“Fortune and Glory” in the Rearview Mirror:
Indiana Jones, Ronald Reagan, Imperialism and Nostalgia in 1980s Cinema
Antonio Roman Campos
NONFICTION
Abstract
While popular historians like Jeff Wallenfeldt have made careers writing decadal histories based in the concept that each decade has its own, unique zeitgeist, it is also evident that many pieces of literature transcend the decade in which they were created, drawing upon older cultural mores and historical traditions. Thus, while this paper seeks to demonstrate the ways in which the three original Indiana Jones films represent and define important motifs and sentiments of the 1980s, it also situates the broader themes of Indiana Jones within the imperialistic traditions of the Victorian Era, and the radio serial storytelling traditions of the 1930s-1950s. Furthermore, this paper investigates connections between the three original films of the franchise and nostalgic, conservative Reaganite politics. In making these connections, this paper neither suggests that Indiana Jones themes came from the politics of President Reagan, nor vice versa. Instead, this paper argues that both Reaganite politics and the Indiana Jones franchise are based in older cultural traditions, representing a nostalgia for both 1930s-1950s wartime American politics, and a celebration of nineteenth century American and European imperialism.
Setting the Stage: The Origins of Indiana Jones and the Age of Reagan
Originally appearing in the now-famous film Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones made his national debut in June of 1981, when Reagan’s presidency was gaining unprecedented popularity and an approval rating over 68% (Newport). A “dignified professor and intrepid adventurer,” Indiana Jones’s character and the first film of his franchise quickly rose to extreme popularity, and it became clear that something about the dashing archeologist, with his iconic bullwhip, revolver, and fedora registered with filmgoers of the day (Barkman and Sanna 236). The first film of the original trilogy was an unquestionable blockbuster, grossing almost 400 million dollars in theatres, and its tremendous popularity led to the release of multiple sequels, including The Temple of Doom in 1984 and The Last Crusade in 1989, which frame the Reagan presidency.
1981 was a marked year in American history, not only because it witnessed the transition between the liberal, Democratic Presidency of Jimmy Carter and the conservative, Republican one of Ronald Reagan, but also because this suggested broader transitions in American social politics both domestically and internationally. Following the radically liberal 1960s and 1970s, a time filled with countercultural lifestyles, Watergate, the Vietnam War, the loss of the Panama Canal, and the Iran hostage incidents (Skow), many American audiences perceived “America as a nation on the wane,” losing strength to smaller foreign powers, just as it had lost the patriotism and community of the World Wars era (Simpson 2). In a “rapidly globalizing world, the [idea] of the incommensurability with otherness became both more visible and more contested” (6), and many Americans gained a “quasi-ideological” hatred of the liberal and liberation countercultures that they perceived as having brought the nation to a lowly and debauched state (8). Thus, the 1980s became “a period of general and institutional conservatism” (11) in which President Reagan was able to “win the White House with a margin that surprised all pollsters” against a liberal incumbent, thus perpetuating a massive national shift towards “the Republican party… the so-called Moral Majority… and a strong, traditional Christian Right” (Wilcox and Robinson 6). Dissatisfied conservative, Christian, and nativist American activists “flocked to the Republican Party in 1980,” mobilizing for Ronald Reagan and the GOP Presidential Nomination (12). By Reagan’s inauguration in 1981, more than “30% of Americans were positively oriented to the conservative Reagan platform, and another 42% were Moral Majority supporters” (Simpson 28). This growing audience craved new heroes who shared their visions of “honor, tradition, and character conventions” (Hoberman 127). In this setting, filled with international political concerns and nostalgia for older American heroism, wherewithal, and global power, Raiders hit box offices. Evidently meeting the needs of the conservative American audiences who had joined the Reagan platform, the film has been called the “first real Reagan movie” (Hoberman 125) or even the “quintessence… of Reaganite entertainment” (Morris, Companion 444). It was the unique hero of this film that made it a booming success.
