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

Le Saboteur

Active member
Attila the Professor said:
Think more in the future about whether the picture you're going to use is <I>really</I> worth a thousand words, and about whether those thousand words are at all relevant.

v-molafrown.jpg


Side note: Apparently the most direct route to India from Shanghai is over the Great Wall of China. In all the years of watching the flick, I can't believe I missed that little geographic error. It's sort of like flying from Seattle to San Francisco via Chicago. Or, for our European friends, from London to Berlin via Rome.

Which is to say that it's about a fifteen hour trip from Shanghai to the nearest section of the wall in Beijing. Not exactly the most direct route.

Attila the Professor said:
It's these folks, the alleged India experts, who are to blame and to credit for the dialogue:

Errors in geography aside (given ceiling limits on prop engine planes, wouldn't a more southerly route into India make more sense?), I don't feel they did a particularly bad job as "experts". While Stoo is generally correct in that Kali is never represented as she is in Temple of Doom, a lot of the detail work is accurate.* That even includes the "magic powers" Mola Ram, and Indy himself, later displays.

*-I'm currently rewatching the movie on Blu-ray (for the first time!) to prove a point to myself, and to make a larger one on the subject at hand.
 
With regard to your proposal of mitigating factors:

Attila the Professor said:
The Stone wouldn't have recovered itself, but Indy was able to use it - and his knowledge of Hinduism - to defeat Mola Ram.

It is true that he had to go native a bit to achieve his goals, what with the incantation on the broken bridge.

Don't these examples mitigate the idea that Indiana Jones represents a white savior?

Clearly he's not employing his white culture or faith in these examples to establish "white" superiority, moral or otherwise...

...and where he has previously failed...


AndyLGR said:
I just think that if someone is going to be offended by the banquet then they will be and even if they added a disclaimer type line during the meal people would still say that's racist, and that one line Indy disclaimer doesn't get you out of the fact that you are still showing Indians eating insects and monkey brains. I suppose I'm trying to say that people who do or want to get offended by such stuff would still ignore the caveat.

I will say that line should of been kept in, it adds a real sinister feel to the scene I think.
Couldn't agree more, including the effect of keeping the line.

RKORadio said:
Lucas has a tin ear for scripts:
Benny-Hill.jpg
Irony abounds...but wouldn't this have been a better choice:

benny132.jpg


God knows junior knows what I mean...

Vance said:
While Spielberg since then has made a remarkable effort to be more 'fair' to other cultures, Lucas has shown absolute contempt towards any criticism levelled at him.
...the same Grantland piece: said:
Spielberg was slightly baffled. "The Sankara stones, the Eastern religion, a lot of the stuff in there — he didn't fully grasp what it was," Lucas said. "So it was harder for him to sort of interpret that into something we have a stake in. And let's face it: It's my fault."

Le Saboteur said:
Which is to say that it's about a fifteen hour trip from Shanghai to the nearest section of the wall in Beijing. Not exactly the most direct route.

*-I'm currently rewatching the movie on Blu-ray (for the first time!) to prove a point to myself, and to make a larger one on the subject at hand.
Intrigued...
 
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Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Rocket Surgeon said:
With regard to your proposal of mitigating factors:

Attila the Professor said:
The Stone wouldn't have recovered itself, but Indy was able to use it - and his knowledge of Hinduism - to defeat Mola Ram.

It is true that he had to go native a bit to achieve his goals, what with the incantation on the broken bridge.

Don't these examples mitigate the idea that Indiana Jones represents a white savior?

Clearly he's not employing his white culture or faith in these examples to establish "white" superiority, moral or otherwise...

They certainly do. I hoped I'd indicated as such.

Henry W Jones said:
Where do we draw the line for who is responsible? Is it a film makers job to make sure everybody in that country is represented? Is it up to the viewer to realize it is fiction? I could see it if their race was depicted as a whole a murderous cultists. So, if a movie where made where a group of people from India, at the beginning of the film are shown broke down on the side of the road, on a tour bus in America. Along comes a family of psycho's a they offer help. They accept. Unfortunately, after a disgusting meal of rabbif brains, frog eyes and dog testacles served by the American psycho's, they start being murdered one by one. After the first few die they start to fight back. By the end of the film, the last two alive are an Indian man and woman. No racial slurs where used in the entire film and no other Americans are represented in any way. Is it a racist film towards Americans?

Leaving apart the fact that American isn't a race (they could be Indian-Americans!), it could depend on a few things.

