When I tell most people that I am an anthropologist, the most common response is “ah… dinosaur bones. Fascinating.” But, as “Kerim points out”:/2005/06/21/no-shamans-here/ many focus on the Indiana Jones thing as well. This isn’t surprising. As a kid I loved Indiana Jones flicks as much as anyone else, but I never went into anthropology because of them (how that happened is a longer story!). But truth be told, I am genuinely shocked at how many anthropologists I know got into the business as a result of Indiana Jones — and if people were willing to admit it, the numbers would rise even higher.
In fact, I’ve even noticed a subsection of these Indiana Jones devotees who started doing archaeology, then realized the sociocultural types got to do all the ‘Indiana Jones type fieldwork’, and switched over the sociocultural anthropology. These poor sods are usually disappointed because in fact the intense community and general joie de vivre of digs is a lot more fun than disconsolately gnawing away at some lamp flaps in the west end of Enga province and contemplating another exciting round of delousing shampoo. Trust me.
In fact the Indiana Jones movies reflects very poorly on our discipline. Ever notice how the first film begins with him runing away after stealing an obviously sacred object from indigenous people? Or how the second features him selling human remains to a crimelord? And this is not to mention whole scenes that revolve around messages like “look at all the creepy food Indian people eat” or “South Asian spirituality consists of ripping the hearts out of peoples’ chests.” Or perhaps I’m being unfair? After all, we learn in Temple of Doom that there are ‘good villagers’ out there who are opressed by the evil aorta-excavators. GOOD THING THAT POWERFUL WHITE MAN IS AROUND TO PROTECT THE PASSIVE AND HELPLESS BROWN PEOPLE. How did they ever get along before we took them over? So no, in fact, sometimes people do not want their history and heritage excavated and hauled off to some museum in whichever country decided to take them over in the name of some ‘civilizing’ mission, thank you very much.
I think the Indiana Jones flicks are a classic example of incredibly successful, tightly-constructed popular cinema, and I love them as much as anybody else. But, pace Indiana Jones’s frequently intoned manta that “that belongs in a museum” sometimes things just don’t. God knows this. That’s why she made all those Nazis melt.
I know of one highly successful physical anthropologist at a major university who owns an Indian Jones whip and hat.
I wasn’t motivated by Indiana Jones, but perhapse by something far worse: as a kid I loved the Victorian adventure fiction that inspired Indiana Jones: Sherlock Holmes (ever notice how all the bad people just came back from the colonies?), the Martian Chronicles (ERB’s not the Bradbury ones – exotic cultures on other planets), and so on and so forth. You know, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and that type of thing. I’m still waiting for the ultimate “John Carter, Warlord of Mars” film to be made!!!
Lol. I have got to be one of the only people on the planet who read _Sign of the Four_ AFTER they read _The Andaman Islanders_. I kept waiting for Sherlock Holmes to find some sea turtle fat at the scene of the crime…
hm, when I tell people about cultural anthropology, I usually see the perfect vacuum in their eyes. And when I explain what’s it all about, they assure me to drop some pennies in my hat next time we meat… I’d appreciate some adventure flavor to add to my appearence 😀
I don’t think it matters how any given person gets into the discipline, surely it’s just the getting there that counts??
Given (in the UK anyway) how relatively obscure, and how little is known about anthropology (based on how many times I have to explain exactly *what* anthropology is to people who ask what I study), I would have thought that anything that motivates kids to look into the subject should be seen as a good thing?
Personally it was through study at A Level of philosophy, ethics, and history, and a love of travel, that my interest was piqued, but if The Jones works for you, hey! I ain’t gonna knock it!
Hmm…. Interesting to think about the professional repercussions of Indiana Jones. I got a BA in archaeology between 1989 and 1994, though I’m now an art historian. But I think I got hooked on the romance of archaeology before the Indiana Jones movies, through some Time-Life books on “Mysteries of the Past” (I vividly remember sitting down with pencil and paper to try to make a translation of the pictographs on the Phaistos disk — I must have been all of 8 years old, dreaming of writing to National Geographic with my discoveries) and possibly also a 1970s popular-history book on the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen (the title escapes me now). But I’m sure that “Raiders of the Lost Ark” et al. certainly reinforced my sense of archaeology as adventure.
