It may come as a surprise to some of my readers, given my interest in ancient history, that I never watched any of the Indiana Jones movies when I was a child. I was, of course, vaguely aware of them. I remember seeing advertisements for the VHS sets at the beginnings of some of the old VHS tapes of Disney films that my sister and I watched when we were growing up. I also remember watching the MythBusters “Indiana Jones Special” at one point. The first time I ever watched any of the actual films, though, was earlier this year.
Thus, even though Raiders of the Lost Ark came out eighteen years before I was born, by the time I actually watched the movie, I was already in college studying ancient history and had already taken multiple courses in real-life archaeology. The film is definitely entertaining if you’re looking for a cheesy, old-school adventure story and I appreciate how it has helped get people excited about archaeology. Unfortunately, it also promotes a lot of racist stereotypes and consistently fails to problematize the atrocious crimes committed by the protagonist.
You see, Indiana Jones is not just a terrible archaeologist; he’s also a despicable human being. He’s a criminal sociopath, a statutory rapist, a grave robber, a murderer, a destroyer of cultural heritage, and an enforcer of European colonialism. The only reason why anyone sees him as the hero is because his adversaries are literally insane Nazis who want to steal an ancient artifact and use it as a superweapon to commit genocide against the vast majority of the human race. Under any other circumstances, he would be the villain.
The racist portrayal of Hispanic people
First of all, before we even talk about what an awful archaeologist and person Indiana Jones is, we need to talk about the casual racism that is absolutely pervasive throughout the entire film Raiders of the Lost Ark. In nearly every single instance where a person who is not white appears on screen, they are portrayed as unlikeable or even downright villainous—thereby making Indiana Jones seem less unlikeable by comparison and his colonialist pillaging seem justified.
At the very beginning of the film, we encounter Indiana Jones’s team of Hispanic guides. In the very first scene, one of the guides runs away screaming in pure terror when bats come streaming out of the mouth of a carved face. Then, bizarrely, for no apparent reason, one of Indy’s two remaining guides tries to pull out a gun and shoot him. Somehow, though, Indy manages to use his whip to knock the gun out of his hand, leading the would-be murderer to run away in terror.
Only one guide dares follow Indy into the temple. The makers of the film emphasize his Hispanic ethnicity and his subservience to Indy by making him constantly refer to Indy as “señor.” He is also portrayed as completely terrified of the temple. He freaks out when he sees tarantulas on Indy’s back and he panics at the sight of a corpse impaled in one of the death traps, screaming and literally shoving his hand into his mouth. Indy, on the other hand—the only white man in the scene—remains perfectly calm and poised.
As they are sneaking into the temple, the Hispanic guide keeps getting into trouble and Indy has to keep rescuing him. But then, when the temple is collapsing and they are trying to escape, the Hispanic guide swings across a pit using Indy’s whip. Once he’s safe on the other side, Indy tells the guide to give him the whip so he can swing across. The guide tells him to give him the golden idol first. Thus, Indy tosses him the idol. The guide immediately betrays him and runs away with the idol, abandoning Indy to be killed in the collapsing temple.
Instead, however, Indy manages to save himself through sheer skill and determination. Upon reaching the other side of the pit, he immediately finds the treacherous guide impaled in one of the death traps—apparently unable to survive without Indiana Jones to protect him. Indy callously picks up the golden idol from where his guide has dropped it and says to the corpse, “Adios, stupido!” before running off without a second thought.
Thus, of the three Hispanic characters for whom any characterization is given in the entire film, every single one is portrayed as cowardly, greedy, treacherous, and incapable of surviving on their own without a white man to help them. The unambiguous message that the filmmakers are sending is that this is what they think all Hispanic people are like.
ABOVE: Screenshot of Alfred Molina as Indiana Jones’s Hispanic guide, who is unnamed in the original film, but was later given the name “Satipo”
The racist portrayal of Indigenous South Americans
The racism only gets even worse when Indy escapes the temple only to find the entrance totally surrounded by the Hovitos, a fictional tribe of Indigenous South Americans. The Hovitos are portrayed as stereotypical warlike savages, clothed only in loincloths and armed with spears and bows and arrows. All of them have war paint and some of them have bone necklaces.
One Hovito man is holding the corpse of the Hispanic guide who tried to murder Indy in the opening scene. (He evidently was not capable of surviving on his own without Indy either.) It is then revealed that the Hotivos are all working for the French treasure hunter René Belloq and they mindlessly obey all his orders, because they are apparently all too stupid and naïve to realize that he is manipulating them for his own personal gain.
Belloq takes the idol from Indy. He holds it up, shouting something in Hovito, and all the Hovitos instantly bow down before him in submission. Indy tries to run away, but Belloq commands the Hovitos to pursue him and kill him. They obey his orders without the slightest question or hesitation, chasing after him with spears, bows and arrows, and blow darts.
The Hovitos are portrayed as having no agency, desires, or even thoughts of their own; they simply do whatever the white man who happens to know their language tells them to. This is, of course, a sickeningly unrealistic and racist portrayal. I don’t think there is a single Indigenous people anywhere on earth who would uniformly, willingly, and unquestioningly obey a random white man just because he happens to speak their language—certainly not to the point where they would be willing to kill anyone for him at his slightest whim, without explanation.
