Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

A well known film franchise that most of us (hopefully) have seen is Indiana Jones. Through its famous main character, Indiana, to the many elaborate action scenes Indiana's escapades lead him through the Middle East and India and lead him to encounters with the stylized Eastern culture that Hollywood uses regularly. In all three movies of the Indiana Jones trilogy the Orientalists viewpoint shines through. As the definition of Orient became more prominent the more we began to see its use through our everyday media and its displaying of the binaries Orient/Europe, Exotic/Normal, etc. Specifically in the second installment of Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, there are profound examples of these binaries.

In The Temple of Doom the main setting is in India, there is a scene where Indiana is sitting at a dinner table and dining with the Indians. In this scene, the "exoticness" of the Indians is shown through their extravagant clothing, adorned with jewels and bright colors, compared to the Westerners (Indiana) where he is neatly dressed in a suit and more conservative in clothing which seems to be our normal for when we go out to dinner. The elaborate food spread is supposed to shock the Western viewers with an array of insects, innards, chilled monkey brains, and eye soup but ultimately ends up representing the Indian culture as barbarians who consume unusual and unsavory meals.

We as Americans have come to embrace these movies, filled with action and adventure but subtly slip in these Orientalism undertones that even myself at times fail to notice. This idea of comparing Eastern cultures to our very own in movies will not go away in a blink of an eye because that is what these big budget films use in order to draw big crowds. To make it habit that the white Westerner is always and the only one that can save the day while the Easterners are the savages.