What we can learn from Indy

For those of you who have never seen Indiana Jones, here is part of the opening clip of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Watching it will make this blog much easier to read.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbmfv_Y9WIc&feature=PlayList&p=64E7441948AC2C8B&index=4

He’s a professor by day; archeologist/ treasure hunter by night. He wears a disguise (a tweed jacket and glasses) and works a steady job until he is called into action for the good of mankind as his alter ego, Indiana Jones. He’s never without his beloved fedora or snappy one-liner, and come the end of the film, he always gets the girl and the treasure. His name has been cursed by many a Nazi: Indiana Jones.

Although Indiana Jones is undoubtedly awesome, he is hardly the picture of what a normal archeologist, or for that matter, what a normal human being, does with their spare time. In fact, many archaeologists resent being compared with a man that gives them a “bad name”.

(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89724552)

What can we learn from a man like him? Why do boys and girls of all ages love, cherish, and identify with Indiana Jones? I’m going to go over three life lessons that everyone, whether old or young, can learn from Indy.

1) Do it your way

Indy taught us that getting the job done is more important than doing the job “right”. For instance, in the movie ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, one of the bad guys is showing off and swinging his sword around with an evil chuckle. When any other man would have used his whip to disable the bad guy, Harrison Ford just rolls his eyes, takes out his pistol, and shoots him without blinking an eye(Youtube clip below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJOXLryzs8g&feature=related

2) It is all right to be afraid of something.

In Indiana Jones’ case, it is snakes. They are everywhere; crawling, writhing, slithering. Sometimes they are lurking by the thousands in the Well of Souls, other times they are gliding out of a dinner course called “Snake Surprise”. Although it is safe to say that Indy’s fear is more pathological than normal and deeply rooted by a traumatic event in his childhood in which he unexpectedly fell into a tank of snakes, his fear of these reptiles makes him a human, just like you and I.

3) Even Indy has issues with his parents.

Indiana’s father was never there for his son when he was a child. In “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, Henry Jones, Sr. had immersed himself in the search for the Holy Grail, and didn’t have any time for his son. This might explain why Indy was going around stealing a golden cross from excavators and running from bad guys on a circus train when he was supposed to be on a Boy Scout trip. A lot of people can relate to Indy in the sense that he always craved more attention from his father and felt he was a constant disappointment. Also, Henry Jones Sr. is continually calling his son “Junior”, a nickname that Indy takes as an insult, instead of a term of affection. When his father calls him by his nickname, Indy is often prone to a state of irritability, or some escalated form of it (see link below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzSnE_l7bxM

I realize that these life lessons may be a bit of a stretch, but if you’re going to watch a mindless action movie, you might as well get something out of it.