00;00;00;22 - 00;00;39;08

Jonathan Hafetz

Hi, I'm Jonathan Hafetz and welcome to Law on Film, a podcast that explores the rich connections between law and film. Law is critical to many films, films, in turn, tell us a lot about the law. In each episode, we'll examine a film that's noteworthy from a legal perspective. What legal issues does the film explore? What does it get right about the law and what does it get wrong?

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Jonathan Hafetz

And what does the film teach us about the law and the larger social and cultural context in which it operates? This episode will explore the iconic Indiana Jones trilogy, some of the most popular and well-known movies of all time. The trilogy consists of the first three movies in the series Raiders of the Lost Ark from 1981, Indiana Jones The Temple of Doom from 1984, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade from 1989.

00;01;06;14 - 00;01;31;04

Jonathan Hafetz

The films in the trilogy are based on stories by George Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg. They feature archeologist and adventure doctor Indiana Jones, played by Harrison Ford, as he travels across the world in the years before World War Two to obtain valuable historical, cultural and religious artifacts and to overcome the many obstacles, human and natural, that stand in his way.

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Jonathan Hafetz

The trilogy, and especially the first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, is the cornerstone of the Indiana Jones franchise, which includes two additional films. Kingdom of the Crystal skull from 2008 and dial of Destiny from 2023, as well as a TV series, video games, comic books, novels, theme parks and toys. The three films have inspired countless filmmakers and had a significant effect on cinema in popular culture.

00;01;55;21 - 00;02;27;08

Jonathan Hafetz

They also have important, if less discussed, legal dimensions. This episode, we're going to examine the trilogy from the perspective of international heritage law, the body of law centered around the preservation of property of historical, cultural, and religious significance. While international heritage law may not be at the forefront. The Indiana Jones trilogy. The subjects of that law, the priceless items from antiquity that Indiana Jones and its various supporting cast seek to recover, are our guest today to discuss the Indiana Jones trilogy is Doctor Lucas Lewinski.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Doctor Lewinski is a professor at the Faculty of Law and Justice at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Prior to joining the University of New South Wales, he was a postgraduate fellow at the Bernard and Audrey Law Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas Law School. Lucas holds a PhD in International Law from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy and an LLM in Human Rights Law from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, as well as an LLB from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

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Jonathan Hafetz

He researches and teaches across a range of fields international law, primarily international cultural heritage law and international human rights law. He sits on the board of editors of multiple well-regarded journals. He's also a co-founder and editor of the International Law Agendas, a blog of the Brazilian branch of the International Law Association devoted to global South engagements with the National law is 2020 co-edited commentary with Janet Blake to the UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention, published by Oxford University Press.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Received the American Society of International Laws Certificate of Merit for high technical craftsmanship and utility to practicing lawyers and scholars. He's a regular contributor to print, radio, and television media, and he's featured regularly in Times Higher Education, SBS radio, in Spanish, and also outlets like ABC news, The Sydney Morning Herald and others. Last but not least, Lucas is also the author of a fantastic article on the Indiana Jones trilogy published in the London Review of International Law.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Lucas welcome.

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Lucas Lixinski

Thank you for having me. We're going to have some fun.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Absolutely. I mean, with these movies, which are so much fun, we can only honor them by doing so on our podcast. So just to get us started, can you talk first a little bit about international heritage law and also why film can be a valuable media to help us understand it?

00;04;18;26 - 00;04;41;07

Lucas Lixinski

International heritage law, which in the US you would call cultural property law, is the idea of love. It addresses how we name and we safeguard, the markers of identity and these markers, they can be monuments, sites. They can be shipwrecks, paintings, dances, storytelling traditions, musical instruments, the music we play with those instruments or even stamp collections and food.

00;04;41;09 - 00;05;14;14

Lucas Lixinski

And so it's a wide gamut of different expressions of identity and that, you know, the fluffy thing that glues us together as a society and film helps us see then what heritage is beyond just that pretty photo that we find online. And by allowing us to see heritage, how it plays out in the real world, and how people relate to it, it can show us the way in which different people relate to different heritage, and why we need the law to help make sense of those relationships and how they connect to this idea that we should be safeguarding heritage.

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Lucas Lixinski

Right. And why we're safeguarding heritage for a home? Are we safeguarding heritage?

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Jonathan Hafetz

It's a wide range of tangible objects, some of which have, well, value is subjective, we could say, of different value in the Indiana Jones trilogy. I guess we're talking about very high value rare items, but it's really covers a wide range of things.