The character of Indiana Jones had been conceived by George Lucas and directed for his production company by Steven Spielberg (Hoberman 126). As a former actor, President Reagan dreamt of the “return of traditional, Hollywood freedom fighters… [like] John Wayne from The Alamo, [or] Kirk Douglas from Spartacus,” and it was evident that Lucas and Spielberg shared in this vision (127). As they told People in 1981, both Lucas and Spielberg “raided Hollywood lore and their childhood fantasies” (127) in dreaming up the character of Indiana Jones, relying primarily on their favorite serial radio and novella classics of the 1930s and 1940s for their inspiration, as well as historic action-adventure pictures, like Boris Karloff’s The Mummy from 1932 (Barkman and Sanna 236). In turn, Spielberg admitted that many of these childhood classics harkened back to popular Victorian Era adventure pulps and journals, featuring both fictional characters like Alan Quartermain and Phileas Fogg, and actual explorers like Wallis Budge, Richard Burton, and Henry Morton Stanley who inspired the character of Indiana Jones (239). Indeed, “the Victorian Era seems to provide the true milieu that frames the Indiana Jones series,” (238) providing an imperialistic undertone and an overtly orientalist flavor that pervades the films.
Additionally, Jones’s characterization features distinctive American flares. While Jones’s background in the Boy Scouts and his upbringing in a small, rural town position the character towards twentieth century Americana, his role as a globetrotting professor references the older American ideal of the “free agent,” and Jones’s tendency toward fisticuffs and his “tough guy” mannerisms harken back to the protagonists of many American Westerns (239). “Quick with his wit… and faithful towards country, capitalism, and God, Indiana Jones becomes… a quintessential, if skeptical, American hero,” (240). An unlikely mixture of the old west cowboy, the suave midcentury American, and the Victorian adventurer, Jones’s interesting character equally seems to belong to the American frontier, classic wartime films such as Lawrence of Arabia, and African Queen, and the Victorian world of Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg and Captain Nemo (Morris, Empire 76). Armed with a bullwhip and six-shooter, both indicative of cowboy Westerns, and “adorning the same leather jacket and fedora that Reagan [himself] wore in 1952’s Hong Kong,” (Hoberman 131) Jones becomes the kind of nostalgic American protagonist that Reagan supporters longed for, revitalizing the idealized “Golden Age of the Hollywood freedom fighter” (129) and the nation at large.
Imperialism and International Policy
Similar to their protagonist, the plotlines of the three original Indiana Jones films are thoroughly saturated with American conservative messages. Like the heroes of the pulp novellas and radio programs upon which his character is based, Jones frequently travels to foreign lands where he acts as an “imperial free agent” under the auspices of the federal government; he primarily meets danger or defeat at the hands of “savage locals,” and he combats alternative imperial interests—like those of the Nazis—for control over the resources and treasures of a given region, (Morris, Empire 76). Still, it is worth pointing out that Jones never directly acts as an imperial agent hoping to acquire land or power from himself. Rather, his ultimate search for “fortune and glory,” as expressed numerous times in the films, more closely aligns with Spanish conquistadors’ quests for “glory, God, and gold,” or Theodore Roosevelt’s quest for national foreign influence (Longenecker 2). In this regard, Jones’s “rugged individualism not only recalls the pioneering spirit enshrined in Manifest Destiny and the conquering of the wilderness, [but also] a zeal [that] permeates United States expansionism since the Monroe Doctrine[1]” (Morris, Empire 75). “Explicitly echoing imperialist African… jungle explorers” like Livingstone and Stanley, one excellent example of Jones’s Victorian and Rooseveltian tendencies, deeply “rooted in the Monroe Doctrine and the White Man’s Burden[2],” comes directly from the famous first moments of the original trilogy (76), where audiences see Jones as an American agent abroad, clashing with foreign powers over the fate of primitive jungle natives.
