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This bugs me because it shows how many people don't understand subtext. The story of "Raiders" is not about finding the Ark, or beating the Nazis, it's about one man overcoming his own nature. To say that Indy doesn't contribute to the story is asinine because he IS the story.
This is why we get that seemingly pointless scene in Cairo where Belloq taunts Indy about how they're exactly alike. This is actually the thematic center of the film. The climax comes not when the ark is opened, but when Indy proves Belloq wrong by doing what Belloq cannot -- turn away from his heart's desire.
Thus, the man who can rise above his nature defeats the man who cannot. And THAT is the story of Raiders.
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Look, Indy is a METAPHOR! For something REAL.
Now, I know he was conceived from the various comic-book/pulp movie characters, but in the hands of Spiel he means something deeper: he represents America and her dealings with the world.
By day, he's a respectable lecturer, by night a fortune-hunter with a whole different moral relativity to him. That's America's dilemma too. He's the most American hero EVER. As the adventurer he's more interested in the 'fortune and glory', the artefacts, the solving the riddle, and he cares nothing consciously about the sort of gentlemanly, ethical concerns that he has to exhibit in his other life as a teacher. So it's ego/shadow superhero territory again. He also wants the money ... at first ... in every picture. In the end he never gets it, he makes the good choice whatever that may be.
Well, that's America really, the 'enlightened' self-interest thing. Indy usually has to be coaxed by situations into doing the 'right' thing, but he does it in the end. Like a lot of modern capitalists.
He's always fighting the greed/altruism thing inside himself, and there's always a big moral battle. We all know that the 'Ark' and the Grail are really 'within' us, and we have to not give it over to the dark side. So Indy is always tempted at some point, by ultimate evil i.e. the Nazis.
I mean this is Joseph Campbell myth-template stuff, like Star Wars tried to be, the same era of film-making post Jungian, and Indy has to be flawed so he can make the right choices which he EVENTUALLY does in each picture.
Don't get hooked up on the Maguffins as Hitch would say.
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A movie about a search for an ark with mystical powers is not to be taken seriously to begin with.
Dan
Oh, that is deeply sad. Miss Rand was never good with metaphor.
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I'm still wondering how Indy know not to look at the Ark since he didn't know what the heck was happening in the picture.
Agent: What's coming out of there?
Indiana: Lightning. Fire... power of god, or something.
Indy was from the 1930s. People then knew about what was in their Bibles. The Bible tells stories of people dropping dead just touching the ark without permission. And God was so terrible he could not be looked on in the Torah.
Does no-one know these things any more?
The ark is a metaphor of course for the part of the 'soul' where the God can sit. It's not to be appropriated by any other 'abomination' as Daniel puts it. And the Nazis were playing sorcery in that they thought they could exploit it. In real terms, the dark side, the 'negative self' is in a race for the soul. Indy has to fight the Nazi for it. Or for the grail, that's the same story. But then he has to relinquish it, in each film.
We all do. And that's not a 'religious' statement, it's a depth psychology matter.
These are PARABLES, and they're not that obscure. Spielberg said it often.
The 'Temple of Doom' is another thing, the negative mother complex that the hero slays (Kali).
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This bugs me because it shows how many people don't understand subtext. The story of "Raiders" is not about finding the Ark, or beating the Nazis, it's about one man overcoming his own nature. To say that Indy doesn't contribute to the story is asinine because he IS the story.
YES .... somebody's got it!!!!
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Posted: |
Aug 15, 2015 - 4:38 PM
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By: |
Last Child
(Member)
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Look, Indy is a METAPHOR! For something REAL.
Now, I know he was conceived from the various comic-book/pulp movie characters, but in the hands of Spiel he means something deeper: he represents America and her dealings with the world.
By day, he's a respectable lecturer, by night a fortune-hunter with a whole different moral relativity to him. That's America's dilemma too. He's the most American hero EVER. As the adventurer he's more interested in the 'fortune and glory', the artefacts, the solving the riddle, and he cares nothing consciously about the sort of gentlemanly, ethical concerns that he has to exhibit in his other life as a teacher. So it's ego/shadow superhero territory again. He also wants the money ... at first ... in every picture. In the end he never gets it, he makes the good choice whatever that may be.
Well, that's America really, the 'enlightened' self-interest thing. Indy usually has to be coaxed by situations into doing the 'right' thing, but he does it in the end. Like a lot of modern capitalists.