00;05;32;28 - 00;05;48;00

Lucas Lixinski

Yeah, absolutely. Right. And we have a whole bunch of different treaties under Unesco and a few under other international organizations, each of which is dedicated to a different type of heritage or domain of heritage. As you likes to call them.

00;05;48;03 - 00;06;11;26

Jonathan Hafetz

Do you mentioned Unesco, United Nations Educational, Scientific Cultural Organization, and you talk about the Indiana Jones trilogy as portrayals of cultural heritage disputes in a pre Unesco era by films made in the post Unesco period. And you explain that a little bit in your article. Can you break that down? What you mean by the Unesco and post Unesco period?

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Lucas Lixinski

Yeah. So what I mean, there is that, you know, effectively the timeline of Indiana Jones. It's all pre 1970s. Well, if you look at the original trilogy we're all talking about, you know, the Second World War, Unesco wasn't created until after the war ended, which is when the United Nations was created as well. So it doesn't exist there.

00;06;30;19 - 00;06;58;27

Lucas Lixinski

And even if you look at the two later, one style opacity, which is the fifth one that set in 1969, which is, in a weird way, a key year for international heritage law, because it's the year before the 1970 convention that forbids the import and export of cultural artifacts came into existence. Right. So, you know, a everything that happens in Indiana Jones movies happens before the key international treaty, in the area came into existence.

00;06;58;29 - 00;07;09;10

Lucas Lixinski

And because there's this time thing going on, the Indiana Jones doesn't need to grapple with Unesco and international law in general, even though it does a little bit of that.

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Jonathan Hafetz

So that's a key dividing line. Well, the trilogy, anyway, are all before World War Two and the post war era with Unesco and various other international treaties, customary norms. So it's it's set in that period. But as you said, it kind of informs it nonetheless informs understanding these films. Another interesting thing about your article, you kind of break down films about international law into two categories.

00;07;29;21 - 00;07;55;20

Jonathan Hafetz

You've got fully fictional adventure films like the trilogy, the Indiana Jones trilogy, and then you reference films that are based on historical events. The Monuments Man, which deals with Nazi looting of art during World War Two. Women and gold, which deals with the attempt to recover the iconic Klimt painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer that the Nazis have taken. We're going to focus on the movies in the first category the fictional adventure films, the Indiana Jones trilogy.

00;07;55;22 - 00;08;12;03

Jonathan Hafetz

But before we dive into the movie itself or the movies themselves, what can fictional pop cultural films like Indiana Jones, which don't really wear law on their sleeve, teach us about international heritage law? Our cultural heritage law?

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Lucas Lixinski

The fact that they are pop cultural, right? They have a much broader reach. I mean, Monuments Man and Woman in Gold are fantastic movies, if you ask me, but they have a more limited kind of audience. They're not iconic the way Indiana Jones is, so it's a way to kind of backdoor or sneak in a lot of conversations about the aspects of heritage.

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Lucas Lixinski

And I think also because they are fictional, we get to buy more easily into that suspension of disbelief. And so we come to the table with a few less preconceptions about what should happen, even though we're still pretty sure that the Nazis and the bad guys all along, one would hope, right? So they allow us to feel a little bit more detached about how we relate to culture, why we care, and all of those important questions without a known outcome.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Turning to the movies themselves, let's start with Raiders, my personal favorite. I'm going to wait till the end to ask you about your personal favorite. But Raiders, probably because I remember it so well. My favorite early in Raiders Raiders of the Lost Ark, there's a scene between Indiana Jones and Marcus Brody, who's played by Denholm Elliott. He's the museum curator or a museum curator and Indiana's friend.

00;09;22;01 - 00;09;43;00

Jonathan Hafetz

And it occurs at the conclusion of Indiana Jones class at the university. He's just returned from an adventure where he managed to extract a golden idol for a booby trapped temple in the Amazon jungle in Peru, only to have the item taken from him by his rival nemesis, the French archeologist Rene Bullock, played by Paul Freeman, who's working for the Nazis.

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Jonathan Hafetz

The idol is actually fictitious. I think it's wrongly attributed as a Peruvian object, but it's really Aztec. But you can view it, I think, still in the Dumbarton Oaks collection in Washington DC, but I think that there's a brief but informative reference in the exchange to international law before Marcus tells Indiana Jones. But there are important people from U.S. Army intelligence waiting to see him.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Let's look at this exchange. I'm gonna play the clip of this interchange between Marcus and Indiana Jones.

