“Hope” for a new generation.
From the immediate and stately entrance music to the scroll at the beginning of the film; Star Wars has made its mark on the filmic timeline as one of the most watched and adored science fiction films of the 20th Century. Many people growing up around the time of the film’s release in 1977 were unsure how a film, paraded and marketed as science fiction, would fare in a post-Vietnam mentality. The importance of why [i]Star Wars was so successful plays into the reading and understanding of the culture at that time. This essay will deal with the importance Star Wars had on the culture of the time, and how the film became a catalyst for many young people to deal with the harsh realities of war.
George Lucas was an up and coming director from the Los Angeles area who had his hand of the pulse of multiple kinds of independent filmmaking. He was a filmmaker interested in the power films had to change the mind of an individual and was displeased with the hum-drum coming from the studio system. During his time at USC he developed a film THX: 1138 4eb. This film dealt with a man living in a totalitarian society where thought, love, and feeling were taken from the people by medication pushed by the governing body. This film propelled him on to make Star Wars. The film came out just after the Vietnam War ended in 1975 and the world was hot about the term Imperialism. The United States virtually had a schism of thought about how to run a war and how to protect a society. So Lucas, who was a participant in the realm of ideas, took this cultural anger and this animosity and used it to make a story of coming to terms with the realities of life. 
The main protagonist, Luke Skywalker a small farm boy in a lone part of the galaxy, is thrown into the battle between Imperials and the Rebels. Much like the feelings of the Vietnam War, many people were not pleased with being drafted for a war that they felt they had no part of. In the story Luke tells the people, he is surrounded with, that it’s not his war, and to let the “other” people worry about it. Lucas chose to tell a coming of age story in the genre of science fiction because that was the last genre left to put the ideas of the generation. Its fantasy allowed for contemporary viewers to escape the realities of an unpopular war while still confronting emotions that were coming from the public because of the war.
One main character from the film, Han Solo, was known as a rouge spirit running around the galaxy taking care of his own self. Han Solo could have been seen by the viewer as a draft dodger or a conscientious objector to the dealings of the Imperials and the Rebels. Obi-wan Kenobi could be seen as the veteran who understood the benefit of a military incursion to bring about the social justice that was being withheld. Now saying that Star Wars was a war propaganda film would be a stretch but it could be used as a therapeutic tool for a nation who was trying to come to terms with a very real war.
The Mise-en-scene of the film was an interesting choice by George Lucas. He had some dealings with Ridley Scott who was in the brainstorming stage of his feature
[ii]Alien. Ridley Scott had the idea of “old space” as opposed to new space; the likes of which viewers had seen in Stanley Kubrick’s [iii]
2001: A Space Odyssey. Old space was used to put the character at ease in the space so they wouldn’t have to get used to the sterile look of outer space. The glitz and glam was gone and all that was left was real life. Post Vietnam War culture was not interested in seeing a fake version of the story that they had just lived out. The Vietnam War was “old” and Star Wars reflected that. [iv]Vivian Sobchack discussed the importance of iconography in film’s dress and design that told the audience that they were in a certain story style/genre and science fiction films usually took that belief and tried to give the viewer something new to see; because after all they are watching a science fiction film. Star Wars took the look of old space and allowed the viewer to forget they were watching a science fiction film.
[i] Star Wars. George Lucas. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford. 1977. DVD. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. 2006.
[ii] Alien. Ridley Scott. Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt. 1979. DVD. 20th Century Fox. 2004.
[iii] 2001: A Space Odyssey. Stanley Kubrick. Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood. 1968. DVD. Warner Home Video. 2007.
[iv] Sobchack, Vivian. “Images of Wonder: The Look of Science Fiction.” Course Packet.
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