He's always fighting the greed/altruism thing inside himself, and there's always a big moral battle. We all know that the 'Ark' and the Grail are really 'within' us, and we have to not give it over to the dark side. So Indy is always tempted at some point, by ultimate evil i.e. the Nazis.
I mean this is Joseph Campbell myth-template stuff, like Star Wars tried to be, the same era of film-making post Jungian, and Indy has to be flawed so he can make the right choices which he EVENTUALLY does in each picture.
Don't get hooked up on the Maguffins as Hitch would say.
Posted: Aug 15, 2015 - 5:43 PM Report Abuse Reply to Post
By: WILLIAMDMCCRUM (Member)
A movie about a search for an ark with mystical powers is not to be taken seriously to begin with.
Dan
Oh, that is deeply sad. Miss Rand was never good with metaphor.
Posted: Aug 15, 2015 - 5:50 PM Report Abuse Reply to Post
By: WILLIAMDMCCRUM (Member)
I'm still wondering how Indy know not to look at the Ark since he didn't know what the heck was happening in the picture.
Agent: What's coming out of there?
Indiana: Lightning. Fire... power of god, or something.
Indy was from the 1930s. People then knew about what was in their Bibles. The Bible tells stories of people dropping dead just touching the ark without permission. And God was so terrible he could not be looked on in the Torah.
Does no-one know these things any more?
The ark is a metaphor of course for the part of the 'soul' where the God can sit. It's not to be appropriated by any other 'abomination' as Daniel puts it. And the Nazis were playing sorcery in that they thought they could exploit it. In real terms, the dark side, the 'negative self' is in a race for the soul. Indy has to fight the Nazi for it. Or for the grail, that's the same story. But then he has to relinquish it, in each film.
We all do. And that's not a 'religious' statement, it's a depth psychology matter.
These are PARABLES, and they're not that obscure. Spielberg said it often.
The 'Temple of Doom' is another thing, the negative mother complex that the hero slays (Kali).
Posted: Aug 15, 2015 - 6:08 PM Report Abuse Reply to Post
By: WILLIAMDMCCRUM (Member)
This bugs me because it shows how many people don't understand subtext. The story of "Raiders" is not about finding the Ark, or beating the Nazis, it's about one man overcoming his own nature. To say that Indy doesn't contribute to the story is asinine because he IS the story.
YES .... somebody's got it!!!!
I'm still wondering how Indy know not to look at the Ark since he didn't know what the heck was happening in the picture.
Agent: What's coming out of there?
Indiana: Lightning. Fire... power of god, or something.
Indy was from the 1930s. People then knew about what was in their Bibles. The Bible tells stories of people dropping dead just touching the ark without permission. And God was so terrible he could not be looked on in the Torah.
Does no-one know these things any more?
The ark is a metaphor of course for the part of the 'soul' where the God can sit. It's not to be appropriated by any other 'abomination' as Daniel puts it. And the Nazis were playing sorcery in that they thought they could exploit it. In real terms, the dark side, the 'negative self' is in a race for the soul. Indy has to fight the Nazi for it. Or for the grail, that's the same story. But then he has to relinquish it, in each film.
We all do. And that's not a 'religious' statement, it's a depth psychology matter.
These are PARABLES, and they're not that obscure. Spielberg said it often.
The 'Temple of Doom' is another thing, the negative mother complex that the hero slays (Kali).
then what happened?
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Of course, Sheldon is fictitious and, for a supposed genius-off-the-charts, is rather immature and specious most of the time . . .
He also famously stated, "Star Trek I fails across the board: art direction, costuming, music, sound editing."
I think Sheldon, or whoever writes his character, is irrelevant to western civilization.
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Posted: |
Aug 15, 2015 - 5:44 PM
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By: |
Thgil
(Member)
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I'm still wondering how Indy know not to look at the Ark since he didn't know what the heck was happening in the picture.
Agent: What's coming out of there?
Indiana: Lightning. Fire... power of god, or something.
You answered your own question. He knew it wasn't good, what ever it was.
That still doesn't make sense though. Closing your eyes when fire, or anything else dangerous, is around will only get you killed. Spielberg created the plot hole when he cut the scene in which Indy received that knowledge.
Funny enough, I was thinking about that specific flub while at the store earlier today.
Of course, Sheldon is fictitious and, for a supposed genius-off-the-charts, is rather immature and specious most of the time . . .
He also famously stated, "Star Trek I fails across the board: art direction, costuming, music, sound editing."
I think Sheldon, or whoever writes his character, is irrelevant to western civilization.
