Indiana Jones And The Flag Of The United States Of America

The studios are at it again. There's a supposedly "leaked" trailer of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull on YouTube. Yes, leaked. Riiight.

Watch the trailer here.

The first thing I noticed in the trailer was the very obvious flag-waving. What's going on? But then again, consider these two facts.

Steven Spielberg has demonstrated his flag-waving tendencies before, namely in Saving Private Ryan. In fact, the film is bookended by the same jingoism flapping in the wind. And the Indiana Jones series, especially the first two films, have never shied away from displaying its paranoid fear of the Other, the same racist perspective as, say, Zack Snyder's 300. Certainly, 300's treatment of Persians, Raiders Of The Lost Ark's treatment of Arabs and Temple Of Doom's exoticising of Asians all grew from the same ugly roots of xenophobia.

But flag-waving, if memory serves me correctly, is a first for Indy.