Everything is awesome! Everything is cool when you’re part of a team! Everything is awesome, when we’re living our dream!
Thus began the words of the now famous, slightly post-millennial and optimistic theme song of The Lego Movie. OK, so maybe it’s not as post-millennial as it is humanist. But still, it’s a great song that fits perfectly inside an even better commercial for Lego Products.
In fact, I think it’s fair to say that The Lego Movie is perhaps one of the best commercials for a product ever made! And I don’t mean that with any negative, anti-product placement presuppositions. It is perhaps the best use of film and marketing ever to be done. It is the example for all future product placements.
The Lego Movie chronicles the ordinary life of Emmet. Emmet is your average, factory mold Lego figurine, who becomes The Special, the single handed most important Lego piece in the entire Lego universe. He battles the evil and greedy capitalist, Lord Business as he attempts to bring order and reason to his corrupt capitalist Kingdom.
If you believe everything Fox News says, it might be easy to think that The Lego Movie is an all out attack on capitalism. I mean, what else would one think of when someone named Lord Business is the bad guy?!
But I think that anyone who takes that position is not really a great thinker, or movie watcher, for that matter.
It is my position that a film so bent on product placement for a multi-million dollar toy company is anything but anti-capitalist. I shall prove it by adding one word to the beginning of Lord Business’ name.
Lord (Serious) Business.
And with that, any attacks on the anti-capitalist nature of The Lego Movie are destroyed.
For those of you that have seen the movie, and without spoiling it for others, the name change to Lord Serious Business pieces everything together for you, doesn’t it?
That’s because the film was not anti-capitalist, it was instead pro-creativity.
Lord Serious Business was a suit, he was a stiff, left-brained minion out to destroy the world of any creativity and artistic expression. It was not about the evils of big business. It was about the evils of boring business- something the Lego Company is definitely not.
I didn’t jump to this conclusion right away, which is why this review is so late. I kept trying to figure out how to make this review into a defense of capitalism, when in all honesty, I didn’t feel the film to be an attack on it. There might be a case to be made that the film was anti corporatocracy…but who cares. I mean after all, who is really pro corporatocracy?
But taking that position would be ridiculous. Because the overarching point of the film is not that. The point of the film is that a society that rewards creativity and the arts leads to a much better culture.
And that is something modern Christians have yet to figure out.
I’d like to position the thesis of The Lego Movie in light of working in Hollywood and Christian Media.
There has always been the fight between the corporate suits and the creatives. There is a reason the term starving artist exists. It’s because a lot of artists are not the best at making money. They desire to do as they wilt, even if it means living all their lives off of Ramen noodles. They refuse to sell out to the suits and have their art desecrated by the corporate elite. Some are perfectly OK with that.
Then you have the suits who rarely see value in pure, undefiled art: Deadlines, broad reaching marketing, hacking and cutting… doing whatever it takes to make a profit. Even if it means destroying the final product, or the work environment, or even the employees who actually make the product.
We see this battle time and time again throughout history.
George Lucas, so upset with with how the corporate studios slashed his first films, decided to become independent, as did many other now famous directors.
Microsoft is well known as lacking on the creative, while excelling on the business end.
Apple is one of the rare exceptions in which the suits and the artists play nicely together. But it wasn’t always that way. Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, by his own suits. He was a dreamer, and they had no time for that. Stockholders don’t dream. They just want factory line Emmets.
Eventually Steve was re-hired, and well…the result changed the world.
PIXAR used to make phenomenal critically acclaimed films when they were completely in house (and run by Steve Jobs). Hit, after hit. Box office smash after box office smash. Ten in a row. No studio has done so since.
But then they were bought by Disney. Or as The Jim Henson Company liked to call them’ Mauswitch, and they haven’t really had a great film since.
EDITORS NOTE: Many people believe that the destructive nature of the Disney takeover actually led to Jim Henson becoming so depressed he actually gave up on life, resulting in his death shortly after. But anyways…
So the battle will always be with the strategy: to have the best of both worlds. Brilliant business strategy, with brilliant creative ability. That wins every time.
But what about in Christian media? Where has all the creativity gone?
Recently I was able to join David Lowman on his talk radio program, Always Ready, where we discussed the destruction of creative Christian media by non-profit models of Christian Broadcasting.
You see, creativity has to be rewarded. The best programming comes from broadcasters that give the most flexibility and financial rewards to the artists.
CBS knows the business end. Cheap programming. Poor Writing. It brings in the most viewers, but it doesn’t have the best creativity. Why does CBS still do outdated multi-cam sitcoms? Because it’s profitable. Multiple CSI and NCIS spinoffs? The answer is money.
It brings in ratings. It works. That’s all they need. That is all they want.
We can see this example further demonstrated with AMC’s two separate businesses of Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead Season 2. Breaking Bad was a partnership between AMC, Sony, and Lionsgate. There was always money for production. But the Walking Dead was solely a venture by AMC. They owned all the properties exclusively. This is why they could fire their excellent producer and original Show runner Frank Darabont after the first season, and also cut the budget to almost nothing. Both decisions made for a really terrible, long and drawn-out second season set in an almost exclusive farm location.
They couldn’t fire whoever they wanted with Breaking Bad. There was always money for production. If AMC said no, there was always Sony’s and Lionsgate’s pockets to pillage for production costs. Thus, even though Breaking Bad was rated lower than The Walking Dead, it was by all stretches of the imagination one of the greatest shows ever made. I would argue this will benefit AMC more in the long term.
Creativity needs to be rewarded.
But then we get to Christian television. There is no creativity. There is no rewarding of creativity. The creatives are just hired hands who do as the producers wish.
Ratings don’t matter in non-profit Christian television. Donors matter.
But donations don’t require great programming. They require relevant content that drives the donations. That content can be delivered on a set with poor lighting, bad audio, an iPhone camera and fake ferns for all the donors care. The message that they wanted to pay for is getting out.
It’s the same reason why you never see any brilliantly produced infomercials. Creativity is not the goal. Selling the product is.
Non-profit television doesn’t just destroy the creative process. The creative process simply doesn’t exist. Non-Profit television is the epitome of Lord Business himself. It’s all about serious business and Kragle.
Entire series, and by series I mean sermons, are funded up front by the sponsor. Ratings don’t matter. The only thing that matters is reaching more donors.
Christian Non-Profit television is an industry run by Lord Serious Business. Much like CBS has no desire for creative programming in the likes of Netflix and HBO, Non-Profit television has no desire for writers rooms or reality television.
Christian media needs Emmets who are free to come up with crazy ideas like double-decker couches. We need rewards when creativity succeeds… and we need consequences when something fails.
Without that, we are forced to live in a world with one song, under the delusion that everything is awesome.
When in fact:
Nothing is.
- Fatherhood for Sale –The Super Bowl sells us Family. - Feb 2, 2015
- Exodus: Gods and Boring Things. - Dec 15, 2014
- Moses – Sight and Sound Theater - Oct 21, 2014