And yet, I think I actually chose to major in archaeology for two reasons: first, because it would allow me to study ancient China without having to study modern China (though this turned out to be not quite true, since modern Chinese archaeologists work in modern China) and second, because it would allow me to study ancient China while making an end-run around the Confucian historiographic and literary orthodoxy that so gets up my nose even today (also only mostly true; you still have to read that stuff). There was also some sense that it was better to major in a discipline than in area studies, but that was probably secondary. I *left* archaeology because, as a foreigner, I couldn’t get permission to go on any digs in China (this restriction has been relaxed since then). So much for romance as a motivation.
But even now that I’m an actual professor and they are paying me to teach undergraduates about the art history of China, I’m finding that that sense of discovery and adventure is still lurking around at the root of my professional motivations. So given that I’m not actually running off with any of the Buddhist carvings I study (“THIS… BELONGS… IN A MUSEUM!”), I feel perfectly justified in the thrill I got from climbing 11 meters up the inside wall of a cave temple, via a rickety and jury-rigged ladder, to enter a chamber that just might have been the secret tomb of a sixth-century emperor. You don’t get to do that every week, after all.
Film studies! Fantastic!
I’d have to disagree (regular contrarian that I am) that Indiana Jones reflects poorly on the profession in the ways that you say:
Nope, didn’t notice that. The indigenous people and the artefact aren’t necessarily related, who knows whether they care about things that could be discovered in some old ruinous tomb? Why should they give a monkey’s. The tomb may have nothing to do with them. What I did notice here is that Indie’s nemesis gets the upper hand here because he relies on local knowledge, rather than bringing in a few non-local heavies, to get what he wants.
No argument from me here, but is it creepy to gnaw at lamb flaps?
Nah, not a powerful white man. In this film Indie acts as the emissary of Shiva. For most, perhaps all of the film he is indeed passive. My reading is that he’s a deus ex machina pulled out of the hat by higher powers to side with (and also, I think, on behalf of) the wise, white haired old bloke from the village. The wise, white haired old bloke is the only guy in the film who seems to know what’s going on, in fact, I’ve not convinced wise, white haired old bloke isn’t divine himself.
Isn’t this the moral though? The Ark of the Covenant ends up in yet another warehouse of a foreign power (with fewer snakes this time), the Shiva linga from the village is given back, the Holy Grail stays hidden.
(I didn’t go into anth because of Indiana Jones – betcha don’t believe me)
Great post…I’m not ashamed to admit that one of the reasons I got into archaeology was because of Indiana Jones (I’m young enough) but then I realized what the field was really about but I was still hooked. My girlfriend bought me the box set on DVD recently for the reasons discussed in the post, and after watching them for the first time as an archaeology student they seem even more ridiculous, but even more fun at the same time.
The most common reaction I get goes like this: “Anthropology? How interesting! What is that exactly?”
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, but the tv show The Adventures of the Young Indiana Jones actually had cameos by Malinowski and Howard Carter in a couple of episodes. I haven’t seen those episodes, only heard about them from a friend, but the synopsis here at least piques my curiosity:
http://www.innermind.com/youngindy/info/yijepg2.htm
Episode 1 has Carter, but it’s not mentioned in the synopsis. Episode 18, Treasure Of The Peacock’s Eye, is the one with Carter and Malinowski.
‘In 1919 Young Indy takes off in search of a legendary diamond said to have belonged to Alexander the Great. The quest begins when a dying man gasps, “The eye of the Peacock!” Young Indy is stalked by a ruthless, one-eyed man as he races from London to Egypt to the South Seas, where he becomes embroiled in a vicious shipboard battle with Chinese pirates. Marooned on a remote island, Young Indy is captured by cannibalistic natives, and only the timely arrival of the famous anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski gives him a fighting chance to save his skin and his head.’
Sounds like trashy fun (it also sounds like Orientalist exoticism but let’s leave that aside for now).
I had youthful visions of guys going off to remote and dangerous places, being bug-bitten and emaciated after living for years with indigs, eating their food, emerging from a jungle in tattered clothes and battered pith helmets with reams of ragged, stained and torn field notes. That is as far as my ‘vision’went. I never could visualize what the field notes contained or what was done with them. I see some of the notes have turned into techno-babble and moral/political posturing. So much for youthful visions.
The Malinowski episode reminds me a similar episode of Xena where Xena barges in on the action of the Iliad. There’s only two things missing, though — Achilles and Hector!!!
“The most common reaction I get goes like this: “Anthropology? How interesting! What is that exactly?””
I’ve just recently started my BA with anth major, and I can say that I’ve generally gotten the same reactions. The only people who have idea what anthropologists do are anthropologists themselves. (Actaully, that’s not quite true. Botanists do. But they also, for some reason, hate anthropologists.)