A) Who is the film made by?
B) Is it a commentary on Americans themselves, or on a set of films or cultural depictions?

Of course, films like this have been made in America, but without Indian protagonists. I think it's reasonable to find something like Deliverance or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as great as they are, to contain objectionable depictions of Southerners. But, then, the creepy redneck is a trope too, just like the helpless native village and the demonic cult.

AndyLGR said:
I just think that if someone is going to be offended by the banquet then they will be and even if they added a disclaimer type line during the meal people would still say that's racist, and that one line Indy disclaimer doesn't get you out of the fact that you are still showing Indians eating insects and monkey brains. I suppose I'm trying to say that people who do or want to get offended by such stuff would still ignore the caveat.

I'm relatively indifferent to those who go out of their way to be offended. Yes, dialogue can often be used to brush away what seems like the fuller intent of a piece; sometimes it seems irrelevant, or as though it's there to protect the film from controversy.

But I absolutely think that an acknowledgement within the film that the meal was unconventional within an Indian context, and not just the context of the viewer or the film's American and Chinese outsiders, would be an asset. An asset because it would be more responsible than allowing two unpalatable meals to be shown in India, with nothing else than some conventional, familiar fruit offered up as acceptable cuisine, and because it would give the meal a point beyond just (lame) comic relief. As you say, it would add a sinister feel to the scene.
 
Stoo said:
True. However...Rasicm = offence
Wouldn't it really be Offence ≨ Racism?

That is: a subset of?

Racism is certainly more than offensive.

I'm certainly not offended by racism, I've gone on to being bemused by it and somewhat amused at the idiocy of it all.
JuniorJones said:
In terms of the view I have been advocating this leads quite nicely to concept of acceptable "Passive Racism".
Oh jeeze...:rolleyes: ...here we go!

JuniorJones said:
In TOD case is based on a misrepresentation of a race by either ignorance, a cheap larrrf or worst - knowingness.
The premise is so wrong. If any thing was misrepresented its the menu...and even that is still being debated. Surely you've read the testimonies regarding Indian fare.

Here's a spark for the tinder box:

Would endulging in cow urine be more to your taste than beetles?


How about bugs, brains or, DOG!?:

Bizarre Indian Dishes!

1. CHICKEN'S BLOOD FOR CURRY? :This is a scintillating food story. Ever heard of Jadoh? Cooked and eaten by the Jaintia tribes of the North East, it is a dish that has pig intestines and blood of the chicken as the ingredients. With this food on your plate, it sure does get crazier!


2. PIG'S BRAIN GARNISHED: We play so safe with our usual dal and roti that it is time we explore the weirder side of food in our own land! Doh Khlieh, a Meghalayan cuisine, will definitely push you out of your comfort zone. Made of pork and garnished with pig’s brain which is steamed, it is considered to be a delicacy. Dare to eat?


3. DOGS! THE NAGA WAY: People in Nagaland love dogs and eat them too! Someone surely said, “Indian food is like Indian dialect… it changes by the kilometers of the land you cover”. This is true! We can take a dislike towards what we choose to eat. But here is the best part. When we say British food, all sorts of breads and croissants come to our mind, with India it is the spice and the curry that the world is crazy about! The difference in eating habits spanning the nation makes it so interesting.


4.CHILLY AS ANTS? :For those bravehearted hoggers, here is something new that you can try. Make your dish spicy by garnishing it with small dried fish, tomatoes and little Portuguese chillies. This sauce can be a sore for your nose but when it comes to setting your tongue on fire, yes, it is guaranteed! Also, delicious red ants cooked along with their eggs into heady and hot chutney, Chaprah is Chattisgarh’s dish that the people are crazy about. Ready for some unearthly experience?

My favorite line, if you failed to notice:
“Indian food is like Indian dialect… it changes by the kilometers of the land you cover”.

WAIT! They DID do bugs and brains!

JuniorJones said:
This type of racism can only be identified if someone is offended, whether they are right to be offended is another question but it is clear from the sloppy narrative that TOD is offensive to Hindu.
Were the Thuggee offensive to Hindu?

What is your definition of "Passive Racism"?

None of the characters indicate the Indians are inferior...they just don't share the same tastes.

JuniorJones said:
Indiana Jones is....Guilty! Guilty! GUILTY! That...it not being a tenth of Raiders.


guilty.jpg


This we can agree on!

Attila the Professor said:
They certainly do. I hoped I'd indicated as such.
I thought as much, but its surrounded by so many if, ands, and buts, I felt it important enough to make that point stand proud.
 