ABOVE: Screenshot of Indiana Jones running away from the Hovitos from the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark
The racist portrayal of Egyptians
The racism kind of trails off for a bit after Indy returns to the United States, but it comes back in full force when he goes to Egypt. Here, seemingly a whole army of stereotypical thugs wearing turbans and wielding scimitars try to murder Indy and abduct Marion Ravenwood on behalf of the Nazis. Other Egyptian people are portrayed as working as low-wage excavators for the Nazis.
Even the Egyptian people who aren’t portrayed as actively working for the Nazis are generally not portrayed favorably, as evidenced by the stereotypical white-robed peasants who stand around gawking while Indy is being attacked and the petty street thieves who attempt to rob him while he’s hiding from the men with scimitars whom the Nazis have apparently hired to kill him.
The only Egyptian characters in the film who are portrayed favorably are the archaeologist Sallah (a personal friend of Indiana Jones) and his family. Even here, though, the racial biases of the writers are quite evident; for some reason, Sallah is portrayed by John Rhys-Davies, a white Welsh actor who delivers all his lines with an unmistakable Welsh accent—rather than, you know, an actual native Egyptian actor.
ABOVE: Screenshot of the stereotypical Egyptian swordsman who attacks Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark
General inaccuracies about the nature of ancient remains
Having clarified that the film itself is redolent with inaccurate and racist stereotypes, I feel I should also clarify that its portrayal of the nature of ancient remains is also totally inaccurate. This is not something that I am necessarily upset about per se, but it is something that I feel I need to talk about because the inaccurate portrayal of the archaeological remains helps contribute to the false impression that Indiana Jones is a hero.
As I have already mentioned, the film begins with Indy sneaking into an ancient temple in the middle of the jungle somewhere in South America. The temple is full of all sorts of terrifying death traps, which are evidently meant to guard a golden idol, which sits on a pedestal in the heart of the temple.
I am not aware of a single archaeologist who has ever found any kind of death traps in any kind of ancient temple. Furthermore, from the perspective of the Native people who presumably built this temple, the whole idea of putting traps in a temple would not make any sense. The whole reason why people make idols is to worship them and the whole reason why people build temples is to use them for worship. For someone to build an entire temple complex and make a golden idol just to put the idol in the temple and fill it with booby traps so no one can possibly access the temple or the idol without getting killed is very strange indeed.
Putting a golden idol in a temple full of booby traps really only makes sense from the perspective of the western, colonialist-minded makers of the film. Western colonialists don’t see idols as genuine subjects of religious devotion; instead, they see them as merely objects of monetary value to be collected and guarded so that they can be sold for profit at a later date. This is a fundamentally different conception of what the idol’s purpose is and why it is valuable.
Finally, even if someone had, for some reason, built a temple full of death traps, the traps would almost certainly no longer be operational hundreds, if not thousands, of years later. Due to entropy, systems naturally break down over time unless they are maintained. Because complex systems (such as complicated death traps) have a lot of parts and each part is necessary for the system to function, they tend to quit working sooner rather than later and they would probably all have broken down by the time Indy arrived. Also, it would be impossible for the kinds of traps Indy encounters in the temple to reset themselves, so it’s likely that, by the time Indy reached them, they would all have already been sprung.
ABOVE: Screenshot of Indiana Jones running away from the boulder at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark
This is not the only inaccuracy in the film about the nature of extant archaeological remains. Notably, throughout the film, Indy is portrayed as following elaborate trails of maps and clues in order to find massive, largely intact rooms filled with treasures. This is not reflective of what real-life archaeologists are actually excavating.
First of all, real archaeologists don’t find ancient sites by following a string of elaborate scavenger hunt clues, with one clue leading directly to the next. The main way archaeologists find ancient sites is through ruins that are either visible on the surface or remains that have been found by accident.
Archaeologists may rely on surviving ancient written sources—including inscriptions—for information about the sites they are excavating, but I am not aware of a single case of an archaeologist following a set of coordinates given in an inscription on an ancient medallion to find a hidden map room that will show them where any kind of “treasure” is buried.
Furthermore, the kinds of sites that real archaeologists are excavating are generally not nearly as well-preserved as the seemingly mostly intact underground rooms that Indy explores. Most ancient buildings that archaeologists excavate have only survived up to waist-level at the most and are completely or almost completely buried. Below are some photographs of sites in Greece that should give you some impression of what most sites excavated by archaeologists actually look like.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a portion of the ruined agora of ancient Athens
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a portion of the ruined agora of ancient Sparta
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the ruins of the Kadmeia at Thebes
Even in Pompeii, where a large number of buildings have survived in a remarkable state of preservation due to the fact that the entire city was buried in volcanic ash within a relatively short span of time, it is rare to find a building that still has any kind of roof remaining.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Via dell’Abbondanza, the main street of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii
There are some ancient buildings that have survived to the present day as intact structures, such as the Temple of Hephaistos in Athens and the Pantheon in Rome, but these buildings have only survived in this state of preservation because they have been continuously used and maintained for thousands of years and have never been abandoned.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Temple of Hephaistos in Athens
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Pantheon in Rome
Finally, it is actually relatively rare for archaeologists to find “treasures” of the kind Indiana Jones searches for and, in general, those aren’t the kinds of artifacts archaeologists are even looking for.
