I think this is what I think about Indiana Jones

I mentioned this WashPost article earlier this week, for the sole reason that I think Hank Stuever is totally off-base. As I read it, Stuever takes his own failure to find a greater political or social context for the Indiana Jones movies as proof that they are a “meaningless void.”

He also offers the typical, half-jokey caveat that he knows he is missing the mark by a mile, but…onward he goes anyway. But I always thought the movies had a lot to say - largely about our relationship with the past. (Note: I haven't seen the Crystal Skull yet.)

If the films are indeed about our relatioship with the past, then it’s not a surprise that the first three films are set during the ambivalent 1930s – are these the halcyon days before the darkest hour of the twentieth century? Or are they a prelude to the darkness, a time during which a gathering evil was largely ignored?

Spielberg and Lucas have talked about their desire to re-create the campy, swash-buckling adventure films of their childhood. These typically would feature an Anglo hero fearlessly treading into the rainforest (or some other far-off place), fighting against vicious, savage tribes, and rescuing a bounty and a girl. The films promise adventure, heroism, riches and love. They are exotic, and typically only show the hero at “home” for long enough to establish that “home” is the opposite of adventure. For any little boy with a vivid imagination, it’s a tantalizing promise.

The Indiana Jones films, much like the Tintin books before, can rightly be slammed for their myopic view of non-white cultures. Yes, the Temple of Doom treats “Orienatlism” about as well as Tintin “African-ness.” (Tintin in the Congo, anyone?) And that is largely inexcusable – you won’t find me defending post-colonial boorishness here. But it's also true that one of the things implicit in yearning for the past is yearning for a kind of simplicity (cultural myopia?) that we can no longer afford. It is not innocent in that it doesn't wish away the evil done by imperialist forays - it simply wishes away the knowledge we have today of that evil.

Though I am probably somewhat in the minority here, I do believe that part of the imperial impulse exhibited by Europeans in the 1800s did arise from a genuine belief that "civilizing" the "other" was indeed a noble pursuit. Misguided, unilateral, and horrific in its consequences - but the original impulse, for some, arose from misguided charity, I think. Before I get painted as some kind of apologist, though, let me say that I also think that nothing excuses the reality of slavery and oppression that arose from European imperialism.

So I hope this is not a disingenuous position – but I think there is something in this about our past and how we relate to it. Certainly there is ambivalence about it. Indiana Jones, liberator of children in sweatshops? Not so much, I’ll admit, but on a personal level, I think most males of a certain age will admit to having Indiana Jones fantasies – about being the hero, about freeing slaves, about carrying the torch of enlightenment values to a place where they may not yet be prevalent.

Every good adventure that is centered around an everyman is somehow predicated on this imbalance – we have a hero who sees or knows something that the other characters don’t (the hero sees that King Kong is a frightened victim, he understands that the menacing “other” means no harm and attempts to overcome the language barrier, etc.) In the case of Indiana Jones, this is also manifested when he shows a clear respect for the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail (something the Nazis are incapable of doing.)

More importantly perhaps than an Edward Said-like reading of the Indy films is what they have to say about the personal realm. Though we do not know it until the third film, Indy is a “junior” who has taken a dog’s name for his own. We see him as perhaps an overgrown boy, but we aren’t told that he is just that until the third film. (It’s not a coincidence either that the third film features Dr. Jones Sr. and Dr. Jones Jr. having carnal knowledge of the same woman – Indy is, after all, pre-pubescent in the first two films and doesn’t confront adulthood until he must save his father and ponder immortality – which means he goes from being a teenager to being knee-deep in midlife crisis in about two hours, by my estimation, totally leap-frogging normal adulthood.)

“Raiders of the Lost Ark” opens with an exhilarating action sequence. Here, Lucas and Spielberg broke one of the then-cardinal rules of filmmaking: that the action is the audience’s reward, that we must work for it. Instead, the film opens in the midst of the action, like an early Christmas gift. The result is that the audience is joyfully infantilized.

Then, as soon as the opening sequence is over, we see Indiana Jones back in the classroom, teaching. He looks boyish with his glasses on, like a child wearing his father’s suit. A student blatantly hits on him, and he stammers, stumbles, and has a hard time going on. However, when presented with questions about the Ark of the Covenant, he becomes fluid, virile, all-knowing. Consider also his relationship with that horrid woman in “Temple of Doom.” He and Short Round have a clear “ewwww, girls are gross” mentality. And I don’t think it’s accidental that he should free a bunch of children in the film either: the films were always about freeing your own inner-boy.

Indy also offers something rare, which is the promise that history is alive – sometimes frighteningly so. There is a lot that the Indiana films don’t do, but nor do they aspire to that. This is maybe the one thing Stuever gets right – that they are about fun and childhood, but he misses the fact that they also remind us, ominously, that the past may not be through with us.