The Failed Probability of Love Over Labor in 'THX 1138' (1971)
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Abstract
Scholarship on panopticism and film rarely considers aesthetic attributes of the medium. Thematic elements associated with panopticism are often examined instead. George Lucas’ directorial debut, THX 1138 (1971), uses aesthetic values in filmmaking to screen a narrative grounded in panopticism. By drawing on the Foucaultian principle of panopticism, this article illustrates the ideological confliction between labor and love that is central to the protagonist THX. On the surface, THX 1138 situates the sexual ideologies of the early Seventies in a socialist contention. The sexual ideology that favors love and freedom of expression is placed in direct conflict with a socialist ideology that labor and obedience. This ideological strife erupts on screen in a dystopian future that is visualized in panoptic cinematography techniques. The result is an analysis of the nuanced visual mastery on Lucas’s part that serves as an explicit commentary grounded in the political and cultural contention never quite resolved in American history.
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