Indiana Jones would be happy to punch neo-Nazis, Harrison Ford said in a recent interview promoting the newest installment in the iconic franchise, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” “He’d push ’em out of the way to get in the first punch,” Ford said. “As well he should.” Ford added that Indiana Jones lives in a “black-and-white world” where “it’s incalculable that this vision of evil not be confronted.”
Ford, of course, is the actor who has played America’s foremost fictional archaeologist, adventurer and Nazi puncher for the past 40 years. His enthusiasm for thumping the newly emboldened far right is welcome.
Hollywood’s simplifications can make it harder to do the right thing in the real world, where the villains don’t always cover themselves in convenient swastikas.
But unfortunately, the latest Indiana Jones installment continues a Hollywood tradition of punching Nazis without doing much to explain why Nazis are bad or how you recognize them. We generally think that black-and-white morality makes evil easier to identify. But Hollywood’s simplifications can make it harder to do the right thing in the real world, where the villains don’t always cover themselves in convenient swastikas.
“Dial of Destiny” is set mostly in 1969, as an aged Indy races rocket scientists and former Nazi Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) to retrieve the ancient Antikythera, which supposedly holds the key to time travel. Voller hopes to use the artifact to turn back the clock and win World War II.
Indy is fighting, in theory, to prevent fascism from conquering the world. But “Dial” spares little thought for the horrors of Nazism or the Holocaust. Director James Mangold is much more focused on fun chase scenes and on the mechanics of riding a horse into the subway than he is on fighting fascism. There’s a single scene in which Voller expresses racism, when he sneeringly implies a waiter isn’t really American because he is Black. But otherwise, Voller just behaves like a standard supervillain, ranting on cue and ruthlessly pursuing world domination for its own sake, without much reference to his ideological motivations. The swastika is a convenient way to label the bad guys, but as a symbol it’s a hollow one.
This isn’t surprising. Hollywood frequently uses “Nazi” as a synonym for “bad.” The “Star Wars” franchise, for example, uses vague references to the Nazis, like “Stormtroopers,” as convenient stand-ins for evil. But with rare exceptions, it doesn’t explain what the Empire or the rebels actually believe. Captain America compares Loki in “The Avengers” to Hitler because he is “standing above everyone else” — which wasn’t really the uniquely bad thing about Hitler. Even the classic “Casablanca” was leery of discussing antisemitism and racism directly. Humphrey Bogart’s Rick joins the antifascist fight for personal reasons, rather than because he has thought deeply about the precepts of fascism and morally condemns them.
Hollywood in general wants to tell fun, exciting adventure stories. But real-life Nazis, spouting real-life bigotry and committing real-life atrocities, aren’t much fun. If you showed Indy fighting Jan. 6 rioters, for example, you’re going to get pushback.
“Dial” flirts with acknowledging that, contra Indy’s black-and-white vision, fascists aren’t always instantly recognizable. In the film, Voller changes his name and is hired by the U.S. to help with its moon launch program. The movie could, perhaps, have shown Voller hobnobbing with U.S. power brokers. He might have bonded with his bosses over the sort of casual antisemitism that certainly existed in the U.S. in 1969.
Instead, the U.S. alliance with Voller is treated as entirely pragmatic, if unsavory. And in any case, Indy instantly recognizes Voller, and soon enough the villain is re-donning his Nazi duds. Potential American complicity is rushed past on the way to yet another chase.
When you see the world in black and white, there’s a lot of evil that may get obscured in the gray shadows you erase.
None of this means Hollywood is responsible for a resurgence of fascism. But it’s too bad that decades of anti-Nazi films have seemingly done so little to inoculate the U.S. polity against fascism, beyond maybe a meme or two.
Punching ideas is tricky, and fascism is an idea first, before it persuades people to wear armbands or storm the U.S. Capitol. When you see the world in black and white, there’s a lot of evil that may get obscured in the gray shadows you erase. And even for Indiana Jones, it’s hard to punch what you can't see.