Throwback Thursdays: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

(image via IMDb)

For this installment of Throwback Thursdays, I decided to revisit Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)—the first installment in the Indiana Jones trilogy—since I didn’t realize how long rewatching the whole trilogy would take. The movie trilogy and the character of Indiana Jones were some of my formative influences as a child. I dreamed of unlocking the world’s mysteries and these movies showed an academic leading a glamorous life of adventure, hunting mysterious artifacts and overcoming difficulties using his knowledge and reasoning powers. However, watching Raiders of the Lost Ark as an adult rather requires that I turn my brain off if I want to actually enjoy it because of the number of glaring issues regarding racial and cultural representation, as well as gendered character tropes.

Spoilers for the movie below, obviously.

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Religious Colonialism in Welcome to Night Vale

via vexingvendiblesarchieve

Welcome to Night Vale is a show that gives us a great example of what intersectional feminism actually looks like in popular media and storytelling. It has excellent female characters, most of whom are women of color; it has characters with disabilities, two queer main characters, and often points out problematic issues surrounding race, sexuality, gender, and disabilities. I am rarely, if ever, disappointed in Welcome to Night Vale, and now I have yet another reason as to why I love this show so much. Welcome to Night Vale is one of the few shows in recent memory to address how sinister the effects of religious colonialism can be on people. Religious colonialism is when the invading culture forces its own religious beliefs onto the native peoples it is conquering and simultaneously demonizes and outlaws the native religious beliefs.

Spoilers for the Strex Corp storyline below the cut.

Five Reasons You Should Read The True Meaning of Smekday

Back in July I wrote a Trailer Tuesdays on Home, an adaptation of a children’s book called The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex. After doing some research, I found out that the book was intended to be a satire of colonialism, and I thought to myself, “Luce, you should so read this book.”

So I did. And guess what? You should too. I have five very compelling reasons, as well as some slight spoilers, for you after the jump.