THX 1138 - Ideology

   The left-center -right model has long been used by political scientists to distinguish differing political ideologies. The model uses social institutions and value systems to differentiate between political extremes. In the same way, the ideology of a film can be identified by these values and how the characters relate to them, although as in films such as THX 1138, the difference is not always clear cut.
   George Lucas' initial film making effort is set in a 25th century underground totalitarian society, where privacy is non existent, emotion is outlawed, and a rigid conformity is enforced at all times. Everyone dresses the same, lives in the same quarters, has shaved heads to maintain similar appearances. Emotion, especially sexual urges, are held in check by continuously medicating the entire population. This conformity is enforced by a robotic police force, ironically assembled by the citizens to maintain their own enslavement.
   The film is leftist in the sense that it emphasizes the similarities among the population; there is no individuality, people have numbers instead of names and fatal accidents are taken in stride - human life is cheap. Cooperation among the population is universal, the is no free enterprise system. However, it has a right wing slant in two ways; in it's total submission to authority, which reinforces the leftist characteristics, and in the characters awakening individuality which leads them to rebel. In the same way, it shows the conflict between environment, which enforces conformity to a social standard, and inborn human traits such as emotion. The society that THX rebels against is rightist in the sense that it holds its citizens to an absolute standard of behavior, whereas the characters re-awakening emotions leads them to desire greater self expression, a leftist point of view. The religious views in the film are right wing in the sense that the society has an official religion for everyone to adhere to , but with a twist: the individual seeks the blessing of the state instead of a deity. A final point of the film is in it's depiction of the future; the leftist view of the future is optimistic, based on the idea of continual improvement, where the the right tends to be more pessimistic. In that sense the film might be regarded as right wing. The real genius of Lucas was to point out that improvement can be many things to many people, the characters in the film have all their material needs provided, but at a terrible cost.The society that THX and his female roommate LUH ultimately try to escape from represses the very qualities that make them human.
   That is maybe the most subtle point of the film - any ideology carried to an extreme becomes indistinguishable from its opposite. With overtones of both Orwell's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World", George Lucas' cautionary tale is as relevant today as it was 40 years ago.