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Marshall McLuhan. That\u2019s right, that guy in the movie theater line scene in Annie Hall<\/a>. McLuhan was a philosopher, and his contributions are right up there with those of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. His particular focus was on mediums, and how they influence our thinking. A person raised before the printing press is different, on a functional level, from a person raised with a television in their home in the 60s, or a person raised with Wikipedia constantly at their fingertips. Our very modes of thought are changed by the forms of information around us.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n George Lucas has a huge interest in social science, and studied both sociology and anthropology in College when McLuhan was highly renowned. His first film, THX-1138<\/a>, has McLuhan\u2019s influence all over it\u2014 it\u2019s set in a world where humans have been so shaped by inventions such as industry, economics, and security cameras that they have essentially become machines themselves, programmed to do whatever best serves the state or the economy. These humans even having computer-ish names\u2014the title is eponymous. This is similar in spirit to Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/a>, in which an entirely new language is developed to try and repress people\u2019s ability to rebel\u2014if the very language you think<\/i> in can\u2019t even conceive of Big Brother as \u2018bad\u2019 (a word that doesn\u2019t exist in Newspeak) how could you ever oppose the state? Language, besides being a tool for our expression, is the ultimate controller of our thoughts. You probably think in English, and because of that, your mind inherently lives in accordance with its rules, instead of your own. In that way, we are trapped by language.<\/span><\/p>\n In Star Wars<\/a>, The Empire is presented as a similar institution to that of the society in THX, with banks of computers and security cameras everywhere. Their greatest weapon is literally a giant computer powered by thousands of bureaucrats, and the film is careful to associate the Death Star\u2019s destruction of planet Alderaan with the flicking of switches in well-lit rooms by officers \u2018just following orders\u2019 at their daily grind. McLuhan\u2019s concepts are present even in the iconic helmets of the Stormtroopers\u2014the face is entirely covered, closing off any real human contact and dehumanizing them. What\u2019s truly evil about The Empire is this system that figuratively and literally encloses them, which is why there are so many<\/i> shots in A New Hope of security cameras exploding\u2014this film is about fighting the Empire in a meaningful way, i.e., through the removal of the network that leads to people doing its bidding, rather than the killing any particular individual.<\/span><\/p>\n McLuhan predicted that mankind would reach a new level of freedom and advancement once it invented a technology that united people into a single consciousness where all voices can be heard. In this context, it becomes strikingly clear that The Force is a symbolic version of this idea. It is all-encompassing, and thus, leads us to commit ourselves to one another and make things better for everyone. It is a place from which the capacity for true egalitarian justice springs forth.<\/span><\/p>\n