Johnson said the latest evidence of this propaganda campaign is "The Lego Movie," in which the bad guy is a heartless businessman intent on destroying the world for profit. "That's done for a reason," Johnson said. "They're starting that propaganda, and it's insidious." The local blog included the comments in its statewide newsletter. In condemning "The Lego Movie," Johnson may be doing the work of his well-heeled supporters. At a separate event earlier this month, video of which was posted to YouTube Thursday, Johnson recalled a phone conversation with a father who'd recently been assaulted by the same type of propaganda. Typically, when senators are calling people they don't know well -- it's known as "call time" -- they're fundraising. "I actually called a gentleman, it was a couple months ago, he was so upset, he took his children to an animated movie ... guess who the villain was? That propaganda starts very early," said Johnson. For Johnson, a self-described "rich guy," the offense is also personal.
When he jumped into the race in 2010 against incumbent Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, he said in interviews that his wealth had been called to service by Fox News pundit Dick Morris. “I was sitting home, watching Fox News, and Dick Morris came on and said… ‘If you’re a rich guy from Wisconsin, step up to the plate,’" Johnson said. "And I kinda looked at [my wife] Jane and go, ‘Is he like talking to me?’” Johnson has several reasons to be concerned about how people view the rich. While he is often described as a "self-made millionaire," Johnson's wealth actually comes by virtue of marriage. He made his fortune as an executive at a plastics company owned by his father-in-law. Then the company, in a roundabout way, paid for what was referred to in the press as a self-financed campaign in 2010. Johnson spent around $9 million on his campaign; after winning election, the company made a lump sum payment of around $10 million to Johnson. Requests for comment from Johnson were not returned.
Johnson may still be taking his direction from Fox News, which has repeatedly slammed "The Lego Movie," comparing it to "The Lorax," "The Muppets" and "It's A Wonderful Life" in terms of propaganda value. One Fox segment, though, suggests that the critique can be taken too far. "I think about 'It's A Wonderful Life,' where Mr. Potter, the banker, is considered the villain," says one Fox host, laughing at the very idea. Off screen, someone reins her in. "You're defending Mr. Potter? Gross earnings for "The Lego Movie" totaled nearly $500 million, boosting quarterly earnings for Time Warner, the multinational media corporation that owns the studio that made the film. Have a tip or story idea to share with us? We'll keep your identity private unless you tell us otherwise. If you didn't mind this story, sign up to get an email when reporter Ryan Grim publishes a new one like it. Enter your email address:In his seminal 1964 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," Richard Hofstadter wrote that "paranoid" was the only word adequate to describe the "the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy" possessed by the extreme actors of the American Right.
I had that in mind when I went to see The Lego Movie to investigate Fox Business's claim that the film was "anti-capitalist" and "pushing its anti-business message to our kids," expecting to roll my eyes over yet another witch-hunt. But I’ll concede this for once in my life: In a sense, Fox was right.The Lego Movie follows the adventures of Emmet Brickowski, a construction-worker Lego figurine completely devoid of original thoughts or interests. Consequently, he’s the ideal citizen of Bricktown, a Huxleyesque city governed by explicit behavioral instructions issued by corporate oligarch Lord Business—or “President Business,” as he’s known to the sheeple. Everything changes when Emmet finds a bizarre, distinctly un-Lego-like red artifact that makes him “the special,” a savior destined by prophesy to thwart Lord Business’ plans to freeze the world with Krazy Glue. The second and third acts ensue, wherein Emmet joins a cast of Lego-ized pop culture characters on a journey to fulfill that prophesy—which, spoiler alert, is ultimately revealed to be a stand-in for a dispute playing out between a live-action child and the real “President Business,” his anal-retentive father who wants to glue his “adult models” into permanent perfection.
It’s true: The Lego Movie is pointedly critical of late capitalism consumer culture. The villain is named Lord Business, after all; he hates "hippie-dippy stuff." The inhabitants of Bricktown drink Over-Priced Coffee™. The film's anthem is the Brave New World-ish "Everything Is Awesome." The archetypical proletariat protagonist, the climactic class revolt, the laughable "relics" made from middle-class waste—The Lego Movie lays it on so heavy, even a five-year-old would get the drift. I suppose that's the point, and explains how the folks at Fox picked up on it. But this is a film which, among other things, features Lego Abraham Lincoln piloting a jet-fueled rocket chair out of a meeting with Batman, Gandalf, and a robot pirate. Subtlety isn’t quite the point. But even more cartoonish is a world where full-grown adults devote ostensibly serious news time to decrying a children’s movie. And that, more than capitalism itself, is precisely what The Lego Movie is attacking. Furthermore, corrosive bourgeois sentiment isn’t alone among The Lego Movie’s "targets," if we can even use so serious a term for objects of ridicule in a children’s film.
In its trim hundred minutes, the movie manages to assault an impressive array of cultural bull’s eyes, from academic think tanks (literally manifest as the best and the brightest with tubes plugged in their heads, threatened with electroshock if they fail to produce whatever new ideas are demanded of them), to film tropes in general ("it sounds like a cat poster, but it’s true"), and even Lego’s own legacy of long-forgotten trend products made embarrassing by time, like the Shaquille O’Neal figurine. And the politics are hardly one-sided: "Cloud Coo-Coo Land," an aptly named locale for perpetual-rainbow dance parties and an explicit ban on negative thoughts (which must be "pushed deep down, where you’ll never, ever find them"), makes a mockery of those all-too-familiar Facebook liberals whose politics seems best expressed by cat GIFs and conflict aversion. At the risk of stating the obvious, we should remember that this movie cannot possibly be anti-capitalist. Beneath the satire, after all, is a feature-length toy commercial for a ubiquitous plastic product valued at $14.6 billion.
The film was produced by a major studio, banked $69 million in its opening weekend, and already has a video game tie-in available on Amazon. Even in the film itself, the profit motive isn’t seriously at risk. If it were, then perhaps The Lego Movie would end with the overthrow of President Business and the installation of a socialist utopia, or—in the "real world" where the Legos are revealed to exist—a moralizing replacement of the Lego models with some environmentally friendly hemp dolls and an illustrated kids edition of Chairman Mao's The Little Red Book.But that isn’t what happens. Despite Fox’s claims, the function of capitalism in our society isn’t the target of The Lego Movie. Lord Business isn’t so-called or so-hated because he’s "the head of a corporation where they hire people" and "[people] feed their families"—he’s called that because he’s the projection of a young boy whose obsessive-compulsive father wears a tie and does some kind of business-y job that, being ten years old, the kid doesn’t have a more precise word for.