Sunday, July 30, 2006
Turning Your Brain On At The Movies - Part 2
Directed by: Steven Speilberg
Written by: Lawrence Kasdan, George Lucas, Philip Kaufman
(1981)
Click here to read "Part 1" of Turning Your Brain On At The Movies.
What the film thinks it is about: Mild mannered archaeology professor uses punching to discover priceless historical artefacts. Nazis find priceless historical artefact. Archaeology professor punches Nazis. Sexy woman wears silk negligee. God kills Nazis.
What it is really about: Raiders of the Lost Ark is an awesome film. It is endlessly entertaining and, though 25 years old, hasn't aged, mostly because most modern blockbuster films have taken it film as their template. This means, however, that it, just like all the recent crap, makes the excuse of being 'just for fun' for not bothering to deal with all that pesky business of having to mean something. What, then, does this film mean, if the film-makers haven't bothered putting any meaning in?
The first scene tells us everything. Paramount’s mountain logo turns into a real mountain, somewhere in South America. Then our hero steps in front of it, obscuring it entirely, towering over it. This is an image of the male sublime, where Man will tower over the natural landscape symbolising his mastery of it, his ownership of it and his divine nature – separate, above and beyond the physical world. It was a style of art particularly popular during the heyday of the European empires in the 19th Century.Here it shows our hero’s true nature. He is an invader into these lands, showing no respect to the natural order or the indigenous culture. He is there to plunder, not to study; to conquer, not to understand. The film, tellingly, is called ‘Raiders’. Indiana Jones is the symbol of Imperialism.
It is no surprise that his theme tune is a march.
Look how he asks for the map from one of his native ‘guides’ – silent, back turned, hand out. The plot point here is that one of the guides has one part of the map and Indy has the other, so they are working together to find the treasure. His body language, however, is that of a master, giving an order. He expects the map to be given to him, as if there were no possibility of refusal. When his ‘partner’ tries to double cross him, Indy pulls a whip on him. This is the slave-master’s weapon and any native that tries to question his authority will be punished. The native who turns away from Indy’s leadership is shown dead within a couple of minutes, unable to handle freedom.
After the idol has been raided, Alfred Molina-native takes the whip from Indy. Thirty seconds later he is dead too. A natural slave, the film states, can not handle the symbols of authority.
Belloq, another archaeologist, takes the idol from Indy, having gained the compliance of the Hovitos – the natives the idol belongs to. It is shown here that he who controls the slaves best, wins. Our hero disapproves of Belloq, not because he is doing something evil, but because he is a rival, after exactly the same thing.
This theme, of white men fighting over the riches of foreign cultures, is returned to throughout the movie.
The car chase where Indy tries to get to the truck with the Ark in shows how this fight mostly serves to destroy large parts of the native’s infrastructure.
The famous scene of Indy fighting the swordsman in Cairo’s market only proves that in the colonial version of ‘rock, paper, scissors’, the white man’s weapon always wins.
Anywhere Indy goes, his pursuit of the treasure leads to the indigenous culture getting stepped on, shot at and blown up.
That opening scene with the map is only there to set up Indy as a natural leader, an expert, a man always ahead of the game, and a dangerous man should you try and cross him. His keeps his back to the camera for so long just because Spielberg wanted to give him a really cool reveal. He has a whip because its old fashioned style fits in with the period adventure vibe of the movie, can be used for lots of purposes (very useful for an efficient narrative), and because it was something that hadn’t been seen on the movie screen for a while. Finally, and above all, the scene is there to show that Indy has an awesome hat. It is a scene designed to tell us that Indy is the hero of this film, that he is the protagonist we are going to be following and why we would want to follow him. Yet, by attaching all this iconography to Indy, the film unwittingly attaches a lot of baggage to the nature of his character.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a good example of how heroes are used, and abused, in movies. Heroes are there to provide models of behaviour. They represent specific virtues, just as villains represent specific vices, and the story will play out to show the relationship between these competing models. That which wins out in the end will represent which model is seen as ‘good’. In this way the story works as morality play, teaching audiences right from wrong.
This hero-role can be reversed, however. Rather than ‘what he does is right, therefore he is the hero’, it becomes ‘he’s the hero, therefore everything he does is right’. Audiences have been taught to accept that the protagonist is the hero, and so will assume that what he is doing is ‘right’. This reversal is a classic means of propaganda, where the film-makers will make the protagonist act out their agenda and the audience, used to not questioning the hero, will unconsciously start incorporating that agenda into heir own value systems.
