https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/feature-interview-simon-pegg/

Is it true that you wrote your undergraduate thesis on a Marxist overview of popular 1970s cinema and hegemonic discourses?

I did. The piece was actually called Base and Super Sucker which was a play on the phrase “Basic Super Structure”, which is a Marxist proposition, hegemony and consent in Star Wars and related works. Basically I was using Marxist modes of critical theory to address Star Wars. And the main thrust of it was that if you watch any kind of television or theatre or film that has certain kind of themes or opinions and you don’t critically recognize them, then you consent with them. So very simply put, if you watch a racist comedian and you laugh, then you are a racist. And there are various preoccupations and concerns that flow through popular cinema that reflect things that are going on in society, certain ideas and certain fears. The thesis suggested that by watching films like those you are participating in those fears and preoccupations.

What aspects of Star Wars did you apply that to?

Well, for instance at the time, in the late seventies and mid-eighties we were in the height of nuclear paranoia and we were feeling that we could be bombed at any second by the Russians, and a lot of films at the time reflect that sense of ill-ease, particularly Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. All those films are riddled with bomb paranoia and also with justifications for having bombs like that. So you have weapons like the Genesis Project in Star Trek, you have the Death Star, the Force, you have the Ark of the Covenant, all of which are fine in the hands of good people. Like the Ark is fine if it’s owned by the Americans, the Genesis Project is fine if it’s with the Federation, but with the Klingons it’s a weapon; the Death Star is a bad thing because bad people shouldn’t have big bombs. It was basically kind of saying that ultimate power is okay as long as it’s in the hands of the righteous. So yes we’re allowed to wield nuclear bombs, but they aren’t, that kind of thing. And also Raiders of the Lost Ark is the most brilliant one in that it’s saying “If you don’t look at it, it can’t hurt you.” Almost kind of like, leave it to us or leave it to the government. And Spielberg wasn’t saying that, but these things just float to the surface—these preoccupations that maybe if we don’t look at it it’ll go away. That’s how Indy and Marion survived all those avenging angels in the end of Raiders: they just closed their eyes. It’s indicative of how society was feeling at the time.