Fictional Archaeology Professor Goes to Peru?

If you grew up in the 80’s like I did, then you’ll remember the adventures of Indiana Jones. I’ve been working on this draft for a while, even starting from scratch again, but here it is in all its splendor, my commentary on the 4th installment of the Indiana Jones franchise.

I can’t remember exactly what age I saw Indiana Jones for the first time, non scientific estimates would say roughly 5 or 6 years old, but what I can remember is that I knew I wanted to be an adventurous archaeologist like Mr. Jones when I grew up.

Last Sunday I took my eldest daughter, Elise, who is six to see the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Quite a lengthy title if you ask me.

Now I knew that Peru was going to be a destination featured in the new movie, but I had no idea to what extent other than from what I saw in one of the trailers where an airplane flies over the Nazca Lines. Imagine my excitement! Here I am in a country I love, Peru, and taking my daughter to see a movie that had influenced me when I was her age. Well it seems that I invested too much excitement only to be shocked and disappointed at what I saw when Indy travels to Peru.

“From Small Town USA to the other land mass below the Rio Grande.”

The movie starts out good, not great, but good. Within the first 10 minutes you are introduced to evil communist Russians….Wait, wait, wait, let me be PC (Politically Correct) here and say “Soviets.” There, now I’ll continue, and of course Indiana Jones (who is preceded by the most famous brown Fedora hat in cinematic history) as he is pulled out of a trunk of a car by the evil cold war commies.

So blah, blah, blah Indy escapes, comes across a kid named “Mutt,” Mutt has a secret message for him from his (Mutt’s) mother, Mary and the paper has all sorts of drawings on it that only Indy can decipher. Cue evil Russians in Soda Fountain…excuse me again, Soviets…followed by Chevy vs. Motorcycle chase (through Yale…Irony coming later) and ending successfully in a study with Indy and Mutt trying to figure out the significance of Mary’s letter. I hope you haven’t seen the movie yet or otherwise I just spoiled it for you up to this point.

Professor Jones deciphers the clue which includes a line where Indy says something like “Only the gods can see” and Voila! Professor Jones excitedly opens a book with a map of Peru and points to Nazca, Peru which is relatively near the Pacific coast; ( Peru is situated on the West coast of the South American continent.)

Cut to airplane dotting a map with stops in Cuba, Panama, etc. before flying over the final destination of Peru…but somehow the Pilot seems to have lost his directional bearings as the final dot on the map reads Cuzco where the plane lands??? Here’s where the confusion is, the map says the plane lands in Cuzco, but then you see Indy and Mutt at the dusty, chicken infested “Nazca Airport.” How’d that happen?!

“X doesn’t always mark the spot!”

Exhibit A: Map of Peru

Key: Spider = Relative Location of Nazca ; Fedora Hat = Relative Location of Cuzco. (Photobucket moved my icons a bit North.)

As you can see, Nazca is relatively close to the Pacific coast and Cuzco is…well, closer to landlocked Bolivia than the Pacific Ocean.

While on the map distances don’t look that great it would take you approximately 11 hours to reach Cuzco from Nazca by speeding bus.

Did Indiana Jones and Mutt get abducted by spacemen and transported to the “Nazca Airport?” Oh wait, that’s right, Nazca doesn’t have an international, domestic or intergalactic airport! They have an airfield that serves the small tour companies that run 30 minute sight seeing flights over the Nazca Lines!

Good thing Professor Jones is a tenured Archeaologist and not a Professor of Geography! Man, they would be asking him for his job on that blunder!

So in a matter of scenes Indiana and Mutt fly to Cuzco, disembark at the “Nazca Airport,” and arrive back at an Andean market in Cuzco again! Hardly 5 minutes into Peru and they sure have traveled quite a bit in this country!

Let’s go back to that irony part I mentioned a section ago…the University where the big chase scene was filmed is actually Yale. A grave robber archaeologist named Hiram Bingham is credited for the scientific discovery of Machu Picchu and stole took back with him numerous artifacts and skeletal remains. Yale has illegally been in possession of these artifacts for a good 100+ years and refuses to return to Peru their cultural patrimony, citing that they’ll keep it for a 100 years more. Did Mr. Spielberg happen to know that there is a dispute between the government of Peru and the University of Yale? Talk about a sensitive oopsy-daisy!

