Indiana Jones films: racist?

Are the Indiana Jones Films Racist?

  • No

    Votes: 61 79.2%
  • Yes - all of them

    Votes: 4 5.2%
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark

    Votes: 2 2.6%
  • Temple of Doom

    Votes: 9 11.7%
  • Last Crusade

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

    Votes: 1 1.3%

  • Total voters
    77

Henry W Jones

New member
RKORadio said:
I just agree with the Indians that have said TOD is racially insensitive.

But I thought only East Indians had the final say. :p Do you watch and join a lot of fan sites for films you find to be racist?
 

RKORadio

Guest
I'm not Indian but I'm against racism and/or racial insensitivity.

Much of the depiction of Indians in TOD was brownface short of actually browning up - as the Indian government said at the time.
 

Henry W Jones

New member
RKORadio said:
I'm not Indian but I'm against racism and/or racial insensitivity.

Much of the depiction of Indians in TOD was brownface short of actually browning up - as the Indian government said at the time.

What part? What do you find racist about it? (And please do not evade with East Indians find it racist) What scene do you find racist and why? And if you are against racism/racial insensitivity, again, why are you at a web site for fans of a film series you find racist/racially insensitive? Or a fan of the films for that matter. :confused: :confused:
 

Dr. Gonzo

New member
RKORadio said:
I'm not Indian but I'm against racism and/or racial insensitivity.

Much of the depiction of Indians in TOD was brownface short of actually browning up - as the Indian government said at the time.

Surely you must also be opposed to "Die Hard" as that films depiction of European Germanic terrorists isn't a very tasteful view of that race... right?

Right?

Come on guy... you're barking up the wrong tree.

I said it earlier in this thread (December 2012), the only Indiana Jones film that is racist is Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Dr. Gonzo said:
By definition Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the only entry that is "racist".

"...A race of supreme beings..."
(y)
 

Henry W Jones

New member
Dr. Gonzo said:
Surely you must also be opposed to "Die Hard" as that films depiction of European Germanic terrorists isn't a very tasteful view of that race... right?

Right?

Come on guy... you're barking up the wrong tree.

I said it earlier in this thread (December 2012), the only Indiana Jones film that is racist is Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
(y)

Guy is a gal and she is a one trick pony. It is always, "someone says it is racist, so I agree". She does not want to provide examples in the film. I don't think she knows the film well enough to provide them.
 

RKORadio

Guest
The only depiction of Indians we get are superstitious villagers who worship Indy and the "educated" Indians we see - such as the Oxford-educated Prime Minister - are shown as evil. The only "good" Indians - the soldiers under the British - are shown but don't speak.

That enough for you?
 

Dr. Gonzo

New member
RKORadio said:
The only depiction of Indians we get are superstitious villagers who worship Indy and the "educated" Indians we see - such as the Oxford-educated Prime Minister - are shown as evil. The only "good" Indians - the soldiers under the British - are shown but don't speak.

That enough for you?

Actually no.

"Educated" Indians? Plural? NO. The only "educated" one, as you put it, is the Prime Minister. Mola Ram didn't get his PHD in Sociology at Oxford. The "snake surprise" guy sure as **** didn't go to LeCordon Bleu culinary school. Your statement that the Educated Indians in the film are shown as evil is a false one madam.

This adventure took place in rural India in the 30's. Not in Dehli. Not in a major city. That's how many of them lived.

Was portraying the Hovitos in loin cloths racist in Raiders, even though there are several tribes in the amazon who still to this day live secluded and unadulterated like the yanamamo?

Hell we've got rural folks here in the states too. Ever heard of the Ozark mountains?

Folks with your demeanor really get under my skin. Looking to call anything racist... and if it's not racist they claim, reverse racism! Blanket statements.

All right... we're going about this the wrong way.
How would you restructure Doom to be racially sensitive in your opinion madam?

Can't wait for this response.
 

RKORadio

Guest
Mola Ram had to have had some education as he was no illiterate villager.

Just because it wasn't a city didn't mean that they had to use the stereotype of the humble and gods-fearing peasant who worships the white hero.

Again, why are people ignoring what the Indian government said at the time? As the elected representatives of the Indian people, their opinion should carry some weight.
 

Mickiana

Well-known member
Who cares what the Indian government of the time said. They could have said anything. Even Roshan Seth, who played Chattar Lal, said, "Indians are very sensitive about foreigners criticising anything in their country." That was a diplomatic way of saying, "Indians are very sensitive about foreigners saying anything about their country."

Mola Ram was educated in a fanatical cult, obviously. And let's not forget the School of Cardiology!:rolleyes:

But where is the racism in the film? Where oh where could it be? It still remains a mystery...to me!
 

Henry W Jones

New member
RKORadio said:
The only depiction of Indians we get are superstitious villagers who worship Indy and the "educated" Indians we see - such as the Oxford-educated Prime Minister - are shown as evil. The only "good" Indians - the soldiers under the British - are shown but don't speak.

That enough for you?

No, still extremely vague. You still can't provide examples beyond the indian government says so and the stereotyping you speak of portrays Indians 3 different way according to your post above.(it does show that indians can be different from each other at least 3 ways) I don't think they were saying all indians are evil if educated or all indiana are helpless. Dr Gonzo is right, in the 1930's you don't think there were villiages all over the world with uneducated and superstitious people in them? And again, if the films are soooooo racist and you are sooooooo against racism, why watch them and participate in a Indiana Jones fan site? Do you like the KKK too but hate their racist side?
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
RKORadio said:
The only depiction of Indians we get are superstitious villagers who worship Indy and the "educated" Indians we see - such as the Oxford-educated Prime Minister - are shown as evil. The only "good" Indians - the soldiers under the British - are shown but don't speak.