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Henry W Jones

New member
Attila the Professor said:
They certainly do. I hoped I'd indicated as such.



Leaving apart the fact that American isn't a race (they could be Indian-Americans!), it could depend on a few things.

A) Who is the film made by?
B) Is it a commentary on Americans them. lves, or on a set of films or cultural depictions?

Of course, films like this have been made in America, but without Indian protagonists. I think it's reasonable to find something like Deliverance or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as great as they are, to contain objectionable depictions of Southerners. But, then, the creepy redneck is a trope too, just like the helpless native village and the demonic cult.

But it still depicts Americans only in a negative light whether it is a "race" or not. Is the commentary on Indians themselves in TOD other than the location? What if the cult is christians in my scenario and have American flags in their home? Does who directs the film change the content? I
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Henry W Jones said:
But it still depicts Americans only in a negative light whether it is a "race" or not. Is the commentary on Indians themselves in TOD other than the location? What if the cult is christians in my scenario and have American flags in their home? Does who directs the film change the content? I

Who directs the film doesn't change the content but it may change the intent. If an Anglo-American directed the film you describe, there's probably satire or commentary, however hackneyed, in mind. If an Indian, American or otherwise, did, there'd be a slightly higher burden of value.

I <I>don't</I> think Temple of Doom seeks to be commentary on India or Indians. I <I>do</I> think that the two primary groups of Indians portrayed, however, or either evil or helpless, and neither group has food that most of those in the viewing audience would find acceptable.

Rocket Surgeon said:
I thought as much, but its surrounded by so many if, ands, and buts, I felt it important enough to make that point stand proud.

That's reality for you. It doesn't often deal in absolutes.

Even if some such foods do occur in parts of India, representing only those - along with the fly-ridden meal offered by the villagers - would be tantamount to the film Henry W Jones suggests including only some small varmint stew complete with buckshot, extremely rare beef, and foodstuffs processed beyond all recognition in their culinary cross-section. It's not exactly inaccurate, but it's not flattering either. It's not a generous interpretation of a culture.

I'd like to interpret Temple of Doom generously, if possible. But there's just so little restraint demonstrated on this particular point, and so little reason to have included it in the fashion it was, other than, as Katz says, "George and Steven [reacting] like children" and "making it as gross as possible."
 
If George Lucas went to a classroom and showed these films to the kids, he'd be hung drawn and quartered by the teachers and ethnic communities and pressure groups.

I'll email him. Could be worth a try.
 

CodySolo

New member
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is also racist towards black people.

By portraying Indiana Jones as being willing to offer up his skills to help the Indian villagers to overthrow the Thuggee, the implication that the film makes is that no black person from the western world either would or could do so.

It is also racist towards Hispanics for the same reason. In fact, it is racist toward any race that isn't white.

Intra-racially, it is also offensive to any white person who isn't of Irish, German, or Jewish descent.
 
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Mickiana

Well-known member
It's also racist to every extraterrestrial race that has ever been or ever will be in the whole universe, which means it is infinitely racist, since it didn't include those generous and justice seeking aliens in the plot to save the villagers and their children.

It did imply Shiva was involved, but that is only one god, so what about all the other gods? Let's not quibble here, there are many gods who feel not just a little miffed at being left out, so a little bit of godism there too.

What are we to do about this terrible atrocity that was unleashed upon the whole good fabric of reality in 1984? Maybe that's it!!!!! 1984!!!!! An Orwellian subterfuge hatched by Hollywood to brainwash us all. Oh my god(s)!
 

CodySolo

New member
There are indeed very subtle traces of godism in the film, but only those few of us who have done a cursory study of interracial, intercultural, interstellar, and inter-deital sensitivity and have written the appropriate undergrad-level dissertations are capable of seeing it.
 

Mickiana

Well-known member
CodySolo said:
There are indeed very subtle traces of godism in the film, but only those few of us who have done a cursory study of interracial, intercultural, interstellar, and inter-deital sensitivity and have written the appropriate undergrad-level dissertations are capable of seeing it.

Love it. You know, in all of the arguments about racism, I'm reminded of W C Fields for some reason.
 

CodySolo

New member
In somewhat seriousness, Temple of Doom is the first Indy film I grew up with as a kid (my Dad bought it for me as part of a combo meal at McDonalds? It was a different world back then), so my recollections of the impressions I at least got from the film are still very retrievable for me because it was such a large part of my childhood.