Getting back to the movie, from this point the inconsistencies in the film just keep getting worse better! Now you see an Andean market full of Indigenous Peruvians and the festive sounds of Mexican Mariachi Music….Oh boy! Here we go again! Indy is in 1950’s Cuzco/Nazca (well one of them) Peru and there is Mariachi Music playing in the market! Indy must have been too busy fighting Nazis to have missed Disney’s 1945 release of The Three Caballeros, which pays homage to our Latin American neighbors. Even cryogenically frozen Mr. W.D. knew that in the Andes they play Andean Music!

“Even money can’t buy imagination!”

Exhibit B: Photo of actual musician at entrance of Machu Picchu.

Really, who the hell equates Machu Picchu with Mexican Music? Google “El Condor Pasa” and listen to the wav/mp3 and immediately you’ll think of the Mysterious Andes (although El Condor Pasa is more about the flight of the Condor in Colca Canyon — Refer to the map again and look South for Arequipa; the Colca Canyon is near there.)

Did the film makers expend the remainder of their imaginations on the past 3 films and 19 year time span it took to create the 4th installment that they couldn’t calculate this one? Or was it a matter of budget cuts? Surely there has to be Andean music in Paramount’s catalog of studio owned soundtracks!

Heck! They could have even gone to Peru hired a group to lay down some tracks and then be on their way! Everything is pirated down here anyway, but if you did have to pay it you wouldn’t be paying out of the wazoo for a Peruvian group to perform for you! $80 greenbacks and they are happy!

So how do two gringos find their way through a Mexican/Andean market and to the clue that they are looking for? Ask one of the natives, of course! And who better to ask than Indiana Jones?! So Doctor Jones speaks to one of the uncivilized market natives and Mutt is amazed! “What language was that?” He asks, “Quechua” replies Dr. Jones who goes on to explain that he happened to pick it up back in his days when he rode with Pancho Villa and his men. ——SCREEEEEEEEAAAAAACCCCHHHH!—— Rewind! Did he say Pancho Villa? The infamous Mexican Outlaw?! Wow! Who knew that Pancho Villa was so well traveled and cultured! Yet another “Peru, Mexico…same difference” generalization.

For the record: Quechua was the lengua franca of the Incas and is still spoken today in parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru and just like any other language in this world, Quechua also has it’s own dialects and variations.

Speaking of languages, Mutt and Indy find the church that they are looking for on their clue hunt and are taken to a dungeon…Those evil Roman Catholics!…where the infirm are imprisoned and tortured and the nuns speak Spanish with a Mexican accent….DAMN! ENOUGH OF MEXICO ALREADY! Don’t get me wrong, I like the Mexicans, but Mexico is in Central America not South America!

So Indy and Mutt find strange drawings of elongated skulls in the cell where one of their friends was held and are off to jungle type ruins above the Nazca lines.

“Now where were we?!”

Exhibit C: Nazca is nowhere near the jungle!

As you can see from the map Peru has different eco-systems. Machu Picchu isn’t exactly a short walk from Cuzco, it also lies at a lower altitude than Cuzco and is actually the beginning of the jungle.

Nazca is located near the sandy brown area just East of where the city of Ica is. Not that the movie shows them traveling to the jungel (yet) at this point, but the burial “ruins” pretty much give you the impression that they are near the jungle.

Enter stereotypical natives screaming like monkeys and running around like animals trying to poison Mutt and Jones with flying needles shot through bamboo sticks (ummm…there’s bamboo in the desert?) and thus begins one of many battles of the mythological natives vs. the educated and much more civilized gringos.

I was already laughing when the plane missed Nazca, stopped laughing as soon as I heard the Mariachi music and now I am back to laughing at seeing misplaced ruins and uncivilized “in-juhns” chasing the gringos around. Isn’t it funny how all the natives run around half naked like monkeys with their eyes painted like raccoons and speak the same ooga-booga language in every part of the uncivilized world? I’ve been reading the wrong World History books!

World History as taught by Professor Henry Jones, Jr.

So now that the film makers have managed to insult the Red Block and the people that live on that land mass below the Rio Grande we now side track for a moment to change Spanish (as in the people from that country in Western Europe called Spain) History.

What is Latin America without those heroes we Westerners refer to so lovingly as the “Conquistadors.” You know those soldiers-slash-Roman Catholic evangelists who came to civilize and convert the heathen natives? Indiana Jones is on a mission to find where Conquistador Francisco de Orellana is buried in the desert, jungle burial ruins…If I have to mention it by now, burial ruins do not exist in Nazca!