Raiders begins in 1936 in the jungles of South America where Jones attempts to purloin a sacred golden idol from the Hovitos Indians, who have allied themselves with rival archeologist Dr. René Belloq, a corrupt Frenchman with Nazi ties. After journeying through the rainforest, Jones succeeds in reaching the Hovitos sacred temple where he must brave booby traps in order to locate the idol. Despite the traps, Jones succeeds in stealing the relic, only to have Belloq and the Hovitos reclaim it by force. To conclude the famous scene, Jones narrowly escapes from the jungle by boarding a seaplane and returning to the United States. In this illegal attempted acquisition of resources (the Hovitos idol), Indiana Jones certainly operates as an imperialist agent in the Rooseveltian vein. In attempting to steal sacred objects from their proper owners and use such relics in order to satiate museum interests in exotic curios, Jones seems to be a shameless colonialist. However, there may also be deeper Reaganite influences accentuated in this brazen scene. Some scholars assert that Jones’s “ominous, looming, and powerful” features in the opening shot are instead intended to represent American power and durability abroad, rather than straightforward imperialistic tendencies (Morris, Empire 77). This opening could also be seen as supporting broader Reaganite policies concerning Latin America. Like Jones’s attempted thievery, Reagan’s political strategies also acted as “forceful reassertions [of] national power and prestige” in foreign lands, accomplished through Rooseveltian “big stick” or “gunboat” diplomacy (Welsh 3). In particular, the events in the famous opening sequence mirror President Reagan’s contemporary visits to Latin America, where he “became embroiled in quasi-military actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua” (Morris, Empire 79). Much like Jones in the film, Reagan felt that Americans had the right to take valuables from Latin America under the Monroe Doctrine. However, just like the film’s protagonist, he “faced confusion and opposition in the region, [leading] to the United States’ undeclared ‘Contra’ war against the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime” (Welsh 2). Thus, from its first scene, “the film becomes classic Reaganite entertainment,” (Morris, Empire, 83), filled with serious and complex “allusions to contemporary problems” (133).
Imperialistic undertones continue to develop in Raiders as Jones arrives in British Egypt on the trail of the Ark of the Covenant. The “environment in which [Jones] operates in Egypt is straight out of stories from the British Empire,” with the sudden, violent ambush in Cairo’s medina coming “with a heavy dose of imperialistic imagery” (Barkman and Sanna 240). In these scenes, Marion Ravenwood, representing the classic figure of a damsel in distress despite her valiant self-defense, is kidnapped by khaki-uniformed Nazi henchmen and trapped in a basket, which Jones attempts to recover via a mad race through the marketplace. In these scenes, Jones’s willful murder of locals and his violent escapades evidence the imperialist drive of the film to celebrate American dominance over foreign bodies. The scenes exemplify the fact that “during the Age of Empire, there was a common, and even popular image, of the White, male hero as a free agent wherever imperial flags flew” (241). While it is clear that “Lucas and Spielberg poke a bit of fun at these overwhelming imperialist images when Marion shouts to her abductors ‘You can’t do this to me! I’m an American!’” (242), recent critics have called these scenes “inordinately and overtly racist and sexist” (Hoberman 199) reflecting some darker undertones of Reagan’s conservativism. The idea of American superiority and infallibility abroad, though comedized, is also clearly articulated.
Connecting the Cairo “basket game” scenes with Reaganite politics and policies, some have argued that Jones’s disregard for human life in the choreographed fight scene is permissible because the Ark, the object for which he is searching, is symbolic of a nuclear warhead. In this reading, the Ark’s destructive capabilities, demonstrated towards the end of the film, are associated with those of an atomic bomb being released, and Jones’s destruction in the medina is sanctioned under the context of the overwhelming anxiety that 1980s audiences expressed towards the Cold War (Morris, Empire 81). Thus, Jones is allowed to do anything necessary to prevent ultrapowerful weapons from falling into the wrong hands. In this reading, although Jones ultimately fails in his quest to study the Ark, he is still a successful hero in that he brings the “weapon” back to the United States, thus giving America the power of its future use. Although it is something of a stretch to fit the Ark into such a 1980s Cold War nuclear message, several characters in the film easily fit into the conservative patterns that defined the Reagan coalition. Certainly, the deep respect that Jones’s friend Marcus Brody holds for the Ark and its divine powers is indicative of broader conservative Christian treatments of religious subjects (Wilcox and Robinson 45). Moreover, “the warm, smiling and gregarious Sallah, the Egyptian digger, who is friendly and cooperative to Americans,” demonstrates how many Reaganite conservatives believed “foreigners, especially Middle Easterners, should be attentive and docile” (Hoberman 129). However, all of these potentially imperialistic themes pale in comparison to those developed in the second film of the franchise, Temple of Doom, which has received mixed reviews from audiences and critics alike.
In its portrayal of Jones saving enslaved Indian children from the monstrous Thuggee cult, Temple of Doom certainly possesses imperialistic overtures. The story seems to harken back to “various popular Victorian magazines and Edwardian novels” (Morris, Empire 74), especially Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, wherein Phileas Fogg saves a maharani from Thuggee fanatics in Allahabad in 1872. In addition to these older, more overtly imperialistic works, the film also possesses several Reaganite and Monrovian qualities, including an obvious portrayal of the “great American savior” archetype (238). However, the necessary way in which Jones is ultimately rescued by British Indian forces under Captain Phillip Blumburtt lends itself to a broader imperialistic tone, rather than a directly pro-American sentiment. This portrayal is certainly in line with Jones’s Victorian origins, which understood “imperialism as heroism” (Barkman and Sanna 238).
