INDIANA JONES IS AN ALLEGORY, HE IS NOT ABOUT ACCURATE ARCHEOLOGY.
“Nazis. I hate these guys.” Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989).
It was never about an accurate depiction of an scientific field of study. Real life archeologists fail to understand Indiana Jones. Hey, I have been accepted to the history major at my college and as a real history buff, I am going to present you why depicting archeology or any field of study doesn't fucking matter. Media literacy is bit dead but okay, that's a different story. He isn't supposed to be about it, Indy does real archeology but it is NOT about it. Doctor Jones is respectfully an intellectual in that era where Nazis are using archeology, history and other existing field of studies to spread their fascist propaganda in Germany. Basically anti-intellectualism. Yes, Indy spent all of his movies punching people who are part of some totalitarian regime (soviets and nazis) but it goes beyond combat and pulp adventure. If you think Indy arguing verbally, writing thesis on Nazi's fake science bullshit and personally sending it to them would work, you have no fucking idea what kind of people they were. To put it mildly, it wouldn't work at all guys. The literal point of his character is to represent that fact real scientists aren't going to like their fields being used in such way to be a propaganda. Yes, Temple Of Doom was so goddamn awful for its racist tropes BUT I don't deny it. It was so terrible. Though in a way, that movie was woke because Indy refused to be part of oppressive system (give Snakra stones to British Museum) and he actually let native indian people have it back. Yes, it can be white savior and what not blah, blah but most of white characters in that era didn't care about same ideals as Indy. The prequel is a different topic, back to the original theme of this post. INDIANA JONES or anti-pseudoscience allegory is a perfect way to teach people that science should be used by everyone, for it to be objective and help people (black communities and other people of color, who unfortunately because of white people were pushed aside) shine with their cultures. Indy might still suffer as a product of its time BUT he is also the character who personally taught me that Nazis are bad people at ripe age of fucking five. I don't care about how archeology is depicted, Indy also does a real archeology and gentle reminder that he is a fucking professor who tells students to read on certain archeology topics for lessons and what not. He also has shown that government is not to be trusted since they were on his tail whole fourth movie and that soviets aren't better than Nazis since they wanted to use alien technology to spread Soviet propaganda and win Cold War. Indy managed to stop that and return the skulls. Once again they used a real archeologist who knew about culture to get what they want and that wasn't definitely about showing lost cultures that existed in Mexico and South America before colonisation. People tend to misunderstand Indiana Jones because media literacy is dead nowadays. It's also annoying when people praise Lara Croft, The Mummy and other similar franchises but DARE to diss Indiana Jones. How fucking stupid you gotta be to call The Mummy 100% accurate and Indiana Jones inaccurate. It's a fiction and just like books or poems, it's supposed to represent different world from ours but sometimes as an allegory to something. Think about George Orwell's Animal Farm and you will understand that Indiana Jones goes beyond your surface knowledge.