Bionicle as Utopian Social Engineering

[Wrinkledlion X]

Hey everybody! Hope I grabbed your attention with that title. 

 

I was browsing some scholarly articles with the keywords "Bionicle" and "Religion" when I stumbled upon something very interesting from around 2002. Check it out—it's an anthropological article detailing the Bionicle fan community: https://studylib.net/doc/8052841/clash-of-communities

 

The first part concerns cultural appropriation of the Maori language, but things get interesting when the author interviews an unnamed member of the Bionicle creative team, referred to as AD. He describes how the Bionicle fan community shares "a common cultural base [in] these Bionicle things," with a common set of symbols and shared myths, and goes on to discuss ways of potentially increasing the fan community's level of social organization: 

 

 

The designer discusses the possibility of introducing referenda into Bionicle in which the users vote on the distribution of resources on the Island and their proper use. He envisions using Bionicle as a instrument to  teach  children  democratic  practices.  This  could, in  turn, be  incorporated  into  an educational  system  based  on  the  Bionicle  story  but  extending  far  beyond  it.  This  scenario  is particularly interesting when bearing in mind that the Bionicle users are generally children from the age of 7 to 14 – an age in which children learn democratic practices, for instance, in school. In this perspective, Bionicle may have a significant empowering potential for children, which may, in turn, foster  and  facilitate  future participation in social or political contexts. A relationship may thus be created between private commercial networks and civic networks. 

 

The designer also discusses the possible ways this could go wrong:

 

 

AD: ”Maybe it could get all religious and a bit scary,  you  know.  What  if  you  (the user) think it is much more fun in that world than the real world. This could constitute a problem for LEGO, which actually wants what is best for your child...It would be problematic if you only wanted to be there. Then again, how do you find the balance? Things develop. What do we want to bring this to? You could ask the question: How engaging should this be? How much time should people spend on it?”

 

 

AD: ”...it would be a project which is started via Bionicle. However, the point it not to go down and buy LEGO-bricks –basically. It it about teaching you a lot of things. Giving you a model of thinking about...but then again, is it because you want to influence the kids and make advertisement. It is... it becomes a moral  question  of whether  we  really  want  this.  What  if  it  suddenly  gets  so  far  and  becomes  so  popular that you actually have power, you end up with this monster which is out of control.”

 

(Author’s translation of interview in Danish with the Bionicle designer)  

 

 

I'm absolutely floored that this was a topic of discussion at some point among the Bionicle creative team.

 

I suppose it makes sense, considering what the early years of the line were like—most toylines don't come with a complex set of constructed myths, with a language and a fictional culture based on shared values (ie: unity, duty, destiny). It seems the creative team was at one point thinking of their creation as a genuine, secular mythology.

 

And us fans on BZP definitely ran with it! The degree of obsessiveness that Bionicle attracted (and still attracts) has always been pretty wild; the existence of BS01 and the obsession over determining a True Canon™ was, after all, kinda religious in a weird way, right? I certainly felt that way about it at the time. I suppose this is where all that came from. 

 

Anyway, enough rambling. What do you think? Do you wish you'd gone to a school that teaches moral lessons through Bionicle? Would we all sit around in a sand pit and listen to an old man in a mask recite mythic stories to us? You decide! 

 

 

(♫ Buy all our playsets and toys!! ♫)

Edited June 19, 2017 by Wrinkledlion X

[emily]

Man, this is fascinating. I wanna get one more quote here in the thread, where A. D. is describing a 'utopic' bionicle:

 

 

Obviously, we would like –it  would  be  the  ultimately  dream  if  you  imagine –now  I  am  going  to  describe  utopia –if  you (the  user) were  actually  given  a location...maybe it was already taken. However, the reason for this would be that another user somewhere in the world had already chosen it...So if you choose to log on late only lousy locations would be available...you could also imagine, if you did not    visit    your    location    at    least    once    a    week,    it    would    be    gone    or downgraded...Simultaneously, if you logged on regularly and exchanged  experiences and so on,you wouldhelptoshape the story. This would be the most fun..

 

A 'utopia' where the people with the most free time are privileged with better stuff, lol. It's pretty crazy that they were dreaming about a huge game/experience like that, though. Who wouldn't want to hang out on Mata Nui? And heck, the concept kind of echoes later ambitions in game development, with MMOs and stuff. People seem to have been really fascinated with the possibilities of stuff like that back then.

 

Interesting how the paper problematizes the positive fan-community image described by AD and basically says "we'll have to wait and see if the Bionicle fandom falls in line with the culture brought down to them by Lego, or if they go off and make their own thing." I totally agree that the canon-obsession we kind of ended up with is pertinent to that. But then there's also the sub-communities that spun Bionicle off into wildly different things, even if those seem to have lost the test of time. Everyone was super into Dark709's comics back in the day, but like, what did they actually have to do with the 'official' Bionicle? not a ton.

 

Thanks for sharing. I'm tickled to read the words 'Bionicle' and 'de Certeau' together in the same context.

[Wrinkledlion X]

Interesting how the paper problematizes the positive fan-community image described by AD and basically says "we'll have to wait and see if the Bionicle fandom falls in line with the culture brought down to them by Lego, or if they go off and make their own thing." I totally agree that the canon-obsession we kind of ended up with is pertinent to that. But then there's also the sub-communities that spun Bionicle off into wildly different things, even if those seem to have lost the test of time. Everyone was super into Dark709's comics back in the day, but like, what did they actually have to do with the 'official' Bionicle? not a ton.

 

Yeah, that is interesting. Little cargo cults, sort of.

 

The whole line of thought that AD expresses about not wanting to absorb kids too deep into the fantasy makes me wonder if that was part of the reasoning behind making G2 way simpler. Most companies would welcome an obsessive fanbase, but perhaps the corporate culture at Lego is genuinely interested in nurturing kids in a healthy direction. As much as I loved and was obsessed with Bionicle, spending all that time on a computer during my adolescence probably wasn't healthy for me.

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing. I'm tickled to read the words 'Bionicle' and 'de Certeau' together in the same context.

 

Haha, you're welcome. I've been searching all over for Bionicle thinkpieces and so far this is about the only one I can find: https://medium.com/@pankopop/subversive-toyetics-polly-pocket-and-transformers-will-help-us-question-authority-and-smash-a281cf963df7 I want more scholarly writing on MUH BONKLES 

[emily]

Haha, you're welcome. I've been searching all over for Bionicle thinkpieces and so far this is about the only one I can find: https://medium.com/@pankopop/subversive-toyetics-polly-pocket-and-transformers-will-help-us-question-authority-and-smash-a281cf963df7 I want more scholarly writing on MUH BONKLES 

Aw heck, that one's fantastic.  I love the idea of Toyetic Storytelling, it starts to coalesce a lot of what was so cool about bionicle and explain why really satisfactorily. 

 

Definitely let me know if you ever come across anything else, this is rad stuff. 

[Wrinkledlion X]

Yeah dude. You know where to find me 

[Pohaturon]

It's pretty fascinating that something like this... exists. Then again, thinkpieces have been written about smaller fandoms I guess, but likening Bionicle to a religion is pretty far out, man. 

 

However, exploring the potential of using Bionicle as an educative tool seems like an early conceptual sibling of the gamification of education which has been increasingly discussed recently, and I see merit to it.