blogs_blog_1497

They're racists.
 
Racists in space.
 
Spacists.

Lego racism strikes once more

They already imprisoned all the other humans. This is actually the beginning of a galactic totalitarian state, run by a few on the police force. The aliens are just struggling citizens just trying to get by.

 

Most likely answer—the focus groups identified better with human characters than they did with aliens.

 

A lot of people might cry racism but frankly xenophobia is instinctive to a certain degree—the human mind is programmed to recognize other humans as being "like them", and identifying with nonhuman characters is a learned trait (one of the reasons why a great deal of pop sci-fi, INCLUDING Space Police, tends to anthropomorphize sentient alien species in one way or another). And while on a purely allegorical level the lesson that sentient species deserve equality regardless of their origins and appearances might be an important one, for a toy company maximizing sales ultimately takes priority over teaching kids not to discriminate against non-existent alien species.

'Cuz space aliens are spooky.

Most likely answer—the focus groups identified better with human characters than they did with aliens.

 

A lot of people might cry racism but frankly xenophobia is instinctive to a certain degree—the human mind is programmed to recognize other humans as being "like them", and identifying with nonhuman characters is a learned trait (one of the reasons why a great deal of pop sci-fi, INCLUDING Space Police, tends to anthropomorphize sentient alien species in one way or another). And while on a purely allegorical level the lesson that sentient species deserve equality regardless of their origins and appearances might be an important one, for a toy company maximizing sales ultimately takes priority over teaching kids not to discriminate against non-existent alien species.

 

On the one hand, I get what you're saying, but on the other, I think it's important for people who produce media to think about the kind of messages they send out. The message Space Police sends out isn't just about discriminating against literal aliens, but about discriminating against differences. It's similar to the unfortunate implications of Redwall having the "vermin" races being almost purely evil (and those that weren't were presented as it being in spite of being "vermin", with their species still being a negative aspect.) It's important to be aware of what message you send, whether intentionally or otherwise.

 

Most likely answer—the focus groups identified better with human characters than they did with aliens.

 

A lot of people might cry racism but frankly xenophobia is instinctive to a certain degree—the human mind is programmed to recognize other humans as being "like them", and identifying with nonhuman characters is a learned trait (one of the reasons why a great deal of pop sci-fi, INCLUDING Space Police, tends to anthropomorphize sentient alien species in one way or another). And while on a purely allegorical level the lesson that sentient species deserve equality regardless of their origins and appearances might be an important one, for a toy company maximizing sales ultimately takes priority over teaching kids not to discriminate against non-existent alien species.

 

On the one hand, I get what you're saying, but on the other, I think it's important for people who produce media to think about the kind of messages they send out. The message Space Police sends out isn't just about discriminating against literal aliens, but about discriminating against differences. It's similar to the unfortunate implications of Redwall having the "vermin" races being almost purely evil (and those that weren't were presented as it being in spite of being "vermin", with their species still being a negative aspect.) It's important to be aware of what message you send, whether intentionally or otherwise.

 

I definitely agree. I would not have minded a bit if Space Police had introduced some alien officers or human villains. But you've got to weigh that against other concerns.

 

While reality is filled with complex morals, kids benefit from a clear delineation between "good guys" and "bad guys" in play scenarios. Would they necessarily distinguish the difference between the dark biker uniforms of the villains and the dark, militaristic body armor of the heroes if both sides were full of multicolored aliens? I don't know for sure. But while focus testing is often an inexact science, Lego does it better than pretty much any company I know of. Assuming they weighed the possibility of having aliens on both sides (and I imagine they did), I expect that the focus testing presented a compelling reason not to go that route.

 

Ultimately, I hope that if there should ever be a "Space Police 4", it might do better at presenting diversity in the ranks of both the police and the criminals. But without knowing exactly what went on behind closed doors at Lego, I'm not content to fault the previous theme for it.

It's probably for creating easily identifiable factions. This is seen in quite a lot of toylines and video games(Autobots/Decepticons, Red/Blu, Terrorists/Counter-terrorists).  It could also be seen in the same way that it's used in XCOM:EU, in that you don't send specially trained soldiers to deal with mundane human threats when you have aliens to worry about. You can probably assume the same for space police(But now that I think about it MIB, Half-Life and Halo all have a mix of Aliens and humans on the good side, so there's that.). Now that's from a storyline perspective so it's probably debatable how much water that holds.

 

But if we know that violent videogames don't actually create violence, I doubt factions such as these create racism.

 

Though, to be fair, Bioshock: Infinite, Spec Ops: The Line, and Mark of the Ninja (And others) don't draw that line clearly and are probably all the better for it.

All lego needed to do was make the Space Police have armor more distinct from the bad guys' by making it, say, white or something, so they could add in non humans to the ranks of the police force. As it is, we have a heavily militarized, homogenous police force using what has to be military-grade technology to deal with vandals and thieves.

 

And Space Police III.

Well I mean

 

Any child who gets their morals from toys and movies, needs serious psychological help. I really don't think any kid is going to learn anything like "wow people who don't look like me are evil" from lego space police. If they do, I don't think a good therapist is too hard to find.