Is it fair to call Indiana Jones a "Christian hero"?
George Lucas has said a great deal, in word and art, about his affection for Joseph Campbell and the power of myth. But I have a feeling he would flinch at the term.
Still, Raiders of the Lost Ark reflects a reverence for scripture, if not a precise understanding of the purpose and power of the Ark of the Covenant. And Indy's journey in Raiders is a journey into a new respect for the sacred is a relatively admirable journey. He ends up with a new grasp of the reality of God's power and wrath, and it seems that he survives by an act of God's grace.
In The Last Crusade, Jones learns a thing or two about sacrificial love and humility, and he affirms an understanding of Christ: "That's the cup of a carpenter." In reconciling with his father, he takes a necessary step of healing, and God seems intimately involved. Of course, the Arthurian elements and the ancient knight took the series into more cartoonish territory than before. It was a little harder to take Indy's spiritual investigations seriously. And the fact that his interest in one-night stands seems unshaken... well, he's not exactly a role model.
In Temple of Doom, he wrestles with a particularly demonic force, but doesn't seem to know where to reach for help. (Of course, this story is supposed to come before his antics with the Ark.) He gets by more on brute strength and a compassionate drive to save people. The spirit world seemed to be exploited for mere sensationalistic effect than in Raiders.
So... where should we hope that Lucas and Spielberg will take Indy in the new film? Do you expect this film will reinforce the surprisingly affirmation of Christian faith in the first and third films? Or will Lucas try to break that down, affirming something more general -- "the power of faith, but not any particular religion"?
Will he try to draw some parallel between alien visitors and heavenly messengers?
Will Indy be invited to go with the aliens at the end to make new discoveries, but refuse the invitation, making the opposite choice of Roy in Close Encounters and instead "choose family" over adventure? (I gotta say, this seems to me like EXACTLY where Spielberg would choose to take the story, as a grownup's answer to his adolescent conclusion of Close Encounters.)
Sure, the Indy stories are crackerjack adventure tales. But it means something to the young fans and the young-at-heart fans who care about what these stories are saying about power and mystery. It's important to me, anyway, as my eleven-year-old imagination was entralled with the idea of a hero who, while failing over and over again, ultimately stepped aside and let God have the last word. It's still so much more subtantial when it comes to adventure serials than, oh, The Mummy.
Full Version: Is it fair to call Indiana Jones a Christian hero?
This topic has been moved to the better-suited "Film Criticism and Appreciation" forum...
Context is everything. If you put him into The Passion of the Christ looking like that, he wouldn't come across a Christian hero.
Links to the threads on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the entire trilogy (1981-1989), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).
Overstreet wrote:
: Is it fair to call Indiana Jones a "Christian hero"?
In a word, no -- and especially not now. The first three films, seen chronologically, do follow a general progression from paganism to Judaism to Christianity, but the new film apparently pushes beyond that to something post-Christian, something New Agey and (depending on certain rumours) possibly even something that could undermine the theistic basis of at least the previous two films. But of course, even the "Christian" elements in Last Crusade were defined in broadly universalist terms ("The search for the Grail is the search for the divine in all of us," etc.). So, apart from the fact that Indiana Jones comes out of a nominally Christian western culture, there is nothing about him that makes him a particularly "Christian hero".
: George Lucas has said a great deal, in word and art, about his affection for Joseph Campbell and the power of myth. But I have a feeling he would flinch at the term.
I'm actually more interested in Steven Spielberg's approach to such matters. His films have been filled with religious references and motifs, some more prominent than others, from the illustrated Bible in Amistad to the Fuller Theological Seminary grad played by Colin Farrell in Minority Report, and of course it was Spielberg who proposed that the first DreamWorks cartoon be The Prince of Egypt (the story of Moses also being a key reference point in Close Encounters of the Third Kind; and what's with the death-and-resurrection theme in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, or the homage to the Sistene Chapel in the poster for that film?).
I don't necessarily expect Spielberg to be all that more articulate about his thoughts and feelings on religious matters than Lucas has been, but the fact that Spielberg has been consistently churning out movie after movie over the past 35 years, and that so many of them have pushed in religious directions, makes him more interesting to me than the ideological and theological mush that makes up the Star Wars franchise -- and Lucas hasn't done much else without Spielberg besides those films.
