Indiana Jones gives Anthropologists a bad bad name

L and I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie last night because a) we both are movie nuts and b) what do people think of when you tell them that you're an anthro? Indiana Jones, so it's sort of like research. It's bad, really bad, my verdict is racist, horrid portrayal of anthropologists (and pity my archaeologist friends at the moment), and perhaps most importantly, boring. I really don't think that it would have been any different to have seen it dubbed in Spanish rather than in English with subtitles. I might have walked out except that I'm really not good at it and I was astonished at the suckatude.

First of all, they made mistakes that a quick google session could have solved.... they DO NOT speak Mayan in the Amazon, not in Peru, not in Brazil, nowhere in South America-- the Mayan empire only went as far south as El Salvador (which I double checked in 5 secs just not now). Nor did they ever ever ever speak Quechua along the US/ Mexico border. These are stupid mistakes, but if you're going to sell the character as knowing something, even just a little bit, about the cultures of the Americas let alone as an expert, make better mistakes!!!!!

Then, I don't care if it's set in the 50's, anthropologists have historically (while operating in problematic relationships with indigenous communities) not had the mentality entering into indigenous spaces with a guns first orientation, really, that's your attitude toward people who are justifiably peeved by the fact that you are destroying their cultural objects and desecrating spaces!?!?! Way to represent anthros. Plus, could we not have a movie in which the secondary bad guys are all wordless savage brown people with body paint and spears?!?! Yeah yeah yeah, it's the genre, but it also pours salt in the wounds of communities who have have really messed up relationships with anthropologists and are justifiably peeved at their representations within scholarly and popular mediums.

But for me perhaps the worst because of its insidious racial message was the big lynch-pin of the movie (and if you continue to read, I will spoil the "surprise"). Ok, so they set up that the city of gold was the treasure everyone sought blah blah blah, the conquest (and Harrison Ford has an atrocious Spanish accent), but that also it evidenced technological skills beyond that of its time period. That's a really interesting point, Mesoamerican archeology shows that indigenous technology, architecture, and cosmology were extremely advanced calling into question our preconceptions about the teleological development of civilizations that so often maps onto contemporary geo-racial politics. Monte Alban, just outside of Oaxaca City demonstrates amazing technological development unheard of in Europe at the same time, as one small example. So cool, Indiana Jones is going to reveal ancient MesoAmerican development as technologically advanced (slightly making up for the way that it portrays contemporary indigenous people) .... but nope, couldn't do that, nope, really it was aliens!?!?! I mean, way to pull the rug out from any scrap of respect the film might have offered indigenous peoples, and that for me made the movie not only completely implausible, but beyond redemption. It also undermined the one moment of Indy "getting it" or acting as a responsible anthropologist when the kid says "they don't look like god, they look like aliens" when told that the images he sees are representations of head binding to make people look more like the gods. Indy replies, "they don't look like your god, but they look like their gods," ok, decent cultural relativity 101 stuff, that was completely shattered by the revelation that no, they really were just aliens. Also as L pointed out, this twist also meant that you didn't learn anything from this movie (beyond the erroneous mapping of languages) unlike in the earlier ones.

And the reason I give a shit enough to rant is that this is about real people and real communities, as much as it's only about entertainment and commercialism, these movies have real impacts on both the work of anthropologists and more importantly real indigenous communities. L and I are both infuriated and offended enough to write letters... and I don't usually ever do that.

And if my political-academic reasons weren't enough, the movie is fraking boring, the fight scenes are too long and repetitive, Harrison Ford phones in his performance, the kid is a non-presence and the sets look like Disneyland rides.