teeming with cultural resonance. Exam- ining the LEGO phenomenon through such interlocking perspectives as peda- gogy, dramatism, digital culture, transmedia studies, and concepts of play, Lee’s work embraces the building block mentality for scholars, fans, and AFOLs alike. Accessible and erudite, Lee proves he isn’t just playing around.” —Paul Booth, Professor, DePaul University, United States Jonathan Rey Lee Deconstructing LEGO The Medium and Messages of LEGO Play Jonathan Rey Lee Cascadia College Bothell, WA, USA University of Washington Seattle, WA, USA ISBN 978-3-030-53664-0 ISBN 978-3-030-53665-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53665-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustrations: SireAnko, Getty Images. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Preface---Deconstructing “LEGO” “LEGO is not a toy,” argues Finn’s father in The LEGO Movie, “it is a sophisticated interlocking brick system” (2014). Toys, apparently, cannot be “sophisticated” without forcibly suppressing their playful elements (as the father attempts to do by regulating his son’s participation and gluing the bricks together). Indeed, this counterintuitive denial that one of the world’s best-known toys is truly a toy finds surprising resonances in schol- arly discourse. “Strictly speaking, LEGO isn’t a toy” argue the editors of LEGO and Philosophy in precisely this vein: “These little plastic bricks are more like a building material or medium, and probably have as much or more in common with bricks and paint than they have with most of the items in the toy aisle at the local megamart” (Bacharach and Cook 2017, p. 2). Underlying both rejections is an implicit claim of worthiness—that LEGO is worthy of adult hobbyism or philosophical attention1 because it is too serious to be toyed with. While I agree that there is certainly value to analyzing LEGO as a medium, it is impossible to separate how LEGO functions as a medium from its status as a toy. By exploring its distinctive 1 It should be noted that the purpose of the anthology is markedly different from that of this project. LEGO and Philosophy is part of the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series and, like most books in the series, aims not to theorize a pop culture phenomenon but to leverage a pop culture phenomenon to make philosophical reflection more accessible. Consequently, the anthology has good reasons to consider the abstract idea of LEGO as separable from its actual status as a toy. This project, by contrast, aims to deconstruct the actual phenomenon of LEGO and cannot itself make any such abstraction. v vi J. R. LEE synthesis of medium and toy, therefore, this project aims to deconstruct how LEGO’s ideological and material design constructs its distinctive, paradoxical brand of playful yet serious, participatory yet consumerist, creative yet scripted play. LEGO has undeniable cultural impact as an iconic multigenerational toy. In 1980, LEGO could be found in 70% of European households with children (Lipkowitz 2012, p. 24). In 2003, even while the company narrowly avoided bankruptcy, this statistic rose to 80% of North Amer- ican and European households (Robertson 2013, p. 71). Since then, LEGO has only extended its cultural reach, becoming one of the three most recognizable global brands and taking the title of world’s largest toy manufacturer (Robertson 2013, p. 3). Certainly, a popular culture phenomenon of this magnitude merits the critical attention that LEGO has only just begun to receive. Yet, LEGO also necessitates more specific critical attention as a distinctive, boundary-blurring participatory media phenomenon. At once a toy medium (a meaning-making system) and media toy (a branded toy tied to its own and other media franchises), LEGO exemplifies the paradoxical intertwining of production and consumption that increasingly defines media culture. Consequently, deconstructing the medium and messages of LEGO both unravel the distinctive cultural contributions of this popular media phenomenon and provides a unique vantage point into the complex dynamics of an increasingly participatory media culture. Fortunately, cultural critique of this influential participatory medium is gradually emerging in public consciousness. Anecdotally, by far the most common, immediate response to this project I have received (from scholars and non-scholars alike) is some variant on “it’s so true that LEGO has become oversaturated with cultural messages—not at all like it used to be.” While this demonstrates that the ideology of LEGO is becoming well-recognized, this critique targets the messages but not the medium of LEGO, as if reversing the more recent proliferation of socially constructed messages could restore LEGO to some originary neutral state. Yet, as this project will argue, there is no sense in which LEGO has ever been neutral or abstract. This misreading is not entirely due to nostalgic misremembering, although that likely plays a part. Instead, this misreading is itself a cultural construction. LEGO is not abstract and therefore nonideological; rather, PREFACE—DECONSTRUCTING “LEGO” vii the idea of LEGO is constructed according to an ideology of abstraction.2 Precisely because LEGO is ideological even at its most abstract, this construction toy invites deconstruction, critical interrogation into how its material design scripts play. Certainly, what it means to deconstruct a toy—especially a “sophisticated interlocking brick system” like LEGO—differs from deconstructing other kinds of texts. Play systems differ from most traditional forms of media in that they are designed primarily to be possibility spaces for enacting various forms of player agency (physical manipulation, story- telling, etc.). In this way, toys are less narratives unto themselves and more conditions of possibility for emergent narratives. This means that toys do not fit neatly into the theories and methods of the linguistically focused Derridean school of deconstruction evoked by the very use of this term. For the sake of clarity, therefore, it is important to explore some of the ways this project does and does not overlap with this critical school whose name it freely redeploys. In popular discourse, the theory of deconstruction is sometimes described as claiming the essential meaninglessness of language. This is not quite right. Instead, it is more accurate to say that deconstruction claims the essential constructedness of language. In other words, it argues that language forges new social meanings rather than merely naming abso- lute, objective meanings. This does not mean that there is no “true” way the world is—there is certainly some “objective” way things like rocks and gravity exist apart from human perception. Nonetheless, the deconstruc- tionist points out that our understandings of things like rocks and gravity are built of much more than the things themselves—they are built, at least in part, of the discourses which circulate around them. Thus, what deconstruction denies is not truth itself but that humans can encounter truth in the abstract, unmediated by human considerations like culture, language, and perception. Furthermore, deconstruction is primarily motivated by the ethical necessity of challenging restrictive or oppressive ways of thinking that 2 The idealization of abstraction runs throughout the history of Western thought, becoming entwined with several ideological narratives pertaining to childhood. For instance, everyday discourse often implies that childhood is a space of innocence, that the play of the past was more natural before the intrusion of modern consumer culture, and that educational toys are developmental rather than socializing. viii J. R. LEE leverage this problematic idealization of conceptual abstraction to rationalize inequitable power relations. For instance, Derrida’s deconstruction of language is informed by and directed toward the problematics of colonial language that he experienced as a monolingual French-Algerian forced to recognize that “I have only one language; it is not mine” (1998, p. 1). In this context, and in the way it is used here, deconstruction is less a philosophical claim about reality and more a tactic of critical resis- tance against the misuse of certain philosophical claims3 about reality to rationalize or even enact social injustice. Critically, deconstruction calls into question prevailing conceptual systems because it cannot assume that these systems promote the universal good of all peoples. Likewise, deconstructing LEGO matters because LEGO is also “not mine” for the vast majority of the world’s population who are not white, middle-class boys.

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