It’s true that, occasionally, archaeologists have found items that are widely regarded as “treasures.” For instance, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann found a whole set of gold death masks in Grave Circle A at the site of Mycenae in Greece in 1876. The British archaeologist Howard Carter found an enormous stash of precious artifacts in the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. In a less publicized but equally significant case, another British archaeologist, Sir Leonard Woolley, unearthed a large hoard of precious artifacts in the Royal Cemetery at Ur in southern Iraq between 1922 and 1934.
More recently, since 1964, archaeologists have been excavating the Kasta Tomb at a site near the city of Amphipolis in the region of Makedonia in northern Greece. It is believed to be the burial of a member of the ancient Makedonian royal family and has yielded impressive finds, including a painted fresco, marble sculptures, and a mosaic depicting the abduction of the goddess Persephone, which I discuss in this article from February 2020.
You may already be noticing a pattern: all of the hoards of valuable artifacts I have mentioned were found in royal tombs. These kinds of tombs, however, are relatively rare to begin with. Furthermore, when they are found, they have nearly always been extensively looted. This means that, when someone does find an unlooted royal tomb, it is a once-in-a-generation kind of discovery.
The vast majority of the artifacts that real, present-day archaeologists find are not especially impressive or even necessarily interesting to non-archaeologists. Instead of searching for golden idols in ancient temples, real-life archaeologists are mostly sifting carefully through dirt for things like tiny bits and pieces of pottery, corroded copper coins, rusty nails, animal bones, and so forth. They are generally far more concerned with the everyday remnants of the past than with impressive burial goods.
It’s clear that all the inaccuracies about the nature of ancient remains in the Indiana Jones films are deliberate. The purpose of these inaccuracies is to make Indiana Jones’s work as a looter and destroyer of cultural heritage seem fun and exciting. Most people like fun and excitement, so, by making Indy’s work seem fun and exciting, the filmmakers succeed in making people like him as a character—despite his objectively horrendous actions.
ABOVE: Photograph of some of the contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb taken in 1922, shortly after it was opened
Indiana Jones’s theft and destruction of cultural heritage
This brings us to the character of Indiana Jones. When real archaeologists conduct excavations, they can only do so with the explicit permission of the government of the country in which they are excavating. Furthermore, in most countries, there are strict restrictions on what archaeologists are allowed to do with the artifacts they find.
In many countries that have a lot of ancient remains—such as Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Italy, and many other countries—all ancient artifacts are automatically considered property of the government and it is illegal for a private citizen to buy, sell, possess, or export antiquities of any kind. These laws are designed to discourage looting (i.e., the illegal removal of antiquities from an ancient site) since this practice results in irreversible harm to ancient sites and the destruction of information about the past.
Unlike looters, real archaeologists are extremely meticulous about documenting everything they find, where they find it, what layer of dirt it is in, and what circumstances they find it under. They take detailed notes, photograph their finds in situ, and try to preserve as much information as possible. Then, when they are done, if their finds are significant, they publish them in academic journals so that other scholars can read about them.
Indiana Jones does none of these things. He does not seek permission from the government to conduct excavations. He does not document his finds. Instead, he simply grabs whatever he thinks might be valuable to sell and runs, often destroying whatever he doesn’t think he can sell for profit in the process. Whatever Indiana Jones’s official position at the University of Chicago may be, he is not an archaeologist; he is a looter and destroyer of cultural heritage.
ABOVE: Photograph from this article from MentalFloss of a collection of confiscated looted artifacts being looked after by authorities
The films themselves occasionally hint that Indy’s heists are less than legal. When Indy arrives back in Chicago, he tries to sell some of the artifacts he has stolen to the museum and the museum curator tells him, “Yes, the museum will buy them, as usual, no questions asked.” In other words, the curator knows perfectly well that all the artifacts Indy is trying to sell him are stolen, but he just doesn’t care because he is corrupt and he only cares about obtaining the shiniest objects to add to his collection so that he can attract more museum visitors and more profits.
Later, when the government officials come to talk to Indy, they refer to him as a “professor of archaeology, expert on the occult, and—how does one say it?—obtainer of rare antiquities.” It seems that, in the film, the United States government knows perfectly well that Indy is stealing artifacts from other countries and bringing them back to the United States to sell for profit, but they don’t care because they like having artifacts pillaged from other countries wind up in their own museums.
These subtle hints that what Indy is doing might be illegal don’t do anywhere near enough to problematize his activities. No one ever outright accuses him of stealing and no one ever even tries to find fault with him for what he does. As far as the characters in the film are concerned, stealing cultural artifacts from Indigenous people and foreign countries is a perfectly normal and acceptable way of making a living.
