I finally went to see the LEGO Movie.
It was great; I loved it; except for a couple of things.
First, a bit of background: I’ve been playing the LEGO Movie video game. It’s slow going because I’m busy with work and because I can really only play the LEGO video game for so long before I feel like I would just rather be playing with actual LEGOs, but I’ve been playing it; I’ve been enjoying it. I love Wildstyle. I love that she’s a Master Builder and Emmet isn’t. I’ve even bought a couple of LEGO Movie LEGO sets, and one of the came with the Wildstyle minifig. I put her together, and I thought she was a pretty cool minifig with her black clothes and pink hair. I have actually spent a bit of time this last month either watching her on my tv as I play the game or walking past her on my shelf, so as I was watching the movie I was amazed to realize that despite the fact that I never noticed, Wildstyle does not have they typical physique of a LEGO minifig; in fact, she has a very curvy physique. It’s subtle, I guess…dark gray and black, but, yeah, there is cleavage. Why is that necessary? I don’t know. But, that’s typical. It’s not really ok or necessary, but it’s typical.
*Minor spoilers to follow about the movie ending:*
But… the ending. Several people had mentioned a “gender” lesson at the end of the movie, and I was waiting for it. I actually thought I missed it at first because it literally happens in the last seconds of the movie. One friend mentioned that she was waiting to hear what I thought about it, so here it is:
I groaned out loud when the father said something along the lines of “well, now your sister can play, too.” Fine, great. Nice to have a nod to the girls. Except if felt tacked on like an afterthought. The whole thing reminded me of Batteries Not Included, a compilation of toy commercials from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. So, many of these commercials do the same thing…”Boys will love it!!!…(Oh, yeah…and, so will girls):
https://archive.org/details/batteriesnotincluded_2009
So, we moved from a vague nod to girls some 60 years ago to Zach the LEGO Maniac (with no nod to girls) back to the same vague nod to girls in 2014. Nice.
And, if that weren’t bad enough…Suddenly, we get a hint of what it would look like if girls played. I was expecting pink and purple (and that what happened), but when the “girl” LEGO bricks filled the screen, all I could think was “ARE THOSE DUPLOS? Those are NOT DUPLOS!” But, yes folks, they do, in fact seem to be DUPLOS. Perhaps the sister in question was a (much) younger sister, but this was not explicit in the movie. So I was left thinking that girls can play, but they probably can only grasp pink and purple DUPLOS. Not even pink and purple LEGO Friends sets…DUPLOS. The scene happened so fast that I just sort of sat there kind of stunned for a minute. When I got home, I thought “nah, those weren’t DUPLOS.” But, yeah, they were.