Modern blockbusters reduce this even further, removing all agenda and symbolic value, leaving only the iconic figure of ‘the guy you root for’. The problem is, especially with Raiders, that the symbolism behind the iconography doesn’t just disappear if it is ignored. Freed from the creators’ control it takes on a life of its own, swirling around under the surface and forming shapes at random. Raiders lifts a great deal of its iconography from the serial adventures of the 1930’s and all of the racist and imperialist baggage from that age comes with it.
While the subtext of most blockbuster films comes out garbled, making the act of turning your brain on merely a exercise in getting a headache, in Raiders it is not only fairly coherent but develops as the movie rushes towards its climax.
Indiana Jones is, at no point, respecting the indigenous cultures, so the distinction between him and Belloq is only the means by which he tries to subjugate the natives. Indy and Belloq are depicted as equals. Now, as Belloq works for the Nazis and Indy is working for the US government, the film is setting up these two empires as equals too. This is where the film gets interesting.
The opening shot sees our hero blocking out the Paramount logo, an act of individualism, independence and authority-snubbing so beloved of the American dream. The ending of the film serves to undermine this image entirely. Indy finally gets his hands on the Ark and hands it over to the American Government, who promptly shut him out of the process of studying it, dumping him now his usefulness has been served. The final shot, of the Ark being boxed up and wheeled into a giant storehouse full of identical boxes is an example of the female sublime, where man is seen as very small and being consumed by the vastness of nature. In art this is usually a positive act of becoming one with the world but this film, by replacing nature with a government warehouse, gives it the negative connotation of becoming lost within bureaucracy and being powerless in the face of the power of Government.
While I always used to take the ending to be a coolly cynical dismissal of the ‘suits’ in favour of the independent man with no boss, the film actually speaks to the meaninglessness of individuality in the greater scheme of things and the foolish pride of believing you can truly be free. Indy, whether he or the audience accepts it, has been nothing but the US Government’s bitch the entire film.
Spielberg has proven himself a smart and savvy film-maker, but his need to constantly return to the happy, sentimental ending suggests he did not mean to have an ending here that would so undermine the hero he had worked so hard to create. Equally, the ending could just be producer George Lucas, so proud of the independence Star Wars bought him, having another dig at the Byzantine power structures of Hollywood – also making it unlikely that he meant for the ending to be so pessimistic about the possibility of freedom.
Yet, by turning your brain on during this movie, you are faced with a study of the American hero as Imperialist thief and of the lie of independence at the heart of the American dream, which is a bit of a pisser. I'd would like to point out that the bit when God kills the Nazis is fucking awesome.
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Are you saying this is meaning that can be extrapolated whether the filmmakers intended it or not, or stuff the filmmakers put in?
Just curious.
You think so I don't have to, Andrew.
Really fun read by the way.
At the moment I really don't think they intended for this reading of the movie. If someone wants to hook me up with an interview with Kasdan (or point me to a book titled 'Yes, Andrew, Raiders Was Always About Imperialism') I'll happily eat my words.
Here I was thinking Indy was Jesus trying to deliver his people's sacred objects to the new holy land, but the Germans (Jews) stop him and hang him from a pole until God throws down his wrath and wipes them out in a quick rapture scene.
Spielberg's take on the government seems to be that they do not live up the criteria he was raised to believe in. They don't maintain the America sold to him as a child. Indy therefore represents the American idealist whose own skills as an archeologist could be helpful to America, but the government squanders the opportunity. In short, they betray the working man.
The American idealist is gone a the end of the movie. There's a chance Indy actually gains some respect for those cultures he has been raiding - by not looking into the Ark. But then he hands it over to the government anyway. He is co-opted, and has lost his freedom.
Also, throughout the film, The American idealist is portrayed as a right bastard.
How does this tie in with his closing lines in Temple Of Doom?
"I understand it's power now" or some such thing.
I think I'll stick with the "dumb" reading.
the prequel, Temple Of Doom, is interesting because he starts out as a totally selfish man (fortune and glory, kid), and learns idealism throughout the film, supposedly leading to the character - the 'good' hero - we find in Raiders. But, as I wrote, he's still a bastard, but now he's a co-opted bastard.
It's only in the thrid film that Indy truly becomes the 'good' hero that most people think he is - principled, humble, doing to save his father and so on - yet Last Crusade gets ripped on endlessly by us geeks. Odd. I guess we like bastards.
We're women!
Raiders is just a better looking movie. It's not chock full of bad one liners and awful blue screen effects.
It's true. Raiders is like David Lean shot an action movie. You know, kind of.
But i do like the one liners in Last Crusade. I should dig up the article on here where i defended it. A bit.
http://www.thefakelife.com/blog/2006/06/indiana-jones-and-inevitability-of.html
And yes i am aware of the irony of my calls to not take the films too seriously in that article.