I was a white boy who grew up in the ’80s. So, to me, Indiana Jones was not merely a pop culture phenomenon to be caught at the local multiplex, he was a compass.
For years the inside of my closet door was adorned by a cheap poster taken from a newsstand movie magazine of the unshaven Harrison Ford as Jones. It was small and square, the deep creases in it a reminder of its humble magazine origins.
But Jones’ were the powerful eyes that measured the worth of my hapless wardrobe choices. Was he looking for the Ark of the Covenant or judging whether I should wear those ripped jeans? How much easier it would have been in that decade had I been simply able to sport a fedora and tote a bullwhip.
Jones captured my attention. My desk held a painstakingly copied drawing of the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” promotional poster, done when I was 12. From the ages of 10 to 18, the Indy movies arrived intermittently as elixir to my childhood mind, and stoked the imagination as to what it might mean to be a man.
Boys seem to spend their days either looking for or emulating idealized men. As a psychologist, I work with many of them now, both the boys who are in the process of looking for such males and the grown men who, if brave enough to explore a little, rediscover both the perceived heroes they once copied and the identities they eventually forged on their own.
Frequently, what men have become offer clues as to whom they revered. Ask and you’ll learn that this or that oft-used mannerism or phrase has its origins in the movies or television, and its meaning is rich. A Brando look, a Newman laugh, a Carson grin, an Indy sarcastic comment helped buoy them above inadequacies and doubt through the years, and they have been folded into their own personalities. If men are lucky, they also had the opportunity to learn from real male heroes in their homes, neighborhoods and schools.
In the ’80s, when the Cold War raged and patriotism and bounty from economic prosperity seemed to be some of the few antidotes society offered from being instantly incinerated from wars waged by a giant computer at NORAD, Indiana Jones suggested something different, the idea that toughness could be synonymous with intelligence, and that true courage meant coming to terms with one’s own befuddlement and fear.
Ford would have become rich and famous without that look, the one that is first seen in “Raiders” when he is grasping the root that is slipping from the ground as his feet dangle above an endless chasm and the temple he is trying to escape is crumbling. It is his hallmark, this look, replicated countless times in his films. Yes, he still would have been successful, but surely not nearly as beloved.
One of the roadblocks I consistently face when working with men is the sheer difficulty they have in acknowledging how fear has sometimes influenced their lives and decisions. Trapped by the idea that being scared is a weakness, some men put their heads down and forge through lives that are falling into ruins at their feet as completely as Indy’s temples.
I had my fears as a boy, but watching Indiana Jones made me feel that despite them, I might dodge bullets, too, and ultimately prevail. When you see Indy confront his snake phobia through the years but never really overcome it, the character’s single-most endearing quality is revealed — awareness of vulnerability and an inability to obscure it, belying the notion that it is only supermen who succeed.
Who among us hasn’t had to reluctantly climb into our proverbial pit of snakes? The message is clear: it matters little that we have no fear but much how we deal with the fears that are ours.
At the beginning of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” there is a scene on a storm-tossed ship in which Indy faces a nemesis from his childhood, a greedy treasure collector whose bejeweled cross Indy had tried to steal as a youth. Now an adult, Jones screams through the rain at the villain that the artifact belongs in a museum, to which the villain replies, “So do you!”
Let’s hope for all of our sakes that men such as Indiana Jones represents, ones who can heroically move through the world while moving through their fears, don’t just exist in museums. If they be rare, let them live among us. No doubt they can teach us how to more elegantly and honestly find the treasures for which we all seek.