The one scene in particular that I am sort of surprised to see people have such a different take on from me is the dining scene. I've always registered it as a joke on Willie, and at her expense. She is a stranger in a strange land...not only is she a westerner in India, but her whole personality is also foreign to most viewers, I would imagine, or at least most viewers of the Indiana Jones demographic.

So the joke to me was always seeing her unrelatabley high level of prissiness come into conflict with this foreign (to her) environment and eating habits. She and Short Round (a child) are contrasted by our hero, Indy, who at the other end of the table shows no aversion to the menu. And the movie doesn't seem to suggest to me, and never did, that people in India now or then dined on snakes, bugs, and monkey brains--it's hyperrealistic like everything else in Indiana Jones or any other pulpy story, designed to play the Willie gag out to its fullest possible extent. Her reactions are the joke...we're making fun of her, not the diners.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Now we're talkin'! I was worried you were just here to make jokes. (As an aside, before we get into it: it's far preferable to edit your post to add whatever else you've thought of rather than just post a new one.)

CodySolo said:
In somewhat seriousness, Temple of Doom is the first Indy film I grew up with as a kid (my Dad bought it for me as part of a combo meal at McDonalds? It was a different world back then), so my recollections of the impressions I at least got from the film are still very retrievable for me because it was such a large part of my childhood.

I grew up with it too. I find it hard to honestly evaluate things like that, but not impossible. Still, I feel like part of it is trying to figure out how I'd respond if I were seeing it for the first time. The village only bugs me a little instinctually, but has the potential to annoy more in the big picture. That's the macro stuff, the "Great White Hero" questions and whatever goes along with it. That's more just the form of storytelling that the film has opted for, and that's <I>okay</I>; they're all adventure tropes being engaged in, and at least some effort is put in to subvert them. The hero learns from the third-worlders, he relies upon a native god to achieve his goal, etc. (Yeah, you can find a bunch of these subversions, including the little ethnic sidekick, in all kinds of stuff. But I'm okay with bracketing it for now.)

CodySolo said:
The one scene in particular that I am sort of surprised to see people have such a different take on from me is the dining scene. I've always registered it as a joke on Willie, and at her expense. She is a stranger in a strange land...not only is she a westerner in India, but her whole personality is also foreign to most viewers, I would imagine, or at least most viewers of the Indiana Jones demographic.

I wonder how foreign a personality she really is. I think there are plenty of people who, more than anything, care about their appearance and their personal level of comfort. They want to be catered to in familiar ways. I certainly agree that the joke is <I>in part</I> on her. She's the one who needs to eat food with flies on it that repulses her. She's the one who's confronted with a "simple" bowl of soup that contains eyeballs.

CodySolo said:
So the joke to me was always seeing her unrelatabley high level of prissiness come into conflict with this foreign (to her) environment and eating habits.

But it's not just equivalent to the sort of fish out of water story that happens where the context itself is familiar to the viewer, as when there's an Eastern greenhorn who makes his way out West and is confronted with wild horses and tough gunslingers. The context is foreign <I>to us</I> too. The joke is definitely on Willie but, weirdly, she (and Shorty) seem to be our viewpoint character in that half of the sequence too.

CodySolo said:
She and Short Round (a child) are contrasted by our hero, Indy, who at the other end of the table shows no aversion to the menu.

Good point, although it may be that they're eating something else. He doesn't even seem to notice the snakes/eels, even though Blumburtt does. Perhaps Chatter Lal or the Maharajah have different tastes, and serve their most honored guests accordingly?

CodySolo said:
And the movie doesn't seem to suggest to me, and never did, that people in India now or then dined on snakes, bugs, and monkey brains--it's hyperrealistic like everything else in Indiana Jones or any other pulpy story, designed to play the Willie gag out to its fullest possible extent. Her reactions are the joke...we're making fun of her, not the diners.

The mustache on the fellow who's excited about the Snake Surprise always made me feel differently.

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But we do know, or at least know that Gloria Katz claims, that Lucas and Spielberg were into the idea of "making [the meal] as gross as possible." I don't think the joke is just on Willie.
 

CodySolo

New member
Attila the Professor said:
The village only bugs me a little instinctually, but has the potential to annoy more in the big picture. That's the macro stuff, the "Great White Hero" questions and whatever goes along with it. That's more just the form of storytelling that the film has opted for, and that's <I>okay</I>; they're all adventure tropes being engaged in, and at least some effort is put in to subvert them. The hero learns from the third-worlders, he relies upon a native god to achieve his goal, etc. (Yeah, you can find a bunch of these subversions, including the little ethnic sidekick, in all kinds of stuff. But I'm okay with bracketing it for now.)

