Hollywood vs. reality

 

If anyone is wondering why Hollywood’s movies don’t make the bold statements they did decades ago like “Casablanca’s” anti-Nazi message and that other Bogart wartime thriller “Across the Pacific” anti-Japanese message, you need to look no further than the daily news.

Arabs complained about the Bruce Willis movie “The Siege” for their depiction of Arab terrorists – it probably led to the rewriting of the Tom Clancy classic “The Sum of All Fears” rewritten from it’s original Arab villains to rich, white neo-nazi bad guys.

The North Koreans complained that the James Bond movie “Die Another Day” depicted them as cruel and violent people led by a despotic regime. Of course, their North Korean victims of their cruel and violent behavior weren’t able to comment.

But, most recently, the new Indiana Jones movie has taken the most ridiculous criticisms from two groups. First, the old Soviet Communists are upset (CNN link);

Members of Russia’s Communist Party are calling for a nationwide boycott of the new Indiana Jones movie, saying it aims to undermine communist ideology and distort history.
Indiana Jones

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” stars Harrison Ford as an archaeologist in 1957 competing with an evil KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowed with mystic powers.

It hit Russian screens Thursday.

Communist Party members in St. Petersburg said on a web site this week that the Soviet Union in 1957 “did not send terrorists to the States,” but launched a satellite, “which evoked the admiration of the whole world.”

Moscow Communist lawmaker Andrei Andreyev said Saturday “it is very disturbing if talented directors want to provoke a new Cold War.”

They went on to threaten Harrison Ford with an ass-whoopin’ for depicting the old Commies as needlessly violent thugs.

But, probably the oddest protest of the Indiana Jones movie comes from the oddest group (Washington Post link);

I know that the Indiana Jones series is just a campy tribute to the Saturday afternoon serials of the 1930s and the B-movies of the 1950s, but believe me, it totally misrepresents who archaeologists are and what goals we pursue. It’s filled with exaggerated and inaccurate nonsense. Even the centerpiece of the new movie — the “crystal skull” — is a phony. Archaeologists have long known about this class of rare and bizarre artifacts, purportedly from the pre-Columbian cultures of Central and South America. But in the current issue of Archaeology magazine, Jane McLaren Walsh of the Smithsonian Institution reveals how she and her colleagues discovered the telltale marks of modern drills and sanders on their surface — and recognized that these supposedly mystical ancient relics were made by profit-hungry forgers to feed the modern black market in antiquities.

Even worse, the picture of the vine-swinging, revolver-toting archaeological treasure hunter is all wrong. Gone are the days when all that mattered was museum-quality treasure, and the “natives” didn’t matter at all.

Bespectacled nerds of the archaeological variety don’t like that Harrison Ford makes their lives seem exciting and his character gets the ladies. Apparently that offends archaeologists.

Not much chance you’ll be confused with Harrison Ford, Mr. Silberman, with or without the fedora.

I guess it doesn’t bother some of them that they’re lumped in with the rest of the amateur theater critics that think that Americans are too stupid to realize that when we’re sitting in a theater, the images on the screen usually aren’t real.

Category: Politics, Society