: And Indy's journey in Raiders is a journey into a new respect for the sacred is a relatively admirable journey. He ends up with a new grasp of the reality of God's power and wrath, and it seems that he survives by an act of God's grace.
Yes... but every single Indiana Jones film begins with him as a skeptic who apparently hasn't learned anything from the events of the previous films. So his experience with God is not all that different from his James Bond-ian experiences with women: a different encounter every movie, no long-term consequences.
: In reconciling with his father, he takes a necessary step of healing, and God seems intimately involved.
How so?
: Do you expect this film will reinforce the surprisingly affirmation of Christian faith in the first and third films?
FWIW, I don't find the first film Christian so much as I find it Jewish. The Ark reveals its power, after all, during "this Jewish ritual" that makes the Nazi commander so "uncomfortable". Indy's brief line to the feds -- "Didn't you guys ever go to Sunday school?" -- is a nice one-liner, and reflects the fact that the United States of America has traditionally been a western, Christian culture (cf. how the military officer refers to anonymous American citizens as "every Christian soul" in Close Encounters of the Third Kind), but the POWER of the story is ultimately rooted in Judaism more than Christianity, per se.
: Will Indy be invited to go with the aliens at the end to make new discoveries, but refuse the invitation, making the opposite choice of Roy in Close Encounters and instead "choose family" over adventure? (I gotta say, this seems to me like EXACTLY where Spielberg would choose to take the story, as a grownup's answer to his adolescent conclusion of Close Encounters.)
It would certainly be consistent wth Indy's decision to stay with his father instead of risking his life to save a sacred relic in Last Crusade.
: It's still so much more subtantial when it comes to adventure serials than, oh, The Mummy.
Ain't that the truth. And hey, this summer marks the first time we'll be able to see films in BOTH franchises playing at the same time!!
Overstreet wrote:
: Is it fair to call Indiana Jones a "Christian hero"?
In a word, no -- and especially not now. The first three films, seen chronologically, do follow a general progression from paganism to Judaism to Christianity, but the new film apparently pushes beyond that to something post-Christian, something New Agey and (depending on certain rumours) possibly even something that could undermine the theistic basis of at least the previous two films. But of course, even the "Christian" elements in Last Crusade were defined in broadly universalist terms ("The search for the Grail is the search for the divine in all of us," etc.). So, apart from the fact that Indiana Jones comes out of a nominally Christian western culture, there is nothing about him that makes him a particularly "Christian hero".
: George Lucas has said a great deal, in word and art, about his affection for Joseph Campbell and the power of myth. But I have a feeling he would flinch at the term.
I'm actually more interested in Steven Spielberg's approach to such matters. His films have been filled with religious references and motifs, some more prominent than others, from the illustrated Bible in Amistad to the Fuller Theological Seminary grad played by Colin Farrell in Minority Report, and of course it was Spielberg who proposed that the first DreamWorks cartoon be The Prince of Egypt (the story of Moses also being a key reference point in Close Encounters of the Third Kind; and what's with the death-and-resurrection theme in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, or the homage to the Sistene Chapel in the poster for that film?).
I don't necessarily expect Spielberg to be all that more articulate about his thoughts and feelings on religious matters than Lucas has been, but the fact that Spielberg has been consistently churning out movie after movie over the past 35 years, and that so many of them have pushed in religious directions, makes him more interesting to me than the ideological and theological mush that makes up the Star Wars franchise -- and Lucas hasn't done much else without Spielberg besides those films.
: And Indy's journey in Raiders is a journey into a new respect for the sacred is a relatively admirable journey. He ends up with a new grasp of the reality of God's power and wrath, and it seems that he survives by an act of God's grace.
Yes... but every single Indiana Jones film begins with him as a skeptic who apparently hasn't learned anything from the events of the previous films. So his experience with God is not all that different from his James Bond-ian experiences with women: a different encounter every movie, no long-term consequences.
: In reconciling with his father, he takes a necessary step of healing, and God seems intimately involved.
How so?
: Do you expect this film will reinforce the surprisingly affirmation of Christian faith in the first and third films?