ABOVE: Screenshot of the government officials talking to Indy. They know what he’s doing is illegal, but they seemingly don’t care.
Stolen artifacts and museums
Now, many people will duly point out that Indiana Jones frequently insists that the artifacts he finds “belong in a museum.” These people will claim that this somehow absolves Indy from the charge of stealing. This, however, is certainly not the case.
First of all, it is unclear just how serious Indiana Jones really is about the whole “It belongs in a museum” shtick to begin with. There are several hints throughout Raiders of the Lost Ark that Indy’s whole insistence that ancient artifacts belong in museums may be little more than an act that he puts on in order to win people’s favor and justify his persistent habit of looting ancient temples and other archaeological sites.
Notably, when we actually see the inside of Indiana Jones’s house, the whole place is pretty overtly decorated with artifacts that look rare and ancient. This issue is never brought up in the dialogue of the film and it’s never explained what the artifacts in his home are or why he has them.
It’s possible that these artifacts may be merely modern reproductions of artifacts that Indy has already sold to museums. It’s also possible that they may be artifacts he is planning to sell to museums that he simply hasn’t gotten around to selling yet. On the other hand, given his other shady activities, it’s very easy to believe that Indy is simply keeping certain artifacts he especially likes for himself.
ABOVE: Screenshot from Raiders of the Lost Ark showing the inside of Indiana Jones’s house, which is decorated with all kinds of seemingly rare ancient artifacts
In any case, even if Indy really is making sure that all the artifacts he finds go to museums, this doesn’t mean he is anything close to an altruistic saint. It is explicitly stated in the dialogue of the film that he is selling artifacts to the museum in Chicago—not donating them. The museum curator who buys them even explicitly tells Indy that he is willing to pay a large sum of money for them—a fact which seems to please Indy greatly. It’s clear that, when he does sell artifacts to museums, he’s doing it for personal profit.
There’s also the problem that, if an artifact is in a museum, it matters greatly which museum it is in and how it got there. Just because an artifact is in a museum doesn’t mean it isn’t stolen. Indeed, as I discuss in much greater depth in this article from October 2020, many of the artifacts that are currently on display in museums in western Europe and North America were verifiably stolen or otherwise acquired by dishonorable means.
Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, western Europeans and people of western European descent pillaged countries all around the world and stole countless cultural artifacts. They put most of these artifacts on display in museums in their home countries so that they could admire them, but the people they stole them from could not. The British and French were particularly notorious for just showing up in other people’s countries and taking stuff, usually without even asking. They stole from anyone they could, which mostly meant anyone who wasn’t western European.
Between 1801 and 1812, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, removed a large number of ancient sculptures from the Akropolis in Athens, including roughly half the sculptures from the Parthenon, and shipped them back to Britain to decorate his personal mansion. Lord Elgin claimed that he had permission from the government of the Ottoman Empire (which ruled most of Greece at the time) to remove the statues, but he never provided any documentation to support his claim.
A friend of Lord Elgin named Reverend Philip Hunt brought forward a document that he claimed was an Italian translation of the original Turkish decree granting Lord Elgin permission to remove the marbles. The document, however, is not in the correct format for an official decree and no version of the alleged original Turkish document has ever been found, despite the enormous number of surviving Turkish documents from the time period. This means that Hunt’s document may very well be nothing more than an outright forgery.
Even if it is authentic, the document produced by Hunt says nothing about Lord Elgin being allowed to remove marble sculptures; instead it only gives him permission to remove “any pieces of stone with old inscriptions or figures thereon.” It’s clear that, if a Turkish official really wrote this, they were imagining that Lord Elgin might collect a handful of rocks with barely legible writing on them; they certainly weren’t imagining that Lord Elgin was going to remove dozens of priceless works of art from a historic building.
In 1816, Lord Elgin sold all the marbles he’d taken from Greece to the British government to settle some very large debts he had incurred through a divorce settlement. The marbles were soon deposited in the British Museum, where they have remained ever since. The Greek government insists that the marbles were taken illegally and demands that they be returned so they can be displayed in Athens alongside the other sculptures from the Akropolis.
ABOVE: Painting from 1819 by Archibald Archer showing the Elgin Marbles on display in a temporary room at the British Museum
The Elgin Marbles, however, are actually among the less egregious examples of western Europeans stealing cultural artifacts and putting them in museums. In many cases, Europeans used outright violence to take artifacts they wanted from other cultures.
In 1857, during the Second Opium War, the British and the French launched an invasion of China. This invasion culminated in October 1860 with the British and French forces looting and destroying the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. Thousands of priceless cultural artifacts were stolen, including works of art that were thousands of years old. Many of these artifacts eventually wound up in western museums.
Incidentally, the British officer who ordered the looting and destruction of the Old Summer Palace was James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, the son of the very same Lord Elgin who took the marbles from the Athenian Akropolis. I guess looting priceless cultural artifacts runs in the family!
