Or, if you prefer a less vulgar title, “Indiana Jones and the Defamation of Cultural Heritage.”
Yes, I saw it. I finally saw it. Just so you know, this post may contain SPOILERS. Yes, SPOILERS.
And, as a movie-goer, I had a blast. There were chase scenes, sword fights, explosions, magnetized gunpowder, the ubiquitous Indiana Jones mass of creepy crawly scenes (though sadly many were CGIed), and Monkeys. Oh my God, the Monkeys. And I have soft spots for Harrison Ford and Shia LeBeouf. And Marion Ravenwood is one of the great adventure movie female side-kicks… unlike that blonde chick from Temple of Doom. What was her name… Charlie? Sorry, I was too busy hoping she’d fall off a cliff to remember her name.
Moving on…
As a student of archaeology, I regretted not having my notebook and pen with me to note the absurdities. Besides from the fact that they’re speaking Mayan along the Amazon, the movie starts out in Area 51 (actually signed at Hangar 51 in the film). And Area 51 always means ONE thing: Aliens. Turns out this is where the government stores all the stuff it doesn’t know how to deal with, including the Ark of the Covenant. And I always thought it was in some hangar in Bethesda MD, possibly near Cheney’s undisclosed hideaway.
So, despite the rejection letter posted by McSweeney’s, Indy’s got tenure, a few years under the belt, a few military and government medals, and is now nosing around New World archaeology. The Commies get him to find for them alien remains he excavated that are now in Hangar 51 and are… highly magnetized? Plot, plot, Shia LeBeouf as angsty greaser, cool car/motorcycle chase around Yale/”Marshall College” campus/building/library, geeky archaeologist moment in library about V.G. Childe followed by telling his students they need to get out the library and into the field to be archaeologists as he leaves the building on a motorcycle, plot, PERU. Peru… hunting for Mayan (no, not Incan) remains… finding a crystal skull in the tomb of some conquistadors… a weird oblong skull. Here’s where we figure out that the crystal skulls we all know and love and very little to do with the crystal skulls of the movie. No. Now Indy’s back to treasure hunting. I don’t care if he’s following clues akin to his father’s diary and golden medallions… he’s following the path of conquistadors.
Once the Commies get him again the movie goes the way of Erich Von Daniken and his numerous books. The crystal skulls are, in fact, the actual skulls of extraterrestrials. Returning the skull to the body it belongs to, resting in El Dorado, powers up a flying saucer. Drawings of the gods are actually drawings of the space visitors who taught agriculture and irrigation to the Mayans (who were apparently along the Amazon… speaking the same Mayan they spoke when the conquistadors came). It was at this point I decided to sit through the credits to see if Erich von Daniken’s name popped up. It did not. 10$ says he’s going to claim theft of intellectual property against Spielberg before the end of the summer.
What all my convoluted drabble above about the movie leads to is my issue with Erich von Daniken and others like him (though I don’t believe he really believes in anything other than a profit). These theories that start with the assumption that the contemporary culture of whatever object or structure we are analyzing was not advanced/skilled enough to have created it is, for lack of a better word at midnight, racist.
I mentioned this to my mother tonight and she began citing respected scientists who believe we could be or could have been visited by lifeforms from other planets… fine, great. I don’t NOT believe there are other lifeforms in our infinitely large universe. I’m a fan of Carl Sagan. I’m not sure I buy the weather balloon of Roswell NM. But if you’re going to tell me that ancient civilizations- ancestors and fore-fathers of modern people- had to be TAUGHT to create wonders, then you better be prepared to show me who taught those teachers. Otherwise, go read your dogeared copy of G.F. Smith’s The Ancient Egyptians (1911). Diffusion theory is a vicious line of reasoning that ends in the argument for the intellectual superiority of one culture over another that I cannot agree with. It’s like the Europeans who came to America and saw the American Indian burial mounds and said ‘no, no, these are too advanced for the indigenous people of this area to have built. There must have been other people here, smarter people, “Mound Builders”, who built these.’ Well, guess what- remember those indigenous people you thought were too ‘primitive’, jackasses? Yeah, they were making them up to the 1500s. What this all boils down to is the defamation of indigenous heritage. If they figured it out on there own, so can we, and so can the next people.
And that’s what my beef with the new Indy film boils down to: my issue with diffusion theory.
Otherwise, I’d definitely see it again, if only to see Indy freak-out when Mutt handed him a giant rat snake to pull him out of the sand pit.
I’ll also refer you to this awesome asylum.com article I stumbled upon minutes after posting this entry.