Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 120

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Popular Culture Review

The explorer as archaeologist acts as an agent at the behest of an imperial power.
In Raiders, Indiana, is “recruited by the American Government, circa 1936, to foil,
singlehanded, a huge German team that is on the brink .of rediscovering the longlost Ark o f the Covenant.” (Schickel 64). Everything Indiana the scientist/
government representative does is coloured by the political leanings and military
ideas of his government. At least, the Americans are motivated by a desire for
world peace. In attempting to stop the Nazis from capturing the terrible power of
the ark which will make them invincible, their motives are noble. Imperialism
takes good forms and bad ones. Almost all alone, it is Indiana against the Nazis. In
the Raiders film, Indiana is pitted against the Frenchman Belloc, his main rival.
Belloc has at his disposal thousands of Egyptians and Nazi soldiers. So consumed
with recovering this magical object they spare no expense for its retrieval, regardless
o f the outcome. Whereas Indiana is by himself, Belloc and the Nazis take over,
interrupt and change. In the film, the massive archaeological undertaking by the
Nazis in Egypt mirrors Napoleon’s invasion of 1798, which was the “very model
of a truly scientific appropriation of one culture by another, apparently stronger
one” (Said 42). One thing that this suggests is that American individualism will no
doubt triumph over the barbarity of butchers. In essence then, good imperialism
triumphs as well.
Indiana is heroic, in this sense, because he is searching for an object that
will give power, but he will not use it for evil. He is motivated by the fear of what
could happen should it fall into the wrong