ABOVE: Scene of British and French troops looting the Old Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860 during the Second Opium War
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the overgrown ruins of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing today
In December 1896, an unauthorized British military expedition set out to depose the oba of the kingdom of Benin. Nearly the entire expedition force was killed by a Benin strike force, with only two officers escaping with their lives. In February 1897, the British sent in a full-on punitive invasion force to avenge the officers who had been killed. This invasion force sacked and burned the city of Benin, annexed all the kingdom of Benin’s territory, and looted countless works of art from the oba’s palace.
The British brought these looted artworks back to Britain. They put some of them on display in the British Museum, but they also sold some of the others off for profit, hoping to recoup the money they had spent on the invasion. Thus, the looted Benin artworks have found their ways into museums all over western Europe and North America.
The sad reality is that Indiana Jones is not an enlightened hero for insisting that artifacts be placed in museums. Taking an artifact from its country of origin without legal permission from the legitimate government of that country and putting it in a western museum is inherently a form of imperialist looting. Indiana Jones is just a fictional twentieth-century equivalent of Lord Elgin.
ABOVE: Photograph from 1897 showing British colonialist looters amid the ruined palace of the oba of Benin with looted treasures
Indiana Jones the statutory rapist
Indy’s crimes go far beyond just stealing and destroying cultural heritage, though; he is also a statutory rapist. The screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark explicitly states that, when Marion Ravenwood first appears on screen, she is “twenty-five years old.” In the film itself, Marion is stated to be the daughter of Indy’s professor and mentor Dr. Abner Ravenwood. Indy is stated multiple times to have had a sexual relationship with her while he was working as her father’s teaching assistant in his twenties. This relationship is stated to have ended “ten years” before the time when the film takes place. This means that Marion was fifteen years old when their relationship ended.
Now, you could argue that maybe Marion was an unusually mature fifteen-year-old and that Jones didn’t realize she was so young when he seduced her into a sexual relationship, but it is explicitly stated in the film itself that he knew perfectly well how old she was and that what he was doing was wrong. When Indy and Marion meet on screen for the first time, she punches him in the face and says, “I’ve learned to hate you in the last ten years.” We then get this exchange:
Indy: “I never meant to hurt you.”
Marion: “I was a child! I was in love! It was wrong and you knew it!”
Indy: “You knew what you were doing.”
Marion: “Now I do. This is my place. Get out!”
[Mohan starts to come in from outside]
Marion: “Mohan, [shouting in Nepalese]!”
[Mohan closes door]
Jones: “I did what I did. You don’t have to be happy about it, but maybe we can help each other out now.”
Thus, it is made absolutely crystal-clear in the script that Indiana Jones knew Marion was underaged. Not only did he pursue a sexual relationship with her anyway, but he doesn’t even seem to particularly regret it now ten years after the fact.
Furthermore, as Marion’s father’s teaching assistant, he was in a clear position of trust and authority. He abused that trust in order to have sexual relations with an underaged girl. This behavior is nothing short of despicable.
ABOVE: Screenshot of Marion Ravenwood telling Indiana Jones that what he did “was wrong and you knew it”
Now, you could argue that maybe the writers of the film didn’t realize how young Marion was supposed to have been, but we actually have the transcripts of the original 1978 story meetings between the writers George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan. These transcripts reveal that the writers of the film actually talked about Marion’s age at length and that George Lucas originally wanted for Indy to have sexually molested Marion when she was only eleven years old. Here is the transcript from the meeting:
Lawrence Kasdan: “I like it if they already had a relationship at one point. Because then you don’t have to build it.”
George Lucas: “I was thinking that this old guy could have been his mentor. He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven.”
Kasdan: “And he was forty-two.”
Lucas: “He hasn’t seen her in twelve years. Now she’s twenty-two. It’s a real strange relationship.”
Steven Spielberg: “She had better be older than twenty-two.”
Lucas: “He’s thirty-five, and he knew her ten years ago when he was twenty-five and she was only twelve. It would be amusing to make her slightly young at the time.”
Spielberg: “And promiscuous. She came onto him.”
Lucas: “Fifteen is right on the edge. I know it’s an outrageous idea, but it is interesting. Once she’s sixteen or seventeen it’s not interesting anymore. But if she was fifteen and he was twenty-five and they actually had an affair the last time they met. And she was madly in love with him and he…”
Spielberg: “She has pictures of him.”
So, again, it’s clear that the writers of Raiders of the Lost Ark very much intended Indiana Jones to be a statutory rapist.
Indiana Jones’s multiple homicides
It’s no secret that Indiana Jones kills a lot of people in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In many of these cases, his killings could be justified as self-defense, since the people he kills are actively trying to kill him. In many cases, though, he kills people without moral or legal justification.
For instance, at one point during the scene in Cairo, Indy shoots the driver of a truck that he believes Marion is in. The truck hits a curb, flips over, and randomly explodes, killing everyone inside. The people inside the truck are probably Nazis, but, in the scene, they are not actively trying to kill Indy, which leaves him without much justification for killing them extrajudicially.
