What I learned from Indiana

Thursday marks the probable end of a very important chapter in my development as a human being. It’s a journey that began 27 years ago, when I was a snot-nosed boy growing up in the jungles of Iowa, searching for a purpose in life, and maybe a little action/adventure along the way.
Now 32 with a snot-nosed kid of my own, what is likely to be the final installment of the Indiana Jones series – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – debuts tomorrow in theaters, on bootleg DVDs and via file sharing sites worldwide, and I can’t help but be a little nostalgic and reflect on how my life has been influenced by Dr. Jones.
I was just 5 years old when Raiders of the Lost Ark was released in the summer of 1981. I don’t remember seeing it in theaters, and I probably didn’t, but it was the first videotape my family ever bought. Amazed how the VHS technology could bring such a huge movie into our living room, my brother and I watched the tape over and over – pausing, rewinding and fast-forwarding until we had every line memorized, including the Spanish dialogue and blow-dart sound effects featured in the first scene in the Peruvian jungle. We even noticed the plexi-glass barrier between Harrison Ford and those snakes.
We probably should have been reading books, but in retrospect, we could have done worse. Raiders of the Lost Ark was a critically acclaimed, big budget, mass market work of art by the two most influential and groundbreaking Hollywood filmmakers of our generation, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won four.
It would have been hard to top the achievements of Raiders, and its first two sequels – Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade – did not. That is not to say they are bad films. They are both fun movies with more than their share of memorable moments.
I remember sitting in the theater in the summer of 1984, watching Temple of Doom with my Grandma Van De Voorde, when one of the bad guys extracted a beating heart from a man’s chest with his own hands. As the man held the throbbing heart high above his head to delight of his crazed worshippers, I looked over to see Grandma’s reaction. She was asleep, head tilted back on her chair and snoring, just like when we saw Return of the Jedi the year before. It’s a cherished memory.
The sequels (technically Temple of Doom is a prequel because it takes place a year before the events in Raiders) cemented Indiana Jones’ worldwide cultural impact, with combined box office receipts of more than $750 million. The bull whip and fedora have become instantly recognizable icons of adventure.
The impact on my life has also been far reaching:
· Without Indiana Jones, it would have taken me a lot longer to develop my healthy suspicion of Germans.
· If I hadn’t been so enamored with the Indiana Jones films, maybe I wouldn’t have been so bored in archaeology class in college. And maybe I wouldn’t have been inspired to get that film studies minor, which has earned me nothing but a bunch of crusty books by French theorists, and – so far – no Oscar.
· Without Spielberg and Lucas’ creation, perhaps I would have never even attended Indiana University, which I was shocked to discover did not have Dr. Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones, Jr. as a tenured professor. There isn’t even a statue. (Duh, he taught at Marshall College.) Although, the General Robert Montgomery Knight did pull out a bull whip once.
· Without Dr. Jones and his romantic exploration of world culture and past civilizations, would I have married my wife, whose native Peru is an archaeological gold mine of artifacts and ruins, and who shares my affection for the films?
That’s probably a stretch. I liked the way she looked in jeans too much to not marry her. But it’s really fun to say “Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip” as we exchange the baby and the diaper bag, and have her get the reference.
We will get a babysitter and go see Crystal Skull this weekend. It’ll be hard not to have grand expectations, but I’ve told myself that as long as it isn’t completely ridiculous, or melts my face off Nazi-style, it will be just great.