Hey, it wouldn't be a discussion of Indiana Jones without a little exploration, would it? It's kind of his thing: finding a place that no one has touched for thousands of years and taking the stuff there to show everyone in the world. The 1930s were the last time we had unexplored regions of the Earth, when jungles and deserts still seemed mysterious and no one quite knew what was waiting in those last hidden corners of the planet. After that, unless you counted outer space or deep sea, it was pretty much a question of where to set up the shopping mall. Raiders reminds us what the world was like with a little more mystery to it, and what happened when those mysteries were opened up to the light.
Questions about Exploration
- How do the maps with the moving red line convey a feeling of exploration?What kind of visual cues does the film use to show us that a given place has been left unexplored?
- What are the consequences of exploration? What happens when Indy finds all of these places?
- Do the bad guys do any exploring? Why or why not? How do their methods differ from Indy's in this regard?
Chew on This
Exploration is more important to Indy's mission than the prizes he brings back. It's the journey not the destination, and all that.
Exploration is incidental to Indy's mission. The goodies are all that matter. He just has to go through all this exploration to get them.