As in Raiders,the images presented in Temple of Doom also mingled with Reaganite policies and headlines of the day. Coinciding with an Ethiopian famine that brought images of starving villages and bound children to American newspapers, Temple of Doom was seen by many audiences as a valid representation of a way Americans might help developing nations, and this sentiment was supported by certain members of the Reagan administration (Morris, Empire 147). Moreover, many nostalgic, older conservatives valued the ways in which Jones single-handedly enacted alliances in the film, and they favored his use of hefty, Rooseveltian “big stick” policies indicative of earlier twentieth century international strategies, wherein American “big men” could single-handedly improve the fate of destitute natives (148).
As a slight variation from these trends, the third and final film of the original trilogy, The Last Crusade returns to the Middle East, reintroduces the original characters of Brody and Sallah, and redefines Jones’s character as a more faithful, conservative American rather than a mere imperialist. However, in keeping with the Victorian background of the earlier films, in The Last Crusade, Jones receives his call to adventure from a wealthy American industrialist, Dr. Walter Donovan, who mirrors several dubious imperial antiquarians and collectors from the nineteenth century. Donavon also continues Belloq’s characterization of the intelligent villain from Raiders, thus furthering the idea of competing imperial interests (Barkman and Sanna 244). Similar to the violence perpetrated against the Egyptians in Raiders, Jones continues to show aggressive tendencies in The Last Crusade as he “skips to violent chase scenes” in Italy, Germany, and the Middle East (Morris, Empire 151). Importantly, Jones’s imperialistic tone is reduced in The Last Crusade because, in these scenes, he more commonly combats the Nazis themselves rather than their impoverished native henchmen. Thus, Jones is portrayed as a patriotic American, directly facing Axis powers, Nazism, and even Adolf Hitler himself in a definitive World War II setting. The result of this change is a less imperialistic and more traditional American tone, palatable to a wider audience.
Traditional Americana and Domestic Policy
Just like President Reagan and his coalition, the Indiana Jones films of the 1980s also spend some time emphasizing conservative nostalgia for domestic policies of the 1940s and 1950s in contrast to violent and complex foreign relations. While Reagan’s administration attempted to present America as a peaceful land of opportunity, operating with a definite Christian and moralistic majority, it also attempted to emphasize the international dangers associated with the prolonged Cold War, the unstable Soviet Union, and the dangerous Third World (Hoberman 126). Similarly, the Indiana Jones franchise always presents its protagonist’s American place of work, the University of Chicago, as a peaceful and protected region, in contrast to virtually all foreign destinations. The domestic Jones, like his surroundings, expresses a “simplistic nostalgia… for midcentury America,” that markedly differs from the complexities and violence of foreign conquest (Morris, Empire 77). This is especially exemplified in the first and third films, which spend multiple scenes at domestic locales.
Raiders follows Indiana Jones home to the United States where the protagonist must hang up his bullwhip in order to teach an ordinary class filled with images of simplicity and nostalgia, from well-dressed pupils who lay apples on their professor’s desk to a comely young student with “Love You” written across her eyelids. All of a sudden, “intrepid adventurer Indiana Jones has transformed into Professor Henry Jones, Jr., sporting little, round spectacles and a nerdy tweed suit rather than his fedora, bullwhip, pistol or leather jacket” (Barkman and Sanna 239). “Like Batman and Bruce Wayne or Superman and Clark Kent, Indy’s dichotomy of personality is common among adventure heroes” and, in this case, his dichotomy may also represent a deeper duality of the Reagan era (240). Whereas Dr. Henry Jones Jr., an esteemed university professor, is a hero of the mundane Midwestern American heartland, his alter ego, Indiana Jones, is more tenacious, shrewd, and violent, willing to do whatever it takes to attain “fortune and glory.” This parallels the Reagan era’s treatment of domestic and foreign policies. While internal governance remained rooted in World War II patriotism and peaceful 1950s nostalgia, international policy grew increasingly heavy-handed and sometimes violent during the 1980s (Hoberman 126). “Not since 1945 had America had a unifying purpose” (Welsh 3), and foreign affairs, just like the international actions of Indiana Jones, began to reflect corrosive American engagements abroad.
