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Indiana Jones is bad for archeology only if you are one of the poor souls who can not distinguish fantasy from reality. I truly feel sorry for anyone in that category. These are the people who look at a forest and see a bunch of trees, while the rest of us see a passage into another realm.

The Indiana Jones movies were meant to entertain, not to give people a look at what archeology is really like. One is supposed to watch these movies for a chance to be swept away, if only for a few hours, for the trails and tribulations of the real world. In case anyone missed it; the world of Indiana Jones is not real.

When I was in eighth grade one of my English assignments was to write a short story. It was the week before Christmas vacation and I really didn't have my mind on writing, but I managed to complete the assignment, a futuristic tale of two people going on a mission to space only to return to Earth and find that while they were gone a nuclear war had taken place wiping out of life. I ended the story with the poignant line that these two people were the Adam and Eve of the 27th century. My teacher loved it for the symbolism and how I was able to tie in a religious aspect without causing anyone to be uncomfortable. In reality I was just writing down the first thing that came to mind so I could get the assignment finished. I wish there were more to it than that but there wasn't.

I was trying to complete an assignment, Steven Spielberg, with the Indiana Jones movies, was trying to entertain. If in the course of being entertained someone gets turned onto archeology, great. That person may turn out to be the archaeologist that solves the puzzle of the missing link.

Fantasy should not be discouraged because it does not paint a true picture of the world. If it did it wouldn't be fantasy. People need to realize that sometimes they can not read between the lines because there is simply nothing there. Not everything in life has a hidden message. Not everything in life is meant to represent the cold hard facts. God gave humans an imagination so we would not have to be bogged down in reality all the time.

Indy himself said that archeology is not all adventure, that X never, ever marks the spot. The fact that in The Last Crusade X actually marked the spot was supposed to be taken as a joke. Anyone who thinks that Indiana Jones is bad for archeology needs to take a serious look at their own life, they may just find something missing. That something is called fun.

Learn more about this author, Dorothy Jo Bourbeau.
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