A Tribute to Colonel Doctor Irina Spalko
Let me pre-face this (probably long-winded) ramble by saying that I
love Irina Spalko, as an antagonist and as a character in her own right. I also admire, greatly respect and (ahem...) lust after the brilliant Cate Blanchett and I've seen pretty much every movie she's ever made, but that's not the reason I'm so biased towards Spalko. When I saw KOTCS for the first time I wasn't really a Blanchett fan. I knew who she was of course and I knew that she was a highly respected actress but I didn't follow her or her career to any degree. I ended up enjoying her portrayal of Irina so much that I found myself wanting to know more about the character, her back story and motivations, e.t.c, and in turn I found myself interested in Cate as an actress. So I guess you could say that it was Irina Spalko who made me a fan of Cate Blanchett, rather than the other way around. So, why post a Spalko tribute thread? Because I see that general opinion of KOTCS seems to be on the upswing these days but I still feel that Spalko is a character that doesn't get the discussion that she perhaps deserves, so I'd like to try and redress the balance.
I've been lurking and reading around on this forum for quite a while and the main criticisms of Irina Spalko as a villain seem to be that she's not enough of a threat, she's not 'evil' enough and she always seems to be two steps behind Indy. I respect those opinions (and I actually agree with the last one which I find as irritating as the detractors do) but I have to say that, in total contrast, the first two are just a couple of the many reasons that I
like her so much. Okay, so she's not the crazy, one note maniacal supervillain that some Indy fans perhaps wanted her to be, and that's exactly why I think she's a
good and memorable villain. There are fleeting moments in KOTCS where she, dare I say it, even shows tiny flashes of fear and self-doubt which give me the impression that she maybe wasn't always the cold hearted, impenetrable uber-dominatrix that we meet in the movie. So, what happened to this woman in her life to make her become what she did? How did she become so obsessed with knowledge, power and control?
Why does she want to know (I VANT TO KNOW!
) everything? Just the mere fact that I'm asking these questions and am so interested to know more about the character's back story indicates to me that there's a lot more to her than people give credit for.
There are many more reasons I love Spalko as a villain and a character:
- Her achievements are damn impressive. In KOTCS she's only in her mid-30's and yet she's already a Colonel in the Soviet Army. She was hand-picked by one of the most fearsome dictators of the 20th century to lead teams of soldiers all of the world looking for objects of paranormal interest (as a sidenote, that would make a fantastic graphic novel - 'The Earlier Adventures of Irina Spalko' anyone?), she's a KGB agent, she's a highly respected scientist, she was awarded the Order of Lenin (3 times!) and the Hero of Socialist Labour which (according to trusty old Wikipedia) is 'the highest degree of distinction for exceptional achievements in national economy and culture' in the Soviet Union. Not to mention she can fight as well as any male soldier and she's an absolute demon with an edged weapon.
- As an extension of the above, she's a very powerful woman in a time period when powerful women (who weren't born into power like a Queen) were as rare as gold dust. I love how all her soldiers seem to respect and fear her in equal measure. Dovchenko, a huge brute of a man, ceasing from pounding Indy into the ground immediately on her order springs to mind as an example. As a woman, watching her bark orders at her regiment of ever-compliant male soldiers with so much authority kinda gives me a vicarious thrill, I must admit.
- She's somewhat a rarity as a female villain in that she's not overly sexualised. Yes, to a lot of people (including me) she is very sexy but that's more due to the fact that she's played by Cate Blanchett than anything the character actually does or says. She has her moments (the ant thigh crushing moment, the double entendre when she's dueling against Mutt, e.t.c) but other than that she doesn't behave in a traditionally 'sexy' manner at all, other than the obvious dominatrix vibe. Look at her uniform, nothing flashy there. Just a standard military uniform that's not even particularly tight-fitting, nothing like the ultra-sexualised female bond villains or comic book villains like Catwoman or Harley Quinn. Yes, of course there are female villains that aren't sexualised - Spalko's countrywoman Rosa Klebb being an example, but the key difference between Rosa Klebb and Irina Spalko is that the latter is thin and beautiful whereas the former clearly isn't. I like the fact that Spielberg, Lucas, e.t.c, bucked the trend of having their primary female antagonist swanning around in inappropriately tight and revealing clothing flashing T&A everywhere. They could have had her stumbling around the jungle all sweaty with her uniform torn to shreds, thereby showing a lot more skin by the end of the movie, but they managed to resist that old cliche.
- I really enjoy her interactions with Indy. He clearly intrigues her and she almost seems to respect him as a worthy opponent. I like that. They even (briefly) worked rather well together, you get the impression that had they not been on opposite sides of the moral and political spectrum they could have made a formidable treasure-hunting team.
The biggest complaint I have about Spalko's role in the movie is that I wish they'd touched on the whole psychic angle a little more. Was she actually psychic? Was she a fraud? Or did she just
believe that she was psychic when in fact she was just highly intelligent and perceptive? I absolutely love the part in the KOTCS novelisation where Spalko displays her (genuine) abilities to a freaked out Mac by reading his mind and shares with him the Soviet experiments in ESP with the rabbits and the submarine. Why oh why did they cut that scene out of the movie?? It was a fascinating scene for both Spalko and Mac and it seems ridiculous that they cut it when it made both characters more interesting and would have added a couple of minutes to the movie's run time, tops. In an ideal world I wish that all the cut Spalko scenes had been left in the movie. The alien autopsy, how she escaped the (big damn) ants through her freaky mental powers rather than hanging from the tree, the way she eventually found the entrance to Akator through her psychic abilities rather than Mac's tracking beacons, e.t.c.
Anyway, to go alongide my aimless rambling, I thought I'd post some of my favourite Spalko-centic fanart and fanfiction.
Fanart (click thumb for full size):