At the university, Jones and Brody are called upon by representatives of the United States government who describe a worrisome situation developing in Egypt where Nazi forces are attempting to locate and claim the fabled Ark of the Covenant. As Jones later admits, the government representatives are “bureaucratic fools,” as evidenced by their ignorance concerning both the Ark and the Staff of Ra. However, notwithstanding this fact, Jones and Brody patiently speak with the officials, respectfully discussing their upcoming tasks. This respect for government figures, and its reciprocated respect for university scholars, fits into nostalgia-based 1950s stereotypes of professional, but fairly unsophisticated, postwar policies (Hoberman 126). The combined trend of respect and nostalgia is also visualized in the next scene, travelling to Jones’ white-fenced, green-lawned, suburban clapboard house, where he talks to Brody in an old-fashioned housecoat and slippers. In these few quiet, domestic scenes, nostalgia for the conservative 1950s and patriotic 1930s-1940s is clearly seen. Instead of “an impenetrable and powerful, imperialistic force abroad,” the Americans, in these scenes, are shown as docile gentlemen and model patriotic citizens, equally willing to live in quiet suburbs or go out of their way to help government officials on dangerous missions (Barkman and Sanna 247).
Similarly, in Raiders, while Marion Ravenwood’s character is often considered plucky and tomboyish, she also resembles certain domestic stereotypes from midcentury suburban Americana (Morris, Empire 74). Despite her initial introduction as a prize drinker at her bar in Nepal, once Ravenwood is in Jones’s company, she begins to revert to a more subservient characterization. In Cairo, she is enthralled by the “cuteness of a monkey in a scene that definitely marks her as soft, maternal, and surrounded by children. [Furthermore,] her weapon of choice against pursuing villains is a frying pan, a metonym for domesticity… [she] thus becomes a mere distressed damsel, abducted and screaming for Jones’s help” (75). By the end of the movie, Jones and Ravenwood appear as a quintessential American couple, and Ravenwood survives her escapades by “always accepting Jones’s authority, inseparable from his nationality and gender” (81). In his romantic relationship with Ravenwood, “Jones, as an American, is cool, knowledgeable, skillful and self-reliant,” effectively bringing domesticity and civilization wherever he goes (81).
Nostalgia for traditional gender roles is seen to an even greater degree in Temple of Doom wherein Willie Scott, another initially capable woman, becomes incapable, foolish, and danger-prone around Jones. Temple of Doom begins in Shanghai in 1935, where Scott is introduced as a nightclub singer, dancer, and love interest. She dramatically opens the film by emerging from the mouth of a Chinese dragon, performing a rendition of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes!” which mocks modernity while touting old-fashioned morals. “In a sparkling red sheath dress, [Scott] adopts the static and objectified femme fatale pose, framed by the film’s stylized logo,” as Jones enters the scene, preparing to do business with Chinese gangster Lao Che and his henchmen (112). From this initial scene, Scott is continuously presented as the beauty, rather than the brain of the movie. In fact, Scott goes on to prove herself even less capable than Ravenwood at keeping up with Jones. In the course of the film, she mounts an elephant backwards, complains about a broken nail when faced with a life-or-death situation, and is even domestically consigned to, in Jones’s words, “watch the kid [Short Round]” whenever more important business must be attended to. In Temple of Doom, as the only meaningful female character, Scott suggests a broader sense of American female domesticity as she asserts that she belongs in “Missouri, where they never feed you snake before ripping your heart out or lowering you into hot pits.” Scott showcases several stereotypes of incapable and shallow midcentury American females despite her initial demonstrations of success. Her character would clearly seem more at home in a domestic 1950s American suburb than in Indian palaces or Chinese nightclubs.