Sheldon is probably the most obnoxious, disrespectful killjoy I've ever encountered in a television show. The fact that so many people enjoy anything he does is sickening. If he were a real person he'd have been met with a vicious, and deserved, beating by now.
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I'm still wondering how Indy know not to look at the Ark since he didn't know what the heck was happening in the picture.
Agent: What's coming out of there?
Indiana: Lightning. Fire... power of god, or something.
You answered your own question. He knew it wasn't good, what ever it was.
That still doesn't make sense though. Closing your eyes when fire, or anything else dangerous, is around will only get you killed. Spielberg created the plot hole when he cut the scene in which Indy received that knowledge.
THERE'S NO FLUB!!!! INDY KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN JUST AS ANY 1930s KID WOULD HAVE KNOWN.
Exodus 33:20 "But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live."
Spielberg will know his book of Exodus. What do you guys think it is that you're watching!!!??? That's why Indy tells her not to look at it.
The biblical story/legend, whatever you want to call it, relates how the Israelites were forbidden to look on God at Sinai directly or approach him, and the ark was his 'dwelling place'. Anyone who touched it (except the priests) would die.
I mean, you're detaching this from the legend as though you were reacting to some sci-fi show.
I might paraphrase the government men at the end and say, 'You don't know what you've got there.' Steve obviously overrated his 1980s audiences .....
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then what happened?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
I'm not sure what exactly you're getting at, but if those ARE 'abuse' posts, then you do need to get out more ... a lot more.
This thread is about plot-loopholes in a film that aren't plot loopholes. And if you're pulling the religious thing, that won't wash either, because you can't talk about this particular bit of dialogue, without discussing where Spielberg got his imagery from, and this is not religious discussion.
Bottom line .... Spielberg took these things for granted when he wrote the damned thing, namely that audiences would know what the hell he was showing. The poster above with the Dutch name has it right, and I'm not surprised he's angry. It's asinine. Grown men too.
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Here's the thing. Big Bang Theory is a corporate produced series, written by writers who script inaccurate stereotypical representations of geeks, spoken by actors who know even less, thus making any arguments they put forth, irrelevant.
Precisely ... THEY'RE supposed to be idiots in the script. Not WE, the watchers!
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The mysticism is not a metaphor; it's treated with utter, literal seriousness (which is laughable).
DH
No.
You're right to say 'laughable' because Indy is not tragedy but comedy. But it's meant that way.
But these films have the same 'seriousness' as, say, a dream, or a myth. Indy is all of us really, but especially Americans, he negotiates the hero's journey with a bit of roguery, and gets himself into the situation where the right moral choice is made. The objets and relics like the Grail, the Ark, the Stone ... all figure prominently in alchemy as symbols of the 'prize', the 'quest'. The Nazis are the dark side. That's metaphor.
It's not that these stories are meant to have 'happened': they're blatantly impossible. They 'represent', they're tall tales. The characters, with the exception of Indy himself, are not people at all really, just, I suppose psychic components, stereotypes, comic book characters. But the DYNAMICS between them have to be the same as the dynamics between various parts of the psyche of the watcher. You could say it's an internal landscape in REAL terms, not in literal ones.
James Bond has no metaphor, he's just a character in the outside world who does things, representing only a sort of style. Indy gets into mythic scrapes, but we all do: except modern man forgets to think that way about his problems (which, by the way, Ayn didn't help with ...), so he never realises it. What Indy does outwardly, we all do inwardly. Maybe it's just to serve entertainment, fun, and a franchise, but you still need those mythic underpinnings with something like this, even to get a story people will plug into.
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Posted: |
Aug 17, 2015 - 2:33 PM
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By: |
Grecchus
(Member)
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That still doesn't make sense though. Closing your eyes when fire, or anything else dangerous, is around will only get you killed. Spielberg created the plot hole when he cut the scene in which Indy received that knowledge.
Funny enough, I was thinking about that specific flub while at the store earlier today.
That's the first I've heard of that extension to the plot. If Indy had been given some miraculous vision it would have made him a prophet, which is a no-no, although the thread would not have existed and I wouldn't have picked up on this particular aspect.
Even so, by the end of the story, Indy and Marion have experienced an event the likes of which would have altered the course of their lives as well as that of the world. Although I've always assumed it is common knowledge, my reading into Indy keeping his eyes closed and not looking at the miracle in progress was due primarily to the story of Lot, and the fate of his disobedient wife.
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