"Star Wars" is the ultimate conservative morality tale

Switch a name or two around, and the film’s political landscape looked familiar: It was no less than the Cold War in space. The Soviet Union still had its grip on Eastern Europe, violently suppressing any sort of rebellion or call for reform. The Hungarian uprising of 1956 had collapsed within three weeks when hundreds of Soviet tanks came barreling into Budapest. The revolts within the Vorkuta, Norilsk and Kengir gulags and slave labor camps in the mid-’50s had failed. The Prague Spring in 1968 was similarly put to rest when the militaries of the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia. The precursor of Poland’s Solidarity movement was formed in the 1970s, and negotiations for reforms were squashed in Yugoslavia in the mid-’70s. Several decades after the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union still controlled all of Eastern Europe, in the name of “security” against the West.
No matter how many times revolutions against the Soviets failed, though, there was still that renewed call for freedom for the people of Eastern Europe. The United States knew that call, and moviegoers recognized it, too. “Star Wars” showed that that call was not worthless, not simply a fool’s errand. It was worth pursuing. The phrase “may the Force be with you” is the ultimate statement of individuality, of American conservatism.

In “Star Wars,” there was no moral ambiguity for the audience. We knew the good guys, we knew the bad guys. Only Han Solo, the smuggler, could be considered morally gray, but even he had a good heart. It was almost fairy-tale-like in the starkness of its battle between Good and Evil.