ABOVE: Screenshot of Indiana Jones standing in front of the burned-out husk of the truck whose driver he has just killed, causing the truck to flip over and explode, killing everyone inside
An even worse example of Indy killing people without justification occurs in a scene during Indy’s getaway. In the scene, there is a group of six Egyptian men in white robes who are standing on raised wooden platforms accessible via ladders at the side of the road, where they appear to be building a house. Indy rams his truck straight through the wood scaffolding, knocking down the platforms the men are standing on and sending at least four of the six men plummeting to the ground—and probably to their deaths.
This is all depicted in a very brief scene lasting for only a few seconds. The fact that Indy probably killed or at least severely wounded nearly a half dozen innocent bystanders is never returned to or mentioned again. Why? Well, the obvious answer is that it’s because all the people Indy probably killed are Egyptians and their lives don’t matter as far the writers are concerned, because the writers are all racist white men and, in their minds, only white people’s lives matter.
Some dark consequences of the film
Indiana Jones is a dark symbol of a world in which elite white men from western countries get to travel around the world, steal all kinds of precious cultural artifacts, indiscriminately commit horrible crimes against women and people of color, and never be held responsible. This is not, however, the problem I have with Raiders of the Lost Ark, strictly speaking. I believe that horrible human beings can make for interesting protagonists; a protagonist doesn’t need to be a saint to be relatable.
The problem I have with Raiders of the Lost Ark is that Indiana Jones’s various crimes and misdeeds are not portrayed as problematic. Instead, they are portrayed as normal. When Indy steals an object of immense religious importance to Native South Americans, it’s treated as no big deal; after all, that’s just what he does. When Indy has sex with an underaged girl, no one cares because he and the girl make up in the end. When Indy drives through a wooden scaffold, sending nearly a half dozen Egyptian men plummeting to their deaths, most people don’t even notice because the scene only lasts for a few seconds and it’s never addressed again.
This kind of treatment of Indy’s actions normalizes racism, looting, statutory rape, and the reckless endangerment of human life. And, unfortunately, this normalization is not without consequences. I doubt anyone has ever watched Raiders of the Lost Ark and decided to kill a bunch of Egyptians in a street chase, but the illegal looting of archaeological sites is a massive, real-world problem. Making films that glorify looting only encourages people to actually do it.
Regarding “Indiana Jones is just a fictional twenty-first-century equivalent of Lord Elgin”: the story is set in 1936, so he really is the twentieth-century equivalent.
Sorry! That was a typo! That was supposed to say “fictional twentieth-century equivalent.” I thought it said that, but I guess I typed it wrong. I have now corrected the error.
Re Lord Elgin, if the firman was authentic then the wording “any pieces of stone with old inscriptions or figures thereon” looks very much like the Turks simply saying ‘take anything you like’. As invading Muslim overlords they didn’t care two hoots about the Parthenon and used it as a gunpowder store.
Care to comment on the now-popular ‘iconoclasm’ of uncovering the nasty side of demigod US presidents and other personages, the concept of Johnny Reb, the explorer-conquistadores, etc., and the taking down of their memorials? Columbus, too: Imagine trying to eliminate all that has been named after him! How Indiana Jones fits the mold!
…And then, there’s the rape thing found rife among so many of today’s most powerful men–and institutionally among so many police personnel. The thrilling priority of forcing utter submission and humiliation because they can get away with it.
Apart from stealing archaeological treasures, Indiana Jones does not seem worse than Conan or James Bond in that he routinely murders people and destroys their property with little justification. The Nazi excuse used reminds me of the uncounted war movies that pretend to have an anti-war message while advertising death and destruction. The least appreciated movie antagonists — Nazis/people with German accents — are white (and male). How does that fit into your racism framework?
Judging from TV shows like Game of Thrones, glorifying amorality and gratuitous violence has become more acceptable, not less. But that is excused as badass, realistic, righteous and also feminist if the perpetrator is female.
The reason I wrote this article is because there are a lot of people who mistakenly see Indiana Jones as a positive representative for the field of archaeology.
The problem I have with Indiana Jones isn’t with the fact that he commits crimes, but rather with the fact that, when he commits crimes, they aren’t portrayed as crimes at all and the film does its best to hide the fact that he is actively hurting people. No one complains about what he’s doing or, if they do, they eventually come to accept that his actions are really for the best. For instance, in the film, Indy knowingly exploits a teenaged girl for sex and then, when they meet back together years later, she just falls in love with him again, without him even having to change his mind about anything or meaningfully repent for how he has treated her. That sends the implicit message that it’s ok for men to sexually exploit teenaged girls.
I honestly don’t have much familiarity with Conan the Barbarian or James Bond so I can’t say much about how they fit in here. Game of Thrones is a bit different because, although the characters regularly commit heinous crimes, their actions are generally portrayed in ways that make it clear that they are morally questionable. If the whole series were about, say, Jaime Lannister and he was portrayed in a completely unambiguously moral light, with all his victims being portrayed as either insignificant extras, barbarous savages, or people who ultimately accept that his actions are good, then that would be very problematic. Instead, though, the show portrays him as a character who has done terrible things and who even acknowledges that he has done terrible things. That actually makes the show more interesting.
If Raiders of the Lost Ark did more to problematize Indiana Jones’s actions and show that he is hurting people, I wouldn’t mind so much that he’s committing immoral acts.