So, I won’t get into great depth, but in the movie Indy, while back at the University, finds a picture of Orellana…Inconsistency alert! As a program here in Peru points out, the picture that Mr. Jones points at is Francisco Pizarro, not de Orellana. Orellana was one of Pizarro’s men, but he was ordered to navigate a river leading to a land believed to be the legendary El Dorado. Orellana navigated the entirety of the Amazon river and once he reached the Atlantic ocean he returned to Spain telling tales of tall jungle women, similar to the Amazon Women of Greek Mythology…Hence you have the Amazons and the Amazon River.

So for a recap, Jones and Mutt fly to Peru, visit a Roman Catholic Dungeon with elongated skulls painted all over the stone walls, go from Cuzco-Nazca-Cuzco-Nazca in a matter of a single day, fight inhuman, murderous natives protecting jungle burial ruins in the desert and FINALLY find the remains of de Orellana (He died in the lands he found) and of course the CRYSTAL SKULL!

“Luke Skywalker is my comrade, comrade!”

From here I’ll fast forward through the rest of this baby! It’s a long movie, so here’s the short end of the stick:

• Jones and Mutt go to the Amazonian Jungle on the border of Peru and Brazil where they find those damn commies step-dancing around a campfire who also happen have their formerly dungeon imprisoned friend (the artist of all those elongated heads), who is now a ward of the USSR.
• Mutt’s mom is actually Marianne and after Indy has a mind altering experience with the Crystal Skull, which is actually the elongated skull of an extraterrestrial, they temporarily escape the evil commies when Mutt, who is Indiana Jones’ love child stages a surprise attack.
• I don’t remember too much of the in-betweens other than a chase in the Amazonian Jungle, a sword fight between Stalin’s beloved Ukrainian ESP/KGB agen Irena Spalko and Indy’s Bastard – Mutt, giant man eating ants and Indy and the gang escaping the commies once again by driving their boat/vehicle over a cliff and into a river that is actually a water fall on the border of Brazil and Argentina (not Brazil and Peru) and find a cave that looks like a skull.
• Hi-ho-Hi-ho into the cave they go to come to another mystical land that is El Dorado!
• Cave paintings show extraterrestrials teaching the uncivilized natives agriculture, architecture and art, and Indy realizes that George Lucas has gone Star Wars on the franchise.
• More half naked, murderous Indians, scared off by the very skull that they protect (there’s more than one) and into the middle of a Mezo-American Mayan pyramid….oh yeah, Quechua had been thrown completely out the window at this point and Mayan was then used as the lengua franca to decipher the clues and speak to the Aliens. (also all those scribblings, the Incas did not have pictographs or a written language, instead they used knotted strings called quipus to relay messages.)
• Alien skull is reattached to alien skeleton, Commies catch up and try to succeed in their evil plan, which is to find El Dorado and unite the skulls to obtain the greatest cold war weapon of telepathic control.
• Room starts spinning, Americans start running for their lives, evil commie lady stays behind, greedy for “all the knowledge,” while her comrades are sucked up into the flying saucer that has been activated by the reattachment of the Crystal Alien Skull hence why the room is spinning.
• Indy and them make it out and watch flying saucer disappear into the place between space and time (probably flying off to that galaxy far far away from a long time ago) and Indy has an epiphany and states that these (spacemen) were archaeologists….Funny since they were the ones that “introduced” the technology? Why would they collect their own crap?

Phheeewww! What a story! So basically it was a fun popcorn movie, nothing too memorable other than all those stereotypes and generalizations that stick out like a sore thumb, and half of the world beyond the borders of the United States pissed off by Spielberg, Lucas and their lazy writers!

They should have taken another 19 years and doubled the money to do a bit more research before insulting half the globe by their multi-millionaire ignorance. Geeesh! You think these guys would be a little more well traveled!

So maybe somebody should relocate NYC to LA, Place the Niagra Falls in the Grand Canyon and rewrite the Revolutionary war to have been won by the Red Coats….or better yet by DARTH VADER and his storm troopers!

The moral of the story? Don’t take lessons from a fictional archeology professor, especially if he goes by the name of Indiana Jones. This movie was fantasy at its worst….at least fantasy leaves room for the imagination. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull just destroys it!