by mends » 02 Jun 2008, 18:18
Pra quem gosta de discutir verossimelhança...
An Archaeologist Whips Indy
Professor Says Jones Breaks All the Rules
(But Fulfills Some Fantasies)
By BRIAN FAGAN
May 24, 2008; Page W1
Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr. has been crashing through crypts and searching for buried treasures since 1981, when he made his on-screen debut in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." The fourth and latest Indiana Jones installment, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is opening to big business and mixed reviews, but the question remains: At his advanced age (Harrison Ford is 65), has Indy evolved at all as a professional?
Paramount Pictures
OLD HAT: Harrison Ford and friends in 'Crystal Skull'
The filmmakers' librarians certainly did their homework and boned up on early archaeological superstars like Heinrich Schliemann, who excavated Troy in 1871, and Roy Chapman Andrews, the American Museum of Natural History's legendary dinosaur hunter of the 1930s. Indiana Jones is more than an amalgam of history's most notorious adventurers: He also carries strains of Zorro and even James Bond. Indy leads a life of nonstop derring-do, while archaeologists typically stay crouched on their knees for hours at a time, using pointy brushes and dental probes to carry out tedious grunt work.
Based on his work in the past three movies, it's safe to say Indiana Jones wouldn't survive five minutes in archaeological circles today (though the archaeological community has taken a favorable view of Mr. Ford, recently electing him to the Governing Board of the Archaeological Institute of America).
The cranium in question is modeled on a series of alleged Aztec or Mayan translucent skulls which have surfaced periodically since the mid-19th century. Though generally considered to be modern forgeries, they're said to have mystical powers. One British specimen is said to emit blue light and to shut down computer hard drives. Such details make them an ideal artifact for an Indiana Jones quest.
Getty Images; Photofest (3)
In the Indiana Jones movies, mayhem comes first, archaeology second. Top left, Harrison Ford in action; Mr. Ford with Sean Connery in 'Last Crusade' (top right); with Kate Capshaw and Jonathan Ke Quan in 'Temple of Doom'; and in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' (bottom).
Again, archaeology takes a back seat, except for a memorable scene in which Jones and his sidekick Shia LaBeouf ride a motorbike through the college library. "To study archaeology, you must get out of the library," he tells a nerdy student as he rises from the crashed motorcycle. And then we're off on another adventurous ride, this time to Peru. The violence is constant, the scenery spectacular, the sword work up to the finest Hollywood standards. But archaeology it is not. When Indiana comes into contact with rare, 5,000-year-old artifacts, he thinks nothing of tucking them under his arm and using them as instruments of blunt force. The Crystal Skull, for all its legendary supernatural powers, is tossed from hand to hand in its bag like a sack of potatoes, and even used to open sealed doorways.
Indiana Jones's professional skills were equally in question in the earlier movies. In "Raiders of the Lost Ark," set in 1936, his enemies, Nazi treasure hunters, think nothing of launching their search for the Ark with excavations that resemble quarry sites. When Indy arrives on the scene, he and his colleagues break open the secret chamber with promiscuous abandon. For all his scholarly roots, the professor seems more concerned with dusting off his gun skills and fighting the bad guys than getting down to work. We are treated to only one ethical moment, when our hero, seconds away from obliterating the Ark with a grenade launcher, thinks better of it.
Indiana Jones is described by an army intelligence officer in "The Temple of Doom" (1984) as "an obtainer of rare antiquities," a title that no working archaeologist would willingly bear. We don't obtain anything tangible -- we look to artifacts to learn about ancient human behavior and to achieve a better understanding of our forebears. Our primary concern is to preserve the priceless archives of the past -- settlements, tombs, artifacts -- before it is too late.
"Temple" takes our hero to India, where he searches for a lost religious symbol. Archaeology barely figures into this rather sophomoric adventure, which resembles an energetic thrill ride complete with heroes and villains and the extraction of a human heart from a living body. Jones is accused of pursuing fame and fortune, but he replies that knowledge is his ultimate quarry. If that's the case, it's a psychic strain of knowledge he's after -- we don't ever see him contemplating abandoned house floors or even jotting down his findings in a notebook.
Though bashful in the classroom, Jones turns into a rugged adventurer in the field, rarely at a loss in the remote lands. He thinks nothing of smashing his way into a hidden chamber or taking a human leg bone from a grave and using it as a torch. In all the movies, he walks a fine line between a professional archaeologist and treasure hunter. He departs for foreign lands and digs up priceless and often sacred artifacts, which he has been known to export with impunity, as seen in "Raiders," when he ships out the Ark of the Covenant from Egypt.
Early explorers were no stranger to the snatch-and-run tactics favored by Indiana Jones; up through the 1860s, archaeologists were treasure hunters first and foremost. The best-known example of such an operator was Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin. He removed the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon at Athens and sold them to Parliament, which gave them to the British Museum in 1816. The Greek government has fought unsuccessfully for their return for years.
In 1871, Schliemann smuggled a spectacular collection of gold Trojan artifacts from Turkey. They now reside in Moscow's Pushkin Museum, despite the Turkish government's cries of foul. By Indy's time, our hero's methods would have been impossibly antiquated. By the 1930s it was common practice to carefully control excavation and pay attention to small artifacts, painstaking techniques Jones never quite has the time for. All excavation, however scientific, destroys a site, and we do our utmost to make minimal impact.
Paramount Pictures
Harrison Ford with Shia LaBeouf and Karen Allen in 'Crystal Skull.'
The 1989 installment, "The Last Crusade," sends our hero on another artifact hunt -- this time for the Holy Grail. Indy tells his students: "Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library." How true, yet, the only time we see our friend entering a library, it's not to read but to smash through the floor to get to the catacombs and the rat-infested tomb of the crusader Sir Richard. Later, Indy and his father escape a collapsing vault and gallop full tilt through the rock-girt defile of the ancient Middle Eastern city of Petra. Such are the privileges of adventurers! I have always wanted to do this, but, alas, I've never had the opportunity.
Indiana Jones's unchanging skills are those of an artifact hunter and adventurer. His professional ambitions revolve around quests for spectacular finds. He'd never risk his life for something as unglamorous as a scatter of potsherds or stone artifacts. While working archaeologists are not above dreaming of making a truly epochal find -- perhaps an undisturbed royal sepulcher, a waterlogged village, or an early human fossil that revolutionizes human evolution -- we recognize that very few are so lucky.
Today there are at least 10,000 of us poking around every corner of the world, as opposed to Indy's day, when much of the past was still underground and the chances of making a truly spectacular discovery were significantly higher. Most of us will never come upon a golden artifact. We deal in the arcane and obscure -- the butchery practices of Neanderthal hunters, the optimal weight of cod salted by medieval fishers, and the changing painted decoration of ancient Pueblo vessels.
We survey miles of long abandoned irrigation canals to reconstruct ancient field systems. We spend months studying faded notebooks in museum archives. Nearly all of us are specialists, each with our tiny expertise, often in subjects so narrowly focused that they interest fewer than a half-dozen colleagues.
I've had the pleasure of working with experts on such esoterica as Ice Age earthworms, plague rats, Bronze Age household beetles and Stradivarius violins. To be frank, it can be rather dull at times. But it is not a world without its exciting discoveries, even if we carry laptops, not bullwhips.
Brian Fagan is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of many archaeological books, including, most recently, "The Great Warming" (Bloomsbury Press).
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."
Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")