#66 ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’
Whips, Quips, and the Colonialist Archaeologist Fantasy We Can’t Quit
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is the cinematic equivalent of a rollercoaster built on looted artifacts and male entitlement—fast, thrilling, occasionally nauseating, and entirely constructed atop centuries of imperial theft. It’s fun, yes. It’s iconic, sure. But let’s not pretend Indiana Jones isn’t just a sexier, sassier version of every white man who ever put a sacred object in a museum and called it “preservation.”
Harrison Ford plays Indy, a fedora-wearing academic with the ethics of a raccoon and the charisma of someone who knows he’ll never face consequences. He’s introduced stealing an idol from a booby-trapped temple like he’s running late for a Sotheby’s auction, and the film instantly frames this theft as heroic. Because apparently, when a white man steals from a non-white culture, it’s called adventure.
Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), our lone female lead, is introduced in a bar, drinking men under the table and punching Indy in the face—which is promising. Then we find out she was his teenage girlfriend. Yes, let’s linger on that: Indiana Jones slept with a teenager. And the film’s idea of character development? Turning her from a furious, independent survivor into yet another damsel in distress with great eyebrows and limited dialogue. She’s strong, until the plot decides she needs to be kidnapped again.
The villains are Nazis, because of course they are—nothing gets an American audience more comfortable with moral ambiguity than putting a swastika on the other guy’s forehead. But here’s the twist: Indy’s race to beat the Nazis to the Ark isn’t about saving the world. It’s about professional one-upmanship. He’s not a hero. He’s a competitor. The Ark is never treated as a religious artifact deserving reverence. It’s a trophy, a bragging right, a box with face-melting powers if you open it incorrectly (which, let’s be honest, is also how most men treat relationships).
And let’s talk about that final act: Indy doesn’t defeat evil with courage or intellect. He wins by… not looking. That’s it. The Ark opens, Nazis explode, and Indy keeps his eyes shut like a toddler in a thunderstorm. It’s not clever. It’s not earned. It’s divine intervention brought to you by plot convenience and the moral of every 1980s blockbuster: don’t worry, the good guy will survive as long as he feels bad about killing people.
Spielberg’s direction is tight, the pacing electric, and John Williams’ score does more heavy lifting than a cursed boulder. But let’s not forget: Raiders is a love letter to pulp colonialism. It fetishizes “exotic” lands, reduces entire cultures to backdrops or traps, and frames cultural theft as heroism—just with better lighting and a PG rating.
3.5 out of 5 stolen relics
(One for the direction. One for Ford’s undeniable charisma. One for the action choreography. Half a star for Karen Allen being better than the script allows. The missing stars? Sitting in a dusty museum display case labeled “Recovered from indigenous peoples,” next to a whip and a smirk.)
