Well, no...it's not quite that simple.
The POV that the hat is BOTH symbolic and literal is the most compelling one.
Yes, the symbolic is the most
important meaning, but that still doesn’t preclude the hats being the same hat. Multiple and simultaneous levels of meaning – literature and symbolic - are common in literature going back to the Bible. Take the Ten Commandments themselves. The
primary interpretation is the spiritual and intangible one: these are God’s rules by which one should live one’s life. But Judeo Christian understanding of the story also has a literal component; namely, there really WERE actually stone tablets on which God recorded the Commandments. They were a tangible reminder of God's presence. They were stored…guess where...anyone? Bueller? (Didn’t you guys ever go to Sunday School?)
I have posted in other threads that the hat is rather like Indy’s Horcrux; as it goes, so goes Indy. The times when Indy is in the most grave danger to his life are signaled to the audience by the hat actually coming off:
- In LC, when the tank goes over the cliff, the hat blows off…then serendipitously blows right back to him after he survives.
- In KOTCS, Dovchenko knocks it off his head during the giant ant fight scene…then Indy uses the skull to save it just before it gets carried down the anthole.
GL has even implied in a DVD featurette that the hat parallels Indy himself (although the Horcrux analogy is my addition
); it never comes off his head expect when there is a point to it, such as when Indy is closest to buying the farm.
If Indy just keeps buying new hats, the impact of all this would be rather lost.
Think about when IJ reached under the massive closing stone slab in TOD just to get his hat back.
Why would Indy risk becoming the “one armed grave bandit” if he could just replace the dadgummed hat? Hmmm…perhaps if it really
were Fedora’s hat, it would be important enough that Indy would go to such lengths to recover it?
To those who say: “It can’t be the same hat because it never would have lasted all those years”, well, I’m dumbfounded at that reasoning….
C’mon, folks… is it any less realistic than the darned thing
staying on Indy head during any of 1,000 impossible stunts, starting with being dragged under a truck? Harrison had so much trouble keeping the hat on his head while filming the scenes, there exists a humorous outtake of him stapling it to his head. I just went Cub Scout camping with my seven year old this week, and my fedora won’t remain on my head even during very tame rock scrambling.
And while were on the realism issue: how about the mine car sailing across a break in its tracks and landing on the opposite side, perfectly aligned on the rails and continuing to speed along the tracks? Or photoelectric devices actuating spikes in ancient temples? How do
these events compare to a hat lasting for a few decades?
Is it any less realistic that
Indy himself survives all the situations, let alone the hat?
Oh, wait…could there be a parallel here somewhere?
The implausibility of IJ’s escapes || The Implausibility of the hat surviving
As the hat goes, so goes IJ….
Once again, the whole parallelism is lost if the hats keep changing.
As far as the “It’s clearly not the same hat” argument – hats can be reshaped with deeper pinches and ribbons can be replaced. That’s a no-brainer. It can be the same hat, but restyled and refurbished according to Indy’s liking over the years. The novelizations even contain indications that Indy had the hat blocked and shaped periodically.
Now all this does NOT prove the hats are the same.
Rather, my only point is that the “different hat appearances” and “implausible durability” arguments are NOT by themselves sufficient evidence AGAINST the hats being the same.
This is rather like a Balrog / Wings debate…JRRT sadly died without leaving us any resolution to the matter in his letters or papers. Perhaps GL could settle this issue of canon before he becomes one with the Force?
BTW: Campbell Black’s novelization of ROTLA
does state in the closing scene that Indy actually lost the hat…but this was written prior to the Indyverse growing into the legendarium it is today, so it is of questionable canonicity….