I love Indiana Jones, but there’s a lot to dislike in Dr Henry Jones Jr. And that’s without considering the gender and race aspects of his stories.

Indiana Jones, as an adventurer, is pretty much awesome. The whip, the hat, the jacket. Rescuing people, finding artifacts, rescuing his dad – all of these things make great movies and a man who is often admirable. (Like I said, this is ignoring the problematic stereotypes, which are not my focus here.) 

Dr Henry Jones, though, is meant to be an archaeologist. A reputable one. An academic at a prestigious university. And this is where, on recently watching The Last Crusade, I got a bit sad and discovered some Suck Fairy dust. Because basically, Jones is Schliemann. He’s an adventurer, he’s single minded, and he’s destructive. To get to a tomb that might exist in catacombs that might be under a converted church, he destroys a library’s floor – presumably a floor that dates to the Middle Ages, if we’re expected to believe the trail of clues. And when he’s in danger for his life, he destroys a thousand-year old tomb (ok maybe that one is almost acceptable). So like Schliemann, Jones is only interested in preserving the bit of old stuff that he cares about. Never is there concern for the provenance of artifacts, of preserving the context in which items exist. And those items do end up in museums, which is good – but they’re not museums in the countries where the items were discovered, or even vaguely associated. 

And although it’s only shown briefly, there’s also Jones’ position as a lecturer. I’m sure he’s a great lecturer, and he’s clearly very knowledgeable. But does he care about teaching? Or even research? Doesn’t seem that way. There’s dozens of students waiting to speak to him after class, and a huge stack of papers that haven’t been graded yet, and what does Jones do? Legs it out the window. Oh, so responsible.

Lara Croft behaving like Indiana bugs me far less. She never pretends to be anything other than an adventurer and opportunist (in the best possible way). You can’t expect her to be concerned about provenance; it doesn’t matter, in her context. But Jones should know better. Especially given how often he is shown to be morally outraged by the careless abandon with which the villains treat the objects that they’re both after – right from when as a young River Phoenix he’s indignant at the removal of an object that “belongs in a museum.”

Does this stop me from loving the Indiana Jones movies? No. It’s a sign of love that I can critique something while watching it for the umpteenth time (as I am doing right now, sitting in a guest house while my darling is off on a mountain bike somewhere. And I’ve sadly run out of wool in the middle of two different projects). And this issues deserves critique.