This week I started working on the Brick Bank, a build I’ve been looking forward to for months. I was mostly excited because attached to the bank is a laundry mat, and LEGO has jokes. The set has several references to money laundering. The big, modular sets also tend to tell a story. Or, at least the newer ones do. The Detective’s Office, for example, left little “cookies” or “clues” for the builder to find. But, I found part of the Brick Bank’s story unexpected. I was about a third of the way through the built and had enjoyed several of the money laundering references, and I had already build several of the included mini figures when I ran across the unexpected.
Thus far in the build, I had built a woman who won some money, a woman photographing the winner, a banker and a customer. I came to the instructions for the next minifigure, and I was stumped for a minute because I couldn’t find the parts. I dug around for a minute, and then I looked more closely at the instructions. (When LEGO instructions confuse me, I always assume it’s my fault. Because they are generally not hard.) The instructions were asking for this:
I finally realized that what LEGO was asking me to do here was to go get the woman photographer and have her change into robbery gear so she could rob the bank. Here is her original build:
It was so unexpected that I actually laughed out loud. I’ve written before about some of the ways gender bias plays out in LEGO sets, and I think they’ve come quite a long way in considering how gender fits into their sets. But, this was just really the best. Not only does a woman get to participate in the fun part of the set’s story, but she gets to be a villain. I love that because that’s what I want: nuanced representation. All women aren’t good or bad, most of us are in between.
I’m also currently rereading Lord of the Flies, and in the edition I have, Stephen King wrote an introduction to the novel. In his introduction, he writes about how when he was much younger, he really wanted a story that focused on how boys really are. Instead, of sweet, obedient boys, he wanted to read about that little bit of evil that is in most of us. He found the story he was looking for in Lord of the Flies. I feel the same about women in stories. I want to be represented in ways that parallel our lives. Not many of us are all good. And, not many of us are all bad. We are all in between those two things. I would never rob a bank, but sometimes women do! Stories are far more interesting when they illustrate our flaws and our very humanness. Here, LEGO managed to add nuance to their story by asking the builder to take a presumably reputable professional photographer and have her change so she can work her “side” gig of bank robber. I was delighted. I want to see more like this.
