Indiana Jones, Arceologist or trophy hunter?

[Matt Deckard]

Something that was brought to my attention just moments ago by watching "Digging For The Truth". At the begening of Raiders, Dr. Jones destroyed everything in the Temple just to get to a golden idol.

 

[Mycroft]

Thank you Mr. D. I need to Tivo that...ug. Anyhow, I think he is a bit of both, but he does not use "tradtional" methods and is not careful, but he is an action hero and no one wants to see an action hero dust off things for 1.5 hours. But, he didermination and knowlege make him an archologist, to me at least.

 

[Zach R.]

Arceologist?

Archaeologist.

 

[Feraud]

Definitely a trophy hunter. Jones was a 'hit man' for the museum. He went in and did the job he was paid to do. He was just itching to go back after the idol he "lost" to Belloq. Belloq was correct that he and Jones were not so different. Fortune and Glory and all that..

The guy is my hero! :fedora:

 

[Zach R.]

Then again, it all depends on which movie you watch.

To me, he was only a trophy hunter in Raiders, and he was just an old softie in the next two movies.

 

[Mycroft]

In my book anyone who fights nazis can be anything they want, even an archologist. He is like James Bond, dosen't follow protical at all, and still gets the job done and annoys his superiors-"The end justifies the means"-Machivelli

 

[Feraud]

Then again, it all depends on which movie you watch.

To me, he was only a trophy hunter in Raiders, and he was just an old softie in the next two movies.

Exactly. Raiders is my favorite.

 

[MrBern]

peru plunderer

Actually, when I was a teen & first saw the film brand new in theaters...I did think, " Whats with the white guy stealing from South Americans? Thats a hero???"
And then when he made it to the plane & the snake was named 'Reggie' and the pilot had a NY ballcap, I did wonder if it was some sort of ReggieJackson slam.
So I was a littl perplexed on its being a contemporary or period piece.

Then again, when I was a teen, he bored me in Bladerunner, but now I think its a classic & easily described as Bogart in 21st century.

 

[resortes805]

That's funny, I just watched the same episode...as far as fictional characters go, I think Indy is a step up from your standard grave robber in that the pieces he seek are intended for the world to share in museums and such. I actually have a friend who has studied the glyphs at Uaxatun and Tikal and other sites. He is a Mayanist and a mechanical engineer. Currently he's working on a robot jaguar that you can ride like a bike.

 

[jake_fink]

MYCROFT said:
he is an action hero and no one wants to see an action hero dust off things for 1.5 hours.

Ha ha. Too true.

He did briefly pose heroically against the sunset while his lackeys dug a hole.

I say trophy hunter, that's why it was called Raiders of the Lost Ark.

 

[The Wolf]

I am a huge fan of both Indiana Jones films and I own all three on VHS and DVD.
He is a favorite hero of mine but that wasn't your question.
I offer this scene as evidence: Indiana busts a hole in the library floor, removes a femur and piece of clothing to make a torch and pushes over the knights coffin for protection. You may draw your own conclusions.

The Wolf

 

[geo]

Archeologist, because he works for a museum. A trophy hunter would keep his finds for himself or sell them.

 

[Solomon Kane]

Grave robber.

 

[Twitch]

Look it's all relative to the era. In the 1930s the attitude was still artifacts over of knowledge of culture gained through thorough archeology. Today we have different values and it is wrong to project them into the past and damn the actions of others. Indy worked for institutions and his artifacts ended up on display for the world to see and for scholars to learn from. Theives steal and destroy artifacts selling them on the black market where only the illegal recipient will view them.

 

[Steve]

By today's standards he would be a grave robber. By the standards of his time, before archaeology became a refined science, he would be called an archaeologist.

If he were to enter the idol's temple today, it would be with a crew of forty people. They would spend a week brushing off the outside and gathering up all possible traces of a human presence, Then they would go inside, and by trial and error, would eventually make their way to the throne room.

 

[jake_fink]

Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered in 1923 by real archaeologists doing real archaeology and not destroying everything between them and the thing with the most gold.

Raiders was set in the 1930s, folks, not the 1730s... and it is a fantasy. Fantasy is not real.

It's fan-tas-y.

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

The thing I never really understood about Indy is how he both has this sort of casual attitude towards the artifacts but also thinks everything "belongs in a museum."

Such as in the Young Indiana Jones movie where he steals that cross from those other diggers and runs off with it. Isn't that just plain theft?

 

[JPS]

Do any of you scientists out there recall "smash and grab" as an accepted scientific method? Didn't think so. Since archaeology is a science, that leaves Indy out.

JPS

 

[Feraud]

The thing I never really understood about Indy is how he both has this sort of casual attitude towards the artifacts but also thinks everything "belongs in a museum."

Such as in the Young Indiana Jones movie where he steals that cross from those other diggers and runs off with it. Isn't that just plain theft?

Sometimes I think the moral outrage shown by Jones was because he felt particular artifacts belonged in his museum! Of course there were exceptions like the Shankara stone & Cross of Coronado.. Jones was very motivated into retrieving the Ark of the Covenant for his museum. Ditto on the Fertility Idol.
On a related note, I see the 'smash & grab' technique is still alive & well.

 

[jake_fink]

That's got more to do with the fallout of the old smash & grab.

The young Indy in Last Crusade says, "That belongs in a museum" because the screenwriter needed to find something that could pass for motivation to send the character off on the silly chase that follows. In Raiders, the motivation to get the Ark is only partly to get it into a museum - his or any other - it's to keep out of hands of the Nazis and, mainly, to get it before (or from) Belloq, his arch rival. So, it's personal, not altruistic.

Last Crusade is the dumbest of the three, a bloated, expensive, overblown piece of dumbness, apparently written by a no account hack (or George Lucas himself), therefore, trying to attribute motivation, logic, human psychology or anything at all from the real world is a little like trying to do so with a Tom & Jerry cartoon. :kick:

So, good luck with that.