FWIW, I don't find the first film Christian so much as I find it Jewish. The Ark reveals its power, after all, during "this Jewish ritual" that makes the Nazi commander so "uncomfortable". Indy's brief line to the feds -- "Didn't you guys ever go to Sunday school?" -- is a nice one-liner, and reflects the fact that the United States of America has traditionally been a western, Christian culture (cf. how the military officer refers to anonymous American citizens as "every Christian soul" in Close Encounters of the Third Kind), but the POWER of the story is ultimately rooted in Judaism more than Christianity, per se.
: Will Indy be invited to go with the aliens at the end to make new discoveries, but refuse the invitation, making the opposite choice of Roy in Close Encounters and instead "choose family" over adventure? (I gotta say, this seems to me like EXACTLY where Spielberg would choose to take the story, as a grownup's answer to his adolescent conclusion of Close Encounters.)
It would certainly be consistent wth Indy's decision to stay with his father instead of risking his life to save a sacred relic in Last Crusade.
: It's still so much more subtantial when it comes to adventure serials than, oh, The Mummy.
Ain't that the truth. And hey, this summer marks the first time we'll be able to see films in BOTH franchises playing at the same time!!
QUOTE (Overstreet @ Apr 4 2008, 01:48 PM) 
Is it fair to call Indiana Jones a "Christian hero"?
As a symbol of cheap plastic junk imported from China? Yes.
Otherwise, no.
I happened to come across this thread again today, and figured I'd mention something that hadn't occurred to me the last time I posted here:
Overstreet wrote:
: In Temple of Doom, he wrestles with a particularly demonic force, but doesn't seem to know where to reach for help. . . . He gets by more on brute strength and a compassionate drive to save people. The spirit world seemed to be exploited for mere sensationalistic effect than in Raiders.
Just wondering, what do you do with the way Indy goes from a disbelief in the Hindu gods at the beginning of the film to not only a belief in them but a sort of invocation of them at the end of the film? At the beginning, the village elder tells him he was sent there not by accident but by Shiva, and at the end of the film, Indy defeats Mola Ram by reciting some words in Sanskrit and repeating the sentence "You betrayed Shiva!" I find this striking because it is far more explicitly theological than anything Indy says or does at the climaxes of the OTHER films. Indy embraces the Hindu spiritual world, at least while he's in India, far more explicitly than he ever embraces Judeo-Christian religiosity. (At the beginning of Raiders, he tosses off a line about "the power of God or something" when he's in skeptical mode, but at the end of the film he never says what he thinks the Ark is all about, leaving Brody to say that the Ark is "a source of unspeakable power" that "must be researched" -- meaning, what? That they would open it again? Subject it to scientific analysis? And at the end of Last Crusade, Henry Jones Sr. says he found "illumination" when he drank from the Grail, but when he asks "Junior" what HE found, Indy changes the subject and says "Don't call me Junior", and he never does get around to answering the question.)
Overstreet wrote:
: In Temple of Doom, he wrestles with a particularly demonic force, but doesn't seem to know where to reach for help. . . . He gets by more on brute strength and a compassionate drive to save people. The spirit world seemed to be exploited for mere sensationalistic effect than in Raiders.
Just wondering, what do you do with the way Indy goes from a disbelief in the Hindu gods at the beginning of the film to not only a belief in them but a sort of invocation of them at the end of the film? At the beginning, the village elder tells him he was sent there not by accident but by Shiva, and at the end of the film, Indy defeats Mola Ram by reciting some words in Sanskrit and repeating the sentence "You betrayed Shiva!" I find this striking because it is far more explicitly theological than anything Indy says or does at the climaxes of the OTHER films. Indy embraces the Hindu spiritual world, at least while he's in India, far more explicitly than he ever embraces Judeo-Christian religiosity. (At the beginning of Raiders, he tosses off a line about "the power of God or something" when he's in skeptical mode, but at the end of the film he never says what he thinks the Ark is all about, leaving Brody to say that the Ark is "a source of unspeakable power" that "must be researched" -- meaning, what? That they would open it again? Subject it to scientific analysis? And at the end of Last Crusade, Henry Jones Sr. says he found "illumination" when he drank from the Grail, but when he asks "Junior" what HE found, Indy changes the subject and says "Don't call me Junior", and he never does get around to answering the question.)
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