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Film Dialogue

I got this in my hand. What happens when I hear about none at all? I'm sure everything you do for the museum conforms to the international treaties for protection of antiquities. It's beautiful. Marcus, I can get it. I got it all figured out. There's no place you can sell it. Americans. And in 2009, I brought some people to see you.

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Film Dialogue

Look, I got these pieces. The good pieces. Marcus, Indiana. Here's the museum. I'll buy them as usual. No questions asked. Yes. Then is it worth at least the price of a ticket to market the supply for all three quarters of the way to which Army intelligence you were coming before, I see. No, no. Everything. But tell me what they want.

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Film Dialogue

What do I want to see them for? What am I in trouble?

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Jonathan Hafetz

So, Lucas, what does this exchange tell us about the law of cultural property or international heritage law and the role it plays in the movie?

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Lucas Lixinski

It's kind of fascinating, right, that it make sure to have this reference so early on to a treaty, by the way, it does not exist, but it is a treaty that exists in Indiana Jones universe. Apparently the US is a party to it, but then what it does in terms of a narrative device within the movie, what I think it does is that it cleans the slate, the first action sequence.

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Lucas Lixinski

Right. So we have that as an establishing kind of sequence about who Indiana Jones is. And he likes adventure. He's good at it. And he goes and gets the prize. And then there's all these activities whether he should be doing that. So we resolve all the ethics by having that reference to the one treaty. And instead we could just focus on Indiana Jones is a good guy, doing good things for the museum and for the scientific community.

00;11;53;12 - 00;12;08;06

Lucas Lixinski

That's what he does, right? Essentially says we don't need to worry about the aftermath of that opening sequence. Let's just move on and look at the new adventure, which is what then Brody, the Brody character, sets up at the very end of that exchange.

00;12;08;08 - 00;12;27;23

Jonathan Hafetz

This scene is followed by the scene between Indiana Jones and the US military intelligence officer, Brody, where Indiana Jones, from what they tell him, realizes that Bullock and therefore the Nazis are seeking to recover the Ark of the covenant. That's part of the Nazi attempt to gather up religious Christian artifacts. It's actually historically correct with Hitler's fascination with them.

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Jonathan Hafetz

So that evening, Marcus comes to Indiana Jones house, tells him the U.S. wants him to recover the Ark for the US before the Nazis do. Indiana Jones is thrilled to hear this. This is the dream of every archeologist, probably in every adventure. So it checks both boxes. And Indiana is happy to learn, too, that the Ark will go into a museum for study, presumably once it's found in Indiana.

00;12;50;19 - 00;13;04;25

Jonathan Hafetz

Tells Marcus the Ark represents everything they got into archeology for in the first place. So I guess this sort of supports what you're saying about setting up the narrative in terms of Indiana Jones is motives and purposes in this quest.

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Lucas Lixinski

So Indiana Jones take is very typical of a Western and or a Christian archeologist, which this idea that we're collecting and we're amassing all these artifacts for the benefit of all of humanity. And as long as we put that object in a museum, preferably, by the way, a quote unquote universal museum, which is a term of art to designate what you would once call an encyclopedic museum.

00;13;29;03 - 00;13;53;13

Lucas Lixinski

Right. So we're talking about museums like the Matt in New York or the Louvre or the British Museum. So as long as it goes into one of the museums that it can be there for the benefit of all of humanity, quote unquote, again, then then we have ultimately done everyone a big service. So it echoes some of that logic, that the British Museum still sort of uses today to keep things like the Parthenon Marbles, these marbles, they're too good to be out there in the open.

00;13;53;13 - 00;14;13;09

Lucas Lixinski

They belong in the museum, and it just so happens that the British Museum is the right one to keep those artifacts. So it brings a lot of assumptions about Western archeology, a lot of which have come under a lot of attack lately. And thankfully they've been eroded. But of course, in the 80s, that was still kind of the prevailing way of thinking.

00;14;13;11 - 00;14;33;22

Jonathan Hafetz

That's really interesting because the films, like you say, predate the treaties and the legal framework in terms of the time they're set in World War Two era, but they're made in the 80s, which post dates this period, this printing place. But the assumptions are different and are evolving now. So I guess what you're saying is there's kind of a different perspective.

00;14;33;22 - 00;14;50;23

Jonathan Hafetz

In 2023, looking back, you know, this scene from Raiders 40 plus years ago where Indiana Jones is going to collect this for good purpose. He's going to put it in a museum that resonated differently legally, politically. In 1981 when the film was made, than it does today in 2023. Is that right?

