[Peter Suderman]
Truly shocking news about the new Indiana Jones film from an archaeologist writing in the Washington Post:
[B]elieve me, it totally misrepresents who archaeologists are and what goals we pursue. It's filled with exaggerated and inaccurate nonsense. Even the centerpiece of the new movie -- the "crystal skull" -- is a phony.
My faith in, well... pretty much everything is now totally ruined!
Somewhat more seriously, the column's author is almost certainly correct that the Jones films are responsible for a bevy of public misperceptions about the field of archaeology -- a sort of CSI effect for professional seekers of civilizational remains. No doubt the field is considerably more boring than Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, and a gajillion dollars worth of special effects would make it seem. There are (and I'm just guessing) probably fewer snakes, fewer guns, and fewer encounters with mystical death cults and Biblical relics that make your face melt off.
But to that I say: So what? Pop culture portrayals of, well, pretty much everything tend to be inaccurate. Sex and the City wasn't really a documentary about single life in New York. The Shield wasn't a textbook on police corruption. The West Wing wasn't C-SPAN, but instead an idealized portrait of Washington politics. Fiction isn't history, sociology, or news reporting -- and thank goodness. I promise you that while the White House can be an interesting place to work from time to time, the vast majority of what goes on there does not have the makings of great drama, or even a moderately diverting 42 minutes of network television. Drama, entertainment, and pop culture rearrange, reshape, and reimagine the real world, or even just discard it entirely. Sometimes this is done to inform, sometimes to question, and sometimes, heaven forbid, just to entertain.
Worse, though, is the author's follow-up complaint that the Jones films don't project the modern archaeologist's carefully honed global sensibilities:
It's not just that the films are harmlessly caricatured visions of old-fashioned archaeology; they are filled with destructive and dangerous stereotypes that undermine American archaeology's changing identity and goals. At a time when our national political debates are centered on our relationships with other cultures, when the question of talking to rather than attacking perceived enemies has become a contentious presidential campaign issue and when claims for the repatriation of looted relics are being seriously addressed by courts and professional archaeological organizations, the thrill-a-minute adventures of Indiana Jones are potentially dangerous and dysfunctional models for both modern archaeology and American behavior in the world.
The sensitivity on display is touching, really, but somehow I don't think any Jones film is all that likely to lead to an international incident (unless maybe you're worried about riots sparked by foreign box-office numbers). If anything, archaeologists ought to be thrilled to have a public representative who's obviously much more fun than some of his cranky real-life counterparts.
"... in New York. wasn't a textbook on police corruption. ..."
Missing title.---^
[S]omehow I don't think any Jones film is all that likely to lead to an international incident . . .
Ahem. ”Members of Russia's Communist Party are calling for a nationwide boycott of the new Indiana Jones movie.
That reminds me of one of my TAs from a history of Eastern Religions course who said he hated 'Temple of Doom' because it was unrepresentative of the Thuggee cult and colonial-era India. I mean, really? You think?
The Shield isn't past tense just yet. We still have one season left to go.
If lawyer TV shows were at all realistic, the ratio would be something like this: 500 episodes showing the lawyer sitting at his desk answering emails, doing legal research, or writing a motion or brief; 50 or 100 episodes showing the lawyer in various meetings; and 1 episode set in the courtroom.
Movies are always unrealistic. The director of "You've Got Mail," asked about impoverished-bookstore-owner Meg Ryan's enormous NYC apartment, pointed out that most impoverished bookstore owners aren't as pretty as Meg Ryan, either.
However, what bugs me most about Indiana Jones, archeologist, is that he invariably demolishes the ancient site he's supposed to be investigating. Now *that's* bad research.
Jeez ... I suppose "The Librarian" wasn't accurate either?
Jen,
Was "The Librarian" the same movie as "The Mummy"?
I know fiction is not supposed to be accurate. Nevertheless, most Peruvians were rather shocked to see that, according to Indiana Jones, the Nazca Lines are located in Cuzco, where people dressed in traditional Mexican customes dance to Mexican music surrounded by Aztec and Mayan ruins!
The Nazca Lines happen to be Nazca, in the middle of a desert about 200 miles south of Lima, not in Cuzco!
Was this the Elder Wand you sought:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/dinosaur.htm
?
Dinoglyfs and dinolits are not only literally described but even carved, hewn and painted all over the continents by the paleolithic man and even by the man of antiquities.
E.g. Beowulf is the oldest book written in the archaic English that still survives. Guess what? Its main figure is yet another dragon slayer, this time from our Nordic countries.
Forget the Dinotopia - documented dinoglyfs they are. Ever read the book of Job? That's Leviathan & Behemot, folks. The longest description of any animals in the whole Jewish Grammata. Besides the flying reptiles of as late a figure as Isaiah - the flying snakes were described also by the Greek father of history, Herodotos.
In Mosaic law of the Old Testament of Judaism and Christianity, there was also one species classified as both bird and a reptile. What about if this
tinshemet=
Qetzalcoatl=
Archaeopteryx=
’old feather'
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Tinshemet.htm
?
Pauli.Ojala@gmail.com
evolutionary critic
Biochemist, drop-out
(MSci-Master of Sciing)
Helsinki, Finland
Was this the Elder Wand you sought:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/dinosaur.htm
?
Dinoglyfs and dinolits are not only literally described but even carved, hewn and painted all over the continents by the paleolithic man and even by the man of antiquities.
E.g. Beowulf is the oldest book written in the archaic English that still survives. Guess what? Its main figure is yet another dragon slayer, this time from our Nordic countries.
Forget the Dinotopia - documented dinoglyfs they are. Ever read the book of Job? That's Leviathan & Behemot, folks. The longest description of any animals in the whole Jewish Grammata. Besides the flying reptiles of as late a figure as Isaiah - the flying snakes were described also by the Greek father of history, Herodotos.
In Mosaic law of the Old Testament of Judaism and Christianity, there was also one species classified as both bird and a reptile. What about if this
tinshemet=
Qetzalcoatl=
Archaeopteryx=
’old feather'
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Tinshemet.htm
?
Pauli.Ojala@gmail.com
evolutionary critic
Biochemist, drop-out
(MSci-Master of Sciing)
Helsinki, Finland