It's the "Great White Hero" thing that I was sort of addressing in my joking posts earlier--in a serial style adventure, Indiana Jones is a hero in the mythical sense, he's one in a million, whether he's amongst Indians, Europeans, Americans, etc.. For the Great White Hero issue to be problematic, it seems to me, the implication would have to be that his being a white man is what makes him able to accomplish what the Indians he is aiding weren't able to accomplish on their own--that would be the delineation that would indicate racism in the story structure.

But this damning evidence seems to be absent, in large part because we've already been on one adventure with Indiana Jones in Raiders where we see that the reason he is able to accomplish the things he does is because he is especially gifted, regardless of his race. In Raiders, he fights the Hovitos, Germans, Egyptians, and Toht's Nepali henchman (a pretty racially diverse list of enemy combatants for one film), and trounces them all by the skin of his teeth due to sheer individual skill and craftiness.

The only implication I see in the films is that everyone from any race, nation, or culture who has some sort of insurmountable problem ought to pray to their respective gods for aid from Indiana Jones, because he always wins in the end, because he is Indiana Jones, not because he is white.
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
replican't said:
No, don't think he's that into trolls.

Do you have anything better to do in your life than troll on the boards of a series you don't really like? Can't you read some Batman slash fiction or something?
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Raiders112390 said:
Do you have anything better to do in your life than troll on the boards of a series you don't really like? Can't you read some Batman slash fiction or something?

He can no more stop 'trolling' than you can stop recreating the same threads over and over again.

Indiana-Jones-and-the-Temple-of-Doom-Mola-Ram-Amrish-Puri-heart.png


Point of order: I just finished watching Temple of Doom for the second time today. At no point during the movie is the term Hindu/Hinduism/whatever mentioned. By anybody. Which is important because the more demonstratively inclined members here are, like with the cuisine of India, conflating Hinduism with a monolithic set of values. This is, of course, a false assumption.

But first, it should be mentioned that geography is our first clue that Temple of Doom doesn't take place in India. No, it takes place in an "India" of the popular imagination; a concept rather a concrete physical place.

Note the movie's lone travel sequence: The Ford Tri-Motor takes off from Shanghai, flies over the Great Wall despite being nowhere near it, and ostensibly refuels in Chungking (modern spelling: Chongqing) before heading west. Each place is specifically mentioned on the map. Yet the rather infamous red line peters out and disappears somewhere over Tibet/Bhutan. This happens nowhere else in the series. Even the unnamed island where Belloq & Co. meet their demise is given concrete representation on the map; i.e., the red line has its terminus on the island's shore.

But let's get back to Hinduism for moment...

Hinduism has no central authority and as a result has no set of tenets that followers must adhere to. In order to make headway into the disorder, it has been broken down into four major denominations: Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Smartism, & Shaktism.

Vaishnavism

Vaishnavites venerate the Lord Vishnu as supreme God. No other god is above him; though, like other denominations, they recognize many other lesser gods and demi-gods.

Shaivism

Shaivism is the second largest congregation in contemporary India. Shaivites, of course, consider Shiva to be the supreme deity. It's also the oldest set of beliefs in Hinduism and can be found throughout the sub-continent and Southeast Asia.

Smartism

Smartism is the true polytheistic denomination amongst Hindus. Adherents of this tradition viewed all gods and goddesses as equals and individuals. Despite this, one particular deity (usually Ganesh, Vishnu, Shiva, Devi, or Surya) could be venerated above others depending on the individual practitioner's preference. And as a non-dualistic tradition, there is no difference to adherents between the actual self and transcendental self.

Shaktism

Shaktism concerns itself with venerating Devi (lit: "the Goddess); by and large, the Goddess is the ultimate, absolute deity. Devi can take the form of one of several goddesses -- Mahadevi, Durga, Saraswati, Shri-Lakshmi, Parvati, & Kali.

There are aspects of all four denominations on display in the Thuggee's worship of Kali, but there is an older form of religion that heavily influences the film's spirit. More on that next time. I need to flip through a few more vedas.

I've only recently delved into the whole podcast phenomenon, but this subject could make a very interesting Indycast if it hasn't already been attempted.
 
You're all reading way too much into this.

Basically, its just a bunch of Americans doing what they always do - thinking they're the centre of the universe, invading other countries, laughing at their cultures and nicking their shiny gold stuff before going back home. Where they all live happily ever after.
 
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