With the fourth installment of the adventure series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, hitting theaters in a week, there’s too much debate going on as to the real-life relevance of Dr. Jones. Is he a crook, as was suggested last month? Or is he a model archaeologist, enough to be granted leading membership into the Archaeological Institute of America? Apparently Indiana Jones portrayer Harrison Ford has been elected to the AIA’s board of directors, as a way of honoring the fact that his iconic character has “played a major part in stimulating interest in the field of archaeological exploration.”
Yet in the same week, ABC News has another report on how archaeologists view the guy most associated with their profession. And somehow one member of the Archaeological Institute is quoted as contradicting the organization’s inclusion of Ford as a member. Mark Rose, AIA’s online editorial director, told ABC, “There are codes of ethics in archeology and I don’t think he would be a member. Not in good standing, anyway.”
Read on through the article, though, and you’ll discover Rose is used to walking about in Midwest cornfields, so he sounds like the person least likely to come in contact with a colleague resembling Indy. Another guy, SUNY Stony Brook professor Paul Zimansky claims some familiarity with Indiana Jones-like moments, whether they involve “breakneck speed” drives to the hospital or simply students who play dress up.
Another professor says he screens the Indiana Jones movies for students to show them examples of what not to do. The Smithsonian Institute’s Jane MacLaren Walsh, though, sees at least some people doing the job correctly in those films, and she gets my recognition for the best movie-related statement I’ve read all week:
“Not a whole lot of what we know as archeology goes on in these movies, except what the Nazis do. They seem to be doing some real archeological work,” said Walsh, who wrote the cover story in the May-June issue of Archaeology magazine examining the real history of crystal skulls featured in the new “Indiana Jones” movie.
I know cinema really loves Nazis, but to sorta claim they’re actually the good guys in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? That’s going just a bit too far.
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