Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my favorite movies of all time. Really, I like all four of the Indiana Jones films quite a bit, and there is a great deal of content in each of them to consider. But Raiders, I was eight years old when it came out. It blew my young mind and topped The Empire Strikes Back as my favorite movie of my life to that point. Thirty-two years later, in my secret heart of hearts, it sits there still, despite weightier and more artistic (I suppose) films to consider. This is a fact I am realizing properly as I type this. This is not a detailed analysis or breakdown of anything Indiana Jones, like I'm doing with Harry Potter for example. Maybe sometime I will dissect these movies in that manner, I don't know. But there are a few facets about the series that I've been considering in recent days that spurred me to write this essay.
Hey, lady! You call him Doctor Jones!
Let's start by recognizing Professor Jones as a faculty member of the Invisible College, a trope I began utilizing in my Doctoring Art Gotic series. He even works at an imaginary college, two of them actually, Marshall College in Raiders and Crystal Skull, and Barnett College in Last Crusade. Indiana Jones is one of those few fictional characters who could have an astrological natal chart drawn, as his birthday has been established as July 1st, 1899. To keep things simple, this makes his sun sign Cancer. Why is this of interest? Because astrology is a symbol system (an ancient one), and this lies beneath the surface of the overt Indiana Jones character. And that's what Inside the Cosmic Cube is all about. As a Cancer we should expect Indiana Jones to be moody, secretive, strong willed, tradition-loving, sensitive, protective, maternal, brooding, intuitive, sentimental, possessive, and romantic. Hmm. Not bad considering this is likely accidental.
Later in this article I plan to address the controversial Fridge event from Crystal Skull. The thing about this controversy that strikes me as so amusing, however, is how surviving a nuclear blast, by any means, is far from the most incredulous event of the fictional life of Indiana Jones. Accounting in the additional, though canonized (if such frankly arbitrary authorization is important to you), biography of Indiana Jones, he has had encounters or personal relationships with T.E. Lawrence, Howard Carter, Theodore Roosevelt, Norman Rockwell, Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, George Braque, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Leo Tolstoy, Annie Besant, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Pancho Villa, George Patton, Charles de Gaulle, Mata Hari, Albert Schweitzer, Ernest Hemingway, Eliot Ness (Indy's college roommate), George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Amelia Earhart, just to name a few. He also survived the sinking of the Titanic. All of this is largely due to The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles exploration of early twentieth century history as mythology. And if it is mythology of any sort, then in the reality of Indiana Jones, it is always, always true.
Even if you just concentrate on the four films, in the world of Indiana Jones, there is certain and demonstrable truth in the theologies of Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism. And also extraterrestrials. And it can be shown via Easter eggs that the world of Indiana Jones is the same as that of Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T. Which is nothing compared to what took place in Tommy Westphall's head, but I digress.
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| E.T.'s race as part of the Galactic Senate in The Phantom Menace |
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| Indiana Jones at the pod races on Tatooine in The Phantom Menace (climbing the stairs) |
Everyone's lost but me!
Unarguably Indiana Jones is a hero. But is he the hero in Raiders of the Lost Ark? I ask because in Season 7, Episode 4 of The Big Bang Theory, The Raiders Minimization, the male characters of the show are all dismayed when Amy Farrah Fowler points out that the events of the movie would have played out exactly the same if Indiana Jones had not been in the movie at all. This is very true.
But the response to this that Sheldon and company could not come up with is the simple fact that Indiana Jones might be the protagonist of Raiders of the Lost Ark, he is the character whom we follow and primarily identify with, but he isn't the hero. For one thing, his name is not in the movie's title (despite reissues that add it in). For another, he's wrong. The Ark should not be in a museum. It is too powerful, too dangerous and too important for that. Amusingly, Indy seems to hold on to his view point on this even after the Ark melts the faces off of dozens of Nazis just for opening it. Notice that the films that do feature his name in the title, the other three, do depend on his presence and his heroic activity. So who is the true hero of Raiders of the Lost Ark? That should be obvious.
