New world, old habits: Patriarchal ideology in Star Wars: A new hope

Ellis, K. (2002) New world, old habits: Patriarchal ideology in Star Wars: A new hope. Australian Screen Education Online, 30 . pp. 135-138.

Abstract

Although Star Wars depicts a new world, it is one permeated with the ideology of an old one. If films are the ‘unconscious instruments of the ideology, which produces them Lucas ‘portrayed a world not dissimilar in its ideology to the world he grew up in’. Therefore, the values we associate with white middle-class California of the 1950s, which include sexism, racism and the promotion of a patriarchal, capitalist culture, are prevalent in Star Wars. Indeed, Lucas admits his desire to return to the values of the 1950s, ‘I wanted to make a kids’ film that would … introduce a kind of basic morality’.