Temple of Doom is the only Indiana Jones film not to have any scenes set in the United States, instead featuring China and India as its primary locations. However, a wealth of domestic Americana abounds in The Last Crusade, making the concept of American domesticity a definite theme of the trilogy. With intense “nostalgia flavors” coinciding with the reintroduction of characters like Brody and Sallah, The Last Crusade focuses on Americana, rather than imperialism, especially in its opening sequence (157). In sticking with original Raiders themes of “simplistic American nostalgia” (79), The Last Crusade opens in 1912 in Arches National Park, Utah. There, a young Jones—garbed as an American Boy Scout—discovers an illegal archeological dig for the fabled “Cross of Coronado.” Claiming that the artifact “belongs in a museum,” Jones pilfers the cross from the digging bandits, and he escapes from them first via a horse chase and then via a circus train bound for Colorado. Finally arriving at a peaceful and quiet home in a small Western town, the young Jones respectfully—if impatiently—waits for his father’s permission to reveal his discovery of the cross, but instead the relic is confiscated from him by the local sheriff and his posse. Within this opening sequence, several elements of Reaganite entertainment, as well as American nostalgia for older and simpler times, are evident. His Western setting and equestrian skills situate the young Jones as a cowboy hero (Barkman and Sanna 244), and his clean-cut Boy Scout uniform and filial piety demonstrate Jones to be a member of the Reaganite moral majority (243). Thus, “in contrast to [Temple of Doom], both Raiders and The Last Crusade work in recognizably Western [spaces] and definite, Christian and American themes” (247).
As The Last Crusade continues, an adult Jones is once again found at work at the peaceful University of Chicago where “Spielberg captures many of the political and cultural observations [later] attributed to the Reagan years” (Morris, Companion 440). As in Raiders, scenes of the conservative establishment and peaceful images similar to those of Reagan’s ordinary “Morning in America” contrast markedly with virtually all other scenes of the film (440). These scenes develop Brody as a respected—if pedantic—member of the conservative establishment, and they present Chicago not as a metropolis, but as a land of smalltown clapboard houses, clean apartments, and mundane avenues. Because of the marked contrast of these images with virtually all other scenes of the film, the notion is made obvious that the United States is tranquil, peaceful, and safe, while most foreign countries and foreigners are dangerous and vindictive.
In The Last Crusade, love interest and duplicitous Nazi agent Dr. Elsa Schneider also helps to develop Reaganite claims of American simplicity, comfort, trustworthiness, and nostalgia. As Jones’s only foreign love interest, Schneider proves herself to be a capable and intelligent woman, able to match both wits and derring-do with the film’s protagonist in the subterranean catacombs of Campo San Barnaba Church in Venice. In the film, Elsa “actively and skillfully pilots speedboats… and, contrary to Scott, she is neither more nor less victimized than Jones when confronted by thousands of rats and a conflagration” (Morris, Empire 153). Therefore, the fact that Schneider is the only woman to betray Jones is meaningful, pointing to the international and educated elements of her personality as dangerous character traits, each contrasting with the domestic, maternal, and subservient characteristics of Ravenwood and Scott. As “the only central female in [The Last Crusade, Schneider] is a betrayer… a femme fatale and [a literal Nazi], ultimately punished for her treachery” as much as for her courage and wit (154).
With its return to topics like Christianity, cowboys, and smalltown America, as well as its recognizable villains, like Nazis, The Last Crusade became yet another Reaganite blockbuster in the franchise (158). Many, including Spielberg himself, even considered it to be the “best and clearest” film of the entire series (Morris, Companion 440). One Reagan supporter called The Last Crusade, an “epic of memory and nostalgia for the past,” and another noted the film as a “conservative, ideological war machine” (446). Clearly, The Last Crusade possessed lasting value and “overt [political] and intellectual arguments” that “deftly tied” World War II nostalgia into contemporary conservative movements (446).
Conclusions
Following two decades of rapid global decolonization and liberalization, the 1980s “Age of Reagan” represented a conservative and retrospective period of American history. The decade recalled both the “glories of empire” and nostalgia for more traditional times (Barkman and Sanna 233). The films of the Indiana Jones trilogy clearly drew upon the same nostalgia, memories, fears, and hopes of President Reagan himself, praising traditional American values and powers while remembering the past. Beloved by audiences both then and now, it is clear that the films of the Indiana Jones franchise captured national tendencies of their era exceptionally well. On both international and domestic scales, they effectively and meaningfully drew connections between World War II, the Victorian Age, and the contemporary times. These films have cast long shadows to the present day, and they continue to inform younger audiences about America’s place in the world, with heavy-handed policies abroad intended to protect internal peace and domesticity.
[1] Presented by President James Monroe in 1823, this doctrine warns European empires that the United States will not tolerate further colonization in the Western Hemisphere because the Americas ought to be the political and commercial domain of the United States.
[2] From Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem of the same name, “The White Man’s Burden” exhorts the United States to assume colonial control of the Filipino people and their country, based on the concept of Social Darwinism.
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