Fox News claims that the Lego movie is "anti-business", despite the fact that it exists to sell toys. Sean O'Neal, at A.V. Club:
the network has lashed out at the film for attempting to indoctrinate the naïve with simpleminded messages about capitalism, only for the wrong team, blasting a movie based on a global, multibillion-dollar toy manufacturer—and the reinvigoration of its branding through movie-generated merchandising—as being “anti-business.” … As Dergarabedian goes on to suggest implicitly that calling a major studio’s marketing synergy-based movie franchise “anti-business” might be overreaching, Payne replies that it at least sounds like “hypocrisy” to him. A hypocrisy that may result in the children who see it developing antagonistic attitudes toward business, even as they demand their parents buy them more Lego bricks.
This reminds me of an odd thing about conservative media criticism: when a work of entertainment (and let me stress that I'm not yet including the Lego movie here, as I haven't seen it!) weds a superficial criticism of greed to a more insinuating portrayal of its virtues, it doesn't get praised as a particularly devilish contribution to the cause. Instead, it meets the full brunt of criticism, as if the superficial message was the only one. Moreover, that criticism often focuses on the alleged superficiality of the whole.
Here is a deep mistrust of ambiguity, and an overwhelming belief in marketing as the maker of the message. Conservatives, moreso than others, worry that to be exposed to even a skin-deep "inoculation" or gloss on a movie or book's greater purpose, however manifestly opposite that cover story is to the author's creative intent, is to risk terminal moral infection.
That said, it's also true that Fox has an off-the-shelf story format–movie says greed is bad, woe to our culture–into which any old subject can be shoehorned if a sentence-worth of description matches the pattern.