God only knows why I chose it as my major, I didn’t even know what it was about! I just had a general romanticized idea based on one of my many aesthetic turns and went with it. There was probably a bit of Indiana in there, even if not directly. Well, I’m enjoying it anyway.
I wanted to be an archaeologist in third grade. After telling my teacher that, she tried to encourage me and sent me to the library to look it up. Failed miserably. It probably didn’t help that I had to read more than one definition to figure out what I was reading. I never really made the connection with Indiana Jones and arch, mostly because, except for a short time in the first movie, he never did anything even close to what I thought a scientist would do.
Try explaining medical anthropology… one person I talked to thought it involved forensics. (Then there are the many people who confuse epidemiology with dermatology, but that’s another rant.)
Are there any other images of anthropologists in popular culture that we could use to explain the profession?
A not-so-famous quote from the character Mola Ram, near the end of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”:
“You are in a position … Unsuitable for negotiation!”
The ravings of a madman? Yes, but Mola Ram is also expressing a cathartic release from the last 150 years of British influence. In particular, the many gun-point forced “negotiations” with the British East India company, which led first to economic dependence and then the colonial state. Mola Ram, being not only a cult leader, but a savvy historian, is surely appreciating this delicious role reversal, and revels in its fist-shaking irony.
And really, is Mola Ram such a bad guy? He’s got great taste in hats, for one thing. Equally dashing in a large skull, or the hip painted head look, you can’t deny his charisma. Yes, he enslaves children. But what annoying children!
Wouldn’t YOU enslave those children? They were asking for it: “Let me die…”
Indeed, I say. And dig some rocks, while you’re at it. Let’s be honest, they’d be toiling in the fields at home anyway. A small price to pay for throwing off the colonial oppressor. Three cheers for the hero of cultural self-determinism.
Mola Ram’s witty retort to Indy is really his one defining moment where he’s on top. Like King Kong on top of the Empire State Building, you’ve got to feel some sympathy for the big guy, even if you know he’s going to fall. Could his dream of shaking off his colonial shackles using glowing rocks actually ever succeed? (efficacy of this plan to be discussed later). Too bad, as we instead get the ending of Gunga Din, just to reference yet another 1930’s film, complete with smart British soldiers. Now who wants to negotiate, brown people!
On the psychoanalysis side, faced with a life of stress and compromise, caught up in fast-paced overwhelming modernity, you find yourself sympathizing with the underdog Mola Ram, wishing on some subliminal level that you could have an army of turbaned, if incompetent, warriors to do your bidding.
Matt
wait, I’m confused. I already do have an army of turbaned, if incompetent, warriors to do my bidding. Most people don’t?
the things I learn on SM….
I used to love the Indiana Jones movies; but I also used to love Star Wars and Star Trek…it’s a good movie and I will admit, I used to think I would love having some Indy adventures; but then I grew up and knew I wanted to be a doctor.
As I was an undergraduate, I ran into Kathryn Guerts and I was just simply in her class to get some general education requirements for my BA. Who knew she would open my eyes to the treasure that would become known as medical anthropology- and who knew I would be ‘good at it’.
Now that I’m done with my MA in Medical Anthropology at a prestigious UK university, I work in a hospital as a CNA and eventually will go to nursing school- so I can be off to my latest “Jamie” adventure- one day, I want to work with the UN, WHO or CDC and get involved with transcultural nursing, refugee nursing or even health development/promotion overseas…but we all start small; regardless of an expected MA degree.
Most of my nurses fail to see that I have nearly twice the education that they do and once they found out I was an anthropologist, they started referring me to patients of all kinds of backgrounds:
“You know Russian, right? Anthropology, you know languages”. And when I shake my head no, they ask “How about Hmong?”
Or anytime a patient has a strange behavior, I’m expected to know “What IS it that they are doing?” or when there are complaints or patients not dealing well with hospital policy I’m sent in to kind of ‘smooth things over’ because apparently, I can read minds, you see.
*giggles*
But as far as Indiana Jones; I suppose anthropologists face the same kind of crap from the wanna-be’s because of Indiana as do the forensic scientists and the CSI type shows-
Actually, I’m getting a ton of questions about forensic anthropology lately, no doubt because of the CSI shows. The irony is that I took my first anthropology class, physical anthropology, because it was the only life science requirement that did *not* require dissections (me = squeamish) so forensics is the topic in anthropology I’m likely to know the absolute least about.