Your criticisms aren’t without merit to be sure. At one time, I’d have said it’s only a movie. However, in the mid 1990s, I worked in a company with a lot of Indian employees and I remember one of them saying he was disgusted by “Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom” with its portrayal of Indians. The dinner scene in particular – Indians wouldn’t eat monkey brains.
One consideration is that Indiana Jones takes place in the 1930s which weren’t exactly a time of enlightenment even by archaeologists. It strikes me that American and European governments treating artifacts and the nations from where they came respectfully is a relatively recent development. In 1935-40, skullduggery was still commonplace – the Louvre and the British Museum got a lot of artifacts through less than legal means. And when did the likes of Winston Churchill treat the Africans and Asians respectfully? In fact, I’d say that opening scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” you referenced would represent exactly how two white guys in 1939 would have treated indigenous people and Hispanic hired hands. Perhaps the one defense of Jones is that he’s not going to turn that golden idol into gold bars like the Spanish conquistadors.
It might be that Steven Spielberg actually took some of those criticisms to heart. If you think about it, “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” shows differences from “Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom”. Despite the opening scene, Jones appears in a classroom telling students that “X does NOT mark the spot and most of the work you do will be in libraries.” He might have also said, as you noted, that most artifacts are not made of gold and silver. A lot of them consist of broken pottery. In that movie, the indigenous people aren’t portrayed as savage and evil. The Middle Easterners were, in fact, guardians of the Holy Grail. The evil ones were all White. The Middle Eastern king was portrayed as shallow-minded such that he’d give permission in exchange for a Rolls Royce but given some of the corrupt, morally-bankrupt despots who rule some Middle Eastern nations, that actually rings true.
This may be a strange question for you, but I am truly at sea about this question. I am in the process of feverishly tracing my family history back as far as possible, and I was doing great until I reached my some # great-grandfather Perseus. I was curious so I kept going, and ended up with Zeus, etc. in my family line. I think I am being dense, but how can someone be a descendant of Zeus, in real life? I was angry because I thought someone was playing with those of us who are being serious, and I cannot find “real” people in my family tree because of all the mythological gods and goddesses and demigods, etc, that come up when I do a search. Do I need a specialized search engine for sch0larly publications (Like NexisLexis?) or am I just being stubborn thinking that I really cannot be related to someone who lived on Mount Olympus back in the day? I know people then and now believe in the Greek Gods, but I am trying to get real people in my tree. Thanks for any help.
If you are trying to trace your family history and you’ve found a line that supposedly goes back to Zeus, I guarantee you that line is not accurate, not only because Zeus probably does not exist, but also because there are no detailed, continuous, or reliable ancestral records going back to ancient Greece.
Very few ancestral lines can be reliably traced back any further than the fifteenth century CE and it is simply not possible to reliably trace any kind of ancestral line further back than the seventh century CE. Once you go further back than that, there are no ancestral records that are detailed, continuous, or reliable enough to reconstruct any kind of family history with any semblance of accuracy. Claims of “descent from antiquity” are invariably rooted in fantasy and supposition.
The reason you often encounter lines that supposed go back to Greek heroes or Biblical patriarchs on websites like Ancestry.com is because the lineages on those websites are made by enthusiastic amateurs who, in their eagerness to trace their own family histories as far back as possible, are willing to play fast-and-loose with the historical records, impute things that the records don’t actually say, string lines together that don’t exist, trust extremely unreliable sources, and even sometimes flat-out fabricate lineages altogether.
Maybe there *is* a Zeus. We won’t know until we die.
THANK YOU!
I thought I had missed a memo. You have helped me a lot, thanks. Your blog is so interesting!
Historians of the less scientific, less widely-disseminated-knowledge past, were interested most in their own futures. If they wanted to be rewarded (or simply, not punished) the thing for them to do was to shine on exalted fantasies of their tribe or masters. They’d better confirm and enhance traditions and lore of glowing ancestors, or make it up with their brilliant, archons of the arcane scholarship. The idea that all creatures ultimately came from God (let alone, would go back to and become like unto His Being– what the word translated ‘reconcile’ in the usual English NT means), is just too intolerably un-special: Gott mit uns, not those —damn enemies and cootie things! Virtually all the genealogies of dynasties with roots (allegedly) pre-Age of Enlightenment trace royal forebears to legendary heroes (‘hero’ originally=’demigod’) and even more divine beings and miraculous events. Of course some people won’t let go. Bad enough that they were told Santy Claus was a martyred bishop who died centuries before chimneys were invented. Remember the ‘Holy Blood’ thing that Dan Brown technically didn’t (ahem!) borrow the heck out of from the fevered Baigent-Leigh-Lincoln book? All from (sycophants of) royals who wanted to believe they were direct ‘blood’ descendants of Jesus Christ (and you-all AREN’T, so no more guff!). This was embroidered out of the quasi-Biblical idea of ‘the everlasting throne of David’ trickling through the alleged records of his descendants, such as the ‘Gaons of Sura’, some of whom ended up in the western Mediterranean and intermarried with local bigshots. Got to all the ‘Christian’ dynasties from Ethiopia to Scandinavia and Russia, and the Caliphs of Islam. East Asians had their own divine ancestors, usually including more dragons than the West, and ‘the savages’ had their own, too. ‘Ancient Aliens’–meaning ‘extraterrestrials’, not refugees to conveniently exploit or persecute, are just the since-Erich-von-Daniken reworking of these so-shiny fantasies.