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Lucas Lixinski

So it is interesting to see those ships in time, but also you kind of see it echoing today in some ways, right? Because you look at Dial up Destiny, which came out in 2023, I know it's not directed by Spielberg, and I don't think it was written by George Lucas either, but it is cut from the same cloth.

00;15;08;05 - 00;15;32;03

Lucas Lixinski

And if you look at the positioning and interactions between Indiana Jones and Helena Shaw, who's the new character introduced as Indiana Jones is niece and she's played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. You still see a lot of the same ideas about, you know, collecting is good as long as it is for a museum or a historical department, archeology department, and she's the villain all along.

00;15;32;08 - 00;15;51;15

Lucas Lixinski

Spoiler alert sorry everyone, but she's the villain all along because she's working in her own interest and are for private collectors. So there's still this kind of binary between the private collector badge and the public museum. Good. And it doesn't really problematize a lot of what it should be in a museum in the first place.

00;15;51;15 - 00;16;29;15

Jonathan Hafetz

This time we have a running spoiler alert on the podcast, so no worry about that. That's really interesting how you talk about the way that the private collector is problematize. In contradistinction to the museum, the collector for the public good. And, you know, it's interesting too, because if you go back to the third in the series, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, last film in the trilogy of the first three, it starts off with a flashback scene where a young Indy, he's a Boy Scout at the time, comes upon a group of looters or raiders attempting to remove a valuable objects jewel encrusted cross of Coronado.

00;16;29;15 - 00;16;56;03

Jonathan Hafetz

So another Christian artifact from a cave or tomb near Utah, where Indy's on a trip with his Boy Scout group, and the group is led by a swashbuckling raider who resembles, at least in some respects, the future Indiana Jones. Indy snatched the cross, he escapes, and a great chase scene, only to be foiled when the looters and their powerful private collector catch up with him back in town, and the sheriff forces Indy to hand over the cross, right the law, the power of making, to give it back and Indy says right.

00;16;56;03 - 00;17;20;02

Jonathan Hafetz

He protects an important object, belongs in a museum. And then after the cross is taken from Indy, the looter gives Indy the fedora iconic fedora that he was wearing. And then Indy later sports throughout the series as a sign of respect for his gumption and his future as a treasure hunter. So it seems like this moment really sets up what you're kind of talking about in terms of the role of museums in the preservation of cultural heritage in the whole series.

00;17;20;02 - 00;17;21;00

Jonathan Hafetz

Right.

00;17;21;02 - 00;17;42;00

Lucas Lixinski

Look, this is such an important scene in terms of motivation for the hero, right? It's the biographical flashback, the thing that forges Indiana Jones and his character, but then it also speaks a lot about these continuities. Right. And how perhaps the bad guy come about who we have no problem calling a looter and our hero are not that different after all.

00;17;42;00 - 00;18;02;24

Lucas Lixinski

So they both want to dig stuff up, they both want artifacts, and they probably see their roles as similarly quote unquote rescue heritage. So collectors deploy that logic all the time. Right? So they say that by Syrian artifacts that ISIS put up on eBay is actually a means of saving those artifacts, or so does the logic go for them?

00;18;02;24 - 00;18;22;27

Lucas Lixinski

And of course, that's not the case. It's not how market incentives work. So can you back to the movie then in this reaction, is a little bit better than those collectors defending buying stuff. But for bébé, in that at least he wants to turn it over to the public. And in the domestic context, it all mostly sort of works, because that crucifix in the you has to go in.

00;18;22;27 - 00;18;41;29

Lucas Lixinski

So you ask museum. So we don't have to deal with the logics right at that point of taking something from Egypt and putting in a US museum. But there's a lot more than unites looters and collectors on the one hand, and researchers museums on the other hand, and actually devised and in many ways that's so interesting.

00;18;42;00 - 00;19;00;21

Jonathan Hafetz

If you can briefly explain, what does the current law of cultural property or international heritage law say? I mean, how would it evaluate the recovery of the Cross of Coronado in Last Crusade or the Golden Idol in Raiders? That's virtual cover. What would international law say about these property was once recovered?

00;19;00;23 - 00;19;29;09

Lucas Lixinski

What international law says is that if an object has been taken out of the territory of a country without the proper authorization, which is an export certificate like, customs paperwork, essentially that it needs to be returned to immediately. So where that title in the opening sequence of Raiders be taken today or in