Can the Ark of the Covenant be considered a character? It is the essential character of the film. Is it intelligent? It contains the Word of God. It is more intelligent than humanly conceptual. Does it have willpower of its own? Yes it does, the Will of God, and it uses human agents to enact this Will. Indiana Jones, Belloq, the Nazis, the government agents, the Pharaoh Shishak, all are ultimately tools of the Ark. Their job, essentially, is to do what Indy and Sallah are doing in the image above. Move the thing from place to place.
It is the will of the Ark of the Covenant to be hidden, protected, and undisturbed. This is why it gets itself moved to the Well of Souls in Tanis. To be lost. To protect its secrets. And this works very well for 3,000 years. The Staff of Ra plainly states that the Ark is not to be disturbed. Yet it also has instructions for finding the Ark. Why? So that when the time comes the Ark can be located and then relocated to a safer location. The Well of Souls is a highly secure resting place up to 1936 when technology and sociopolitical forces make it vulnerable. It is much safer, ultimately, in the warehouse of Hanger 51, protected by cold science and bureaucracy.
But safer for who? Not the Ark itself. Despite what Hitler might believe, this vehicle of God's word can not be appropriated as a tool of evil. Note how it burns the swastika off the crate containing it on the submarine. It is for the safety of mortal women and men that the Ark hides itself. Direct contact with this "transmitter," this "radio for speaking with God" is lethal. When the Ark is opened, contrary to its Will, what protects Indy and Marion? Not looking upon it. Respecting its secrets. Resisting human curiosity. Everyone else gets melted, ignited or vaporized. And still, Indiana Jones wants to put the thing in a museum.
It's a leap of faith.
Now let's look a bit closer at the Nuking the Fridge incident. As stated, it doesn't bother me in the least. Maybe it's a steady diet of super hero comic books that does that. It's far from the most incredulous act in a work of fiction that I've ever swallowed. The Indiana Jones films emulate cliff-hanger style movie serials. That's another reason why Indy has no great influence in Raiders other than keeping himself and Marion alive. His story is a series of perilous events which he miraculously survives only to fall once again into peril. Using the lead lined fridge to survive the atomic blast was, for my money, clever and fun. I know I'm in the minority. But why is it okay for Indy to have stowed away on the outside of a submarine in Raiders? Perhaps that bend of reality is more acceptable because it takes place much more quietly.
Indiana Jones can survive a nuclear blast through a means that is much, much more incredulous. Indiana Jones is immortal. Because Indiana Jones drank from the Cup of Christ.
I admit, any claim regarding the immortality of Indiana Jones is contentious at best, with the majority of people fully swallowing the exoteric limitations laid out in the film. But let's be honest, these restrictions are very vague and rather arbitrary. I'm not even close to being traditionally religious. I am not a Christian. But limiting the life giving power of the Holy Grail strikes me as wrong-minded.
The Grail Knight states that not passing the seal is the price of immortality. That's a means of keeping the Grail hidden, just as the Ark wants to remain hidden. And it doesn't pass the seal anyway. The earth opens up and swallows it instead. Does the immortal Grail Knight die? We don't see him die. But Henry Jones Senior also drank from the Grail, and in Crystal Skull he's dead, right? Maybe. We don't see him die. Maybe Indy, and everyone else, only think he's dead.
When asked at the end of Last Crusade what he found, Henry Jones Sr. answers "Illumination." It is very often the case that, symbolically, illumination and immortality are the same thing. Usually the substitution goes the other way. For example, the immortality of the Philosopher's Stone represents a state of spiritual enlightenment. An illumination.
I don't think Indiana Jones can die. We haven't seen him die. Honestly, it feels a little sinful to think of any scenario where he does die. If The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is to be believed, he lives at least into the early 1990s, almost a hundred years old. Maybe he continues his improbable adventures forever.
Keep in mind, through nerdish debate, that these are works of fiction,
rife with symbolic content. I fully believe confusion over the
illuminating/immortality granting abilities of the Holy Grail are meant
to be buried so that they can be dug up by the curious.
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