Let’s see, you completely miss the fact of many, MANY, Europeans being portrayed as dispicable throughout the series from Jones’ rival in the first act of Raiders to his sidekick Mac and the Russians in Crystal Skull. Apparently you also forgot the noble characters of Sallah and the freighter Captain. This merely reveals your own racism.
Apparently you also have little experience with spurned women of any age. There was a reason captured enemies did not wish to be given over to the women of the village. Is it not possible the hurt Marion endured colored her narrative in referring to herself as a child? Could this not also have been a contribution of Abner to the story? Maybe when you have more experience in life this blindspot will be reconciled. But I doubt it.
As an archaeologist you seem woefully ignorant of, or more than willing to ignore, the time period and the culture, mores, and taboos of said period. Did the researchers of the day act on a manner repugnant to our modern sensibilities? Certainly. Should we judge them metelybby our own standards or by the perfection of the Son of GOD? No, no we should not. To do so would be wholly dishonest.
Please rethink your premise of Jones as a repugnant villain. It does not hold up to scrutiny.
So, which films should I watch instead of Indiana Jones?
I thought that the portrayal of Indiana Jones was to fit the time period, that is that he was in the middle of the transition to what we consider archeology as opposed to the rich collector type. I also got the impression that he sold the eye-catching pieces to the museums in order to finance searches for and preservation of the less showy pieces.
Re his relationship with Marion, I didn’t remember particular ages from the movie so I put him as grad student (about 25) and her late high school (about 16 or 17). Still unacceptable by our standards but not as out of line for the time except for not “making an honest woman of her”.
Since most of the Europeans are also trying to kill him, I simply assumed that the non-European representation was because of the type of person he would encounter in that situation and not the country he was in. The type of people who would join someone visiting their country to take something from an indigenous temple or work for another visitor to cripple his efforts are going to be greedy and amoral. Perhaps I was naive but we don’t have an opportunity to see the airline clerks, hotel staff, transportation workers, etc that he would encounter precisely because that is not an adventure. You are correct that it should not be done today but it was a deliberate harkening back at the time to the old adventure movies that the writers, director and producer saw growing up (so 1930s to 50s sensibilties).
Have you ever read the Amelia Peabody mysteies? In the late 1800s/early 1900s, she inherits a fortune and travels to Egypt where she meets an archeologist trying to get the government and his competitors to adopt the same careful excavation methods he is using. Both tend to leap to conclusions, are sure their solutions to the mystery in each book are correct, and disagree vehemently over what to do next. Again products of their time but as advanced as the author could make them without being anachronistic.
I’m not sure how much I agree with your counter arguments, but I WILL say this much. Your points raised therein are more thought-out & comparatively illustrated than others in these replies…
ahahahaha!!! you know, kid, you might shove your woke nonsense where the sun doesnt shine! it´s pretty easy to play the virtue signaling “enlighted one”, any self righteous jerk could do your “homework”! I know PERFFECTLY what´s entertainment, and what´s real, don´t need lecturing from a self – sanctimonious elitist “jester”. Some of us grew up with those movies, and never felt as uncomfortable as you. In fact, i had an archaelogist teacher in college who really enjoys these movies, understanding they are fiction, and even said that thanks to films like Indiana Jones or The Mummy, young people were pushed to study History, and getting an archaelogy B.A. Your whine comment it´s as ridiculous as those pansies who want to cancel classic books like Treasure Island, King Solomon´s Mines, or Around The World in 80 Days, because for THEM they are problemati, and need the urge of driving us away from such matterial, in order to control anything, and anybody. I remember as a child going to explore my grandparents´estate in the countryside, finding “curiosities” linked to History, or imagining myself finding a lost world/Lost kingdom. The Indiana Jones series, as well The Mummy, or even the 80s tv show Tales of The Gold Monkey, simply connected us with our childhood, understanding they are ENTERTAINMENT, their creators simply wanted to tell a fun (a word that seems forbidden by the self righteous “Proffessor Trelawney” ones) swashbuckling, fantastical yarn, inspired on old pulps and serials, political correctness thwarts imagination and preaches mediocrity as a “virtue”
Look, I’m not saying you can’t watch Indiana Jones movies and enjoy them. I’m just pointing out that there are some seriously problematic elements of Indiana Jones’s character that nearly everyone seems to overlook; he steals cultural artifacts and sells them for profit, he is stated to have sexually exploited an underaged girl, and he kills people who get in his way without a second thought. It’s fine if you want to watch movies about him, but you should bear in mind that he’s objectively a terrible person and not at all somebody you should model your life after.
It´s an ACTION movie, of course there will be killings, it´s part of that, but maybe you are even too afraid to leave your “cave”, good luck with that …