Decker, Mark T.

Decker, Mark T. "They Want Unfreedom and One-Dimensional Thought? I'll Give Them Unfreedom and One-Dimensional Thought: George Lucas, THX-1138, and the Persistence of Marcusian Social Critique in American Graffiti and the Star Wars Films." Extrapolation 50.3 (Fall 2009): 417-441.

Impressive argument that the critique of "technologically driven, totalitarian, conformist society" of Lucas's THX-1138 (1971) is continued in more indirect ways in Lucas's far more commercial AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973) and STAR WARS series (1977f.). Locates THX in the dystopian tradition of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, METROPOLIS, COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT, et al., but has Lucas more generally and fairly consistently following Herbert Marcuse's critique in One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964 [see esp. Decker 421, 423]). See for the two STAR WARS trilogies on technology, especially technology in the service of empire and opposed to the Force, and humanity, in the era of US warfare in Vietnam.

5. DramaCrit, RDE, 27/IV/10