1.) In a very recent survey -- May, I believe -- 87% of all Indians identified themselves as religious. Congratulations. You've managed to insult some 870-million people because science.

2.) Ritual killings do, and have, made the Indian papers in the 21st Century. As recently as 2012, a young girl was ritually murdered and her liver offered to the gods to improve crop yields. In 2010 a twenty-something male's decapitated corpse was found outside a temple dedicated to Kali in the state of West Bengal.

3.) "India" didn't exist before the 20th Century. Hindustan in Northern India -- the modern Indian states of Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and some parts of Madhya Pradesh & Bihar -- was essentially the only clearly defined unit in Urdu sources. Outside of this region, with Delhi as its capital, were a lot of principalities, fiefdoms, and whatnot that were exploited by the British.

I had a fourth point about the the "power of the rock" being vindicated, but opted to delete it. Perhaps I'll address it at a later point in time.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Submitted Without Comment

From the November 4, 2013 food issue of <I>The New Yorker</I>, an excerpt from the one-page piece "Butter" by Akhil Sharma, a 1.5 generation Indian-American whose family had an ambivalent relationship to American patterns of food consumption outside the home.

We had moved to the United States, from Delhi, when I was eight, settling first in Queens and then in New Jersey. There weren't many other Indians in my middle school. Those of us who brought Indian food from home all sat at the same table in the cafeteria. Boys would wander by our table and sing, "<I>Shiiit</I>. I smell <I>shiiit</I>." They would lean over our shoulders, look at our food - spicy potatoes, okra, bitter gourd - and gag. Things became worse a few years later, when "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" came out: the movie shows Indians eating snakes and monkey brains. At lunch one day, a black boy asked me what I was eating, and I said snake. "Snake!" he began yelling. He sounded both happy and proud. Soon I was surrounded by a crowd. I wanted to fit in, of course, but even more I wanted to lash out.
 

Henry W Jones

New member
So, it got worse when the film came out or when he told the other kids he was eating snake? It also sounds like they were teasing about the food (while not right, most kids do that) before the film came out.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Attila the Professor said:
From the November 4, 2013 food issue of <I>The New Yorker</I>, an excerpt from the one-page piece "Butter" by Akhil Sharma, a 1.5 generation Indian-American whose family had an ambivalent relationship to American patterns of food consumption outside the home.

Apropos of nothing. Now this, on the other hand, perfectly exemplifies the casual relationship with racism towards Indians segments of the United States still have.

1385489807120.cached.jpg


The gentleman with the awesome beard is Waris Ahluwahlia. You might have seen him in one of Wes Anderson's twee flicks. If not there, you might be aware of his budding jewelry empire and general cult of personality. Not sure who the girl is, but the focus is obviously on the dude with the turban. Where in the cultural zeitgeist the turban became wrongly associated with Muslims, I couldn't begin to say.

While I've wasted a lot of time over here detailing the financial concerns with bringing a new Ford-led Indy picture, this entire thread is another very large concern.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Henry W Jones said:
So, it got worse when the film came out or when he told the other kids he was eating snake? It also sounds like they were teasing about the food (while not right, most kids do that) before the film came out.

Sure, they were teasing him beforehand. But he says it got worse after the film. I won't put words into Sharma's mouth, but presumably he said it was snake because he'd be dealing with the teasing having gotten worse since the film.

* * *

Le Saboteur said:
Now this, on the other hand, perfectly exemplifies the casual relationship with racism towards Indians segments of the United States still have.

Yeah, I've been following this story a bit. It's pretty awesome that Gap's employed him as a model. I first saw the image earlier in November in a Gap window, but didn't hear anything further about it until looking to see if there'd been any controversy and finding the article you linked to. The scrawled commentary on the ad isn't surprising, but there honestly doesn't seem to be much of a broader uproar, other than a few "the gap trying to make terrorist look hip" [sic] comments on Twitter, and this note that somebody left in a shirt at a Gap store.

Would a fear of being seen as racially or culturally insensitive hinder a fifth film? Well, I guess that depends in part on whether it hindered the fourth film. Crystal Skull definitely spent less time on exotic locals than the prior films, which might suggest some apprehension about it. That said, we also had the Ughas, who weren't that different than the Hovitos in presentation.

But a fifth film would also be obliged to go somewhere other than the Americas. It also wouldn't be forced to spend so much time getting us up to speed on the era and our older hero, leaving it with more room to spend overseas, and thus more time to be potentially offensive. The Middle East and China are already likely out of the question for political reasons.
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
Sorry for the bump, but didn't somebody once have a pretty damning screenshot from the Raven shootout that exposed how the Nepalese/Mongolians were played by Caucasian extras with their eyes taped or something? A search of this thread yielded nothing.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Udvarnoky said:
Sorry for the bump, but didn't somebody once have a pretty damning screenshot from the Raven shootout that exposed how the Nepalese/Mongolians were played by Caucasian extras with their eyes taped or something? A search of this thread yielded nothing.

There's a reference to it on IMDB:

When Toht is menacing Marion with the hot poker from the fire, one of the Sherpa henchmen is clearly wearing prosthetic makeup around his eyes, presumably to make the Western actor's rounded eyes look more Asian in appearance.

If it's true it shouldn't be too hard to find a screenshot.

From TheRaider.net's stash there's this one:

129.jpg
 
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