Essay Questions

Some critics have read into Raiders of the Lost Ark a Cold War-era interpretation of the film’s ending as a symbol of nuclear weaponry. How might this interpretation be supported?

This is a fairly cold-hearted interpretation that attacks not just the underlying ideology of the film, but also questions its audience’s sensibilities. The Ark of the Covenant’s power to instantly obliterate the Nazis is positioned as the symbolic equivalence of nuclear weaponry. The protection afforded Indy and Marion by not looking at the spectacle becomes a metaphor for the willingness to turn a blind eye to the catastrophic power of nuclear weaponry by accepting that such weapons in the hands of Americans is unquestionably morally superior to the very same weapons being at the disposal of America’s ideology enemies: communist regimes in the USSR and China. The incredible commercial success of the film implicates its audiences as being especially accepting of this criticism by being blind for the greater part to its darker symbolic meanings.

A common criticism of the film is that it lacks character development. Is this valid?

The film is an adventure story and as such it is far more concerned with plot than character. Belloq does not develop. Toht certainly doesn’t develop. Marion? Not really. To suggest that the Indy at the film’s close is exactly the same Indy the audience first meets in the jungle, however, is debatable. The movie’s famous opening set piece reveal an Indiana Jones not particularly concerned with the sacred qualities the Hovitos attach to their precious relics. Later on at college he also dismissively—even derisively—refers to an illustration of the potential power of the Ark in the Bible as “Lightning. Fire. Power of God or something.” By the climax of the film, however, his respect for such sacred beliefs in “superstitious hocus pocus” has fundamentally changed to the point where it serves to protect him from the wrath of God.

Is Raiders of the Lost Ark an adventure movie? A science fiction flick? A religious film?

The answer is yes to this diversity of genres and intentions. The opening entry in the continuing saga of Indiana Jones is rarely noted for the ease with which it crosses genres, but a closer examination reveals that it is actually one of the most successful genre-bending films in Hollywood history. Among the generic elements that are not touched up, but actual integral to the narrative are comedy, action, science fiction, World War II drama, desert adventure, horror, paranoid political thriller, romance, fantasy, religious film and even horror. Conventions of each of these genres (and doubtlessly others) all play significant parts in the construction of the whole. Remove one or two and the film would hardly fall apart, but perhaps those one or two marks the difference between it Raiders being the landmark it is and being Romancing the Stone or National Treasure. Consider, for example, just how incredibly different the movie would be if the pervasive elements of comedy and its justly famous paranoid political thriller closing shot were absent.