sophiaserpentia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophiaserpentia) wrote2008-02-15 11:14 am
sophiaserpentia) wrote2008-02-15 11:14 am
indiana jones and the spectre of misappropriation
So, the trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie is out, and i'm... feeling really mixed and weird about this.
When "Raiders of the Lost Ark" came out, i was 11 and this was, like, the best movie evar! It had dungeons with bizzare traps, and bullwhips, and arabs swinging swords, and a staff which had to be put in the right slot at just the right time so the sun could shine through the gem and reveal where the treasure was!
In the 27 years since, we've had a lot of discourse about how destructive and misappropriative archaeology can be, culturally speaking. And the overriding principle of Indiana Jones's morality, that antiquities "belong in a museum" is, let's face it, the antithesis of how we should really be conducting discourse between cultures and examining the past. 27 years ago, this seemed an enlightened perspective because in a museum, as opposed to a private collection, an antiquity is more roundly accessible to academia and therefore to the advancement of "human" (by which was meant, Western) knowledge.
But, whereas antiquities appear to be the products of civilizations long gone and people dead for generations, their descendants live in the area, and their cultural identity is increasingly tied to those antiquities. Those items belong to the descendants of the people who made and used them, and our awareness is growing that it is wrong to take them away from the country where they were found and locked in a museum thousands of miles away, where they are examined in a scholarly way out of context.
The new model of handling antiquities is to leave them in the possession of the country where they are found, since the means to preserve them can be established there; and for scholars to go and study the objects in an environment closer to the cultural context in which they were produced.
I think, though, kidding aside (thanks for that,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_yggdrasil), that i trust Steven Spielberg not to glorify cultural misappropriation. Most of his films, particularly his later films, have shown a sensitivity to the ways and workings of oppression; not a perfect understanding, perhaps, but in general he does not take the side of the oppressor over the underdog.
In the second Indiana Jones movie, Jones gives the artifact in question (a sivalingam) back to the people to whom it belongs after taking it from the Thugs (literal Thugs) who appropriated it. To do so, he has to strain against his own instinct to take the artifact for himself; but we see this struggle, and his eventual understanding that the artifact belongs to the Indian people.
So i hope it is *this* Indiana Jones we see in the fourth film, and not the one who sees bringing a prize back to his museum in America as a victory. Because *that* Indiana Jones is as dated as the theme music.
When "Raiders of the Lost Ark" came out, i was 11 and this was, like, the best movie evar! It had dungeons with bizzare traps, and bullwhips, and arabs swinging swords, and a staff which had to be put in the right slot at just the right time so the sun could shine through the gem and reveal where the treasure was!
In the 27 years since, we've had a lot of discourse about how destructive and misappropriative archaeology can be, culturally speaking. And the overriding principle of Indiana Jones's morality, that antiquities "belong in a museum" is, let's face it, the antithesis of how we should really be conducting discourse between cultures and examining the past. 27 years ago, this seemed an enlightened perspective because in a museum, as opposed to a private collection, an antiquity is more roundly accessible to academia and therefore to the advancement of "human" (by which was meant, Western) knowledge.
But, whereas antiquities appear to be the products of civilizations long gone and people dead for generations, their descendants live in the area, and their cultural identity is increasingly tied to those antiquities. Those items belong to the descendants of the people who made and used them, and our awareness is growing that it is wrong to take them away from the country where they were found and locked in a museum thousands of miles away, where they are examined in a scholarly way out of context.
The new model of handling antiquities is to leave them in the possession of the country where they are found, since the means to preserve them can be established there; and for scholars to go and study the objects in an environment closer to the cultural context in which they were produced.
I think, though, kidding aside (thanks for that,
_yggdrasil), that i trust Steven Spielberg not to glorify cultural misappropriation. Most of his films, particularly his later films, have shown a sensitivity to the ways and workings of oppression; not a perfect understanding, perhaps, but in general he does not take the side of the oppressor over the underdog.In the second Indiana Jones movie, Jones gives the artifact in question (a sivalingam) back to the people to whom it belongs after taking it from the Thugs (literal Thugs) who appropriated it. To do so, he has to strain against his own instinct to take the artifact for himself; but we see this struggle, and his eventual understanding that the artifact belongs to the Indian people.
So i hope it is *this* Indiana Jones we see in the fourth film, and not the one who sees bringing a prize back to his museum in America as a victory. Because *that* Indiana Jones is as dated as the theme music.
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Hopefully the latest one will be better in this regrad -- one would expect that after Schindler's List and Amistad -- but it may be that Native Americans -- specifically the Maya or some other Mexican people -- will get their share of stereotyping in the new film.
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After suffering through Munich, I sure as hell don't. If I'd had any doubts that Spielberg doesn't clearly understand his own biases and limitations, that film made it profoundly clear. I think Spielberg is basically the world's most successful 10 year-old boy, and any cultural, political, or gender sensitivities to which he aspires are always filtered through that lens. (The same is true of George Lucas, except that Lucas has never aspired to any kind of pseudo-adult sophistication.)
When I was younger, to the extent that I recognized their limitations, I loved the trappings enough to overlook them. Times have changed. I'll inevitably go see it eventually (Cate Blanchett's cheekbones have led me stupider places), but I'm bracing myself for the antediluvian mentality and a lot of fake Russian accents.
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He *is* acutely aware of the role that movies can play in cultural discourse, and it was certainly not an accident that Minority Report came out just as the nation was having an intense conversation about privacy and police surveillance. He *does* use movies to make cultural statements, and, for the most part - not perfectly, but for the most part - he sides with the downtrodden.
...with the caveat that i haven't seen Munich.
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