Warner Bros. “The Lego Movie” (2014) has the main message of embracing creativity. Emmet’s journey throughout the movie is to learn to think outside the societal norm. The communist agenda follows the same idea. “The Lego Movie” is an indirect interpretation of how capitalism kills creativity and leaves workers scared to break the capitalist agenda.
To begin, “The Lego Movie” is all about how businesses want the working class to not thoroughly think about their lives and essentially be “worker bots”. Many of Lord Business’s workers behind the scenes are actual robots. All of the real people in Bricksburg are tasked with following the instructions made by Octan. This represents how corporations view their employees. These CEO don’t care about their workers and only see how they can benefit the company. Furthermore, Octan is an analogy of corporations as a whole. Octan is seen to own almost every business in Bricksburg. Emmet even says that, “Octan, they make good stuff: Music, dairy products, coffee, TV shows, surveillance systems, all history books, voting machines… Wait a minute”. Emmet lists all of the things that Octan produces without realizing it’s what controls his life. This is representative of conglomerates and how one business can affect so many aspects of someones life. Emmet is subconsciously trained to just accept the societal norms and not think outside of the box. This is similar to how capitalist corporations do not want you to notice their shady business practices and keep falling in line.
With “The Lego Movie” being as popular as it is, how is this idea less caught on to? At some points, it feels almost obvious with some things like the main antagonist being named “Lord Business”. I believe this is not being seen as a propaganda piece because it is a movie for children. The main audience for this movie would have no idea what communism is or the negative effects on capitalism. The communist undertone could also be unnoticed because Lego itself a 13 billion dollar corporation. Why would a corporation that gains wealth from capitalism make a subtle propaganda piece? I believe this is because the idea of a Lego is supposed to represent creativity. Lego bricks are used for children to make what they imagine into reality. I don’t believe the movie was intentionally made to promote communism, but to inspire kids to be creative and think outside of the box. The reason it can be interpreted as communist is because it promotes creativity, unlike capitalism. Capitalism wants you to follow the “instructions” because then you can’t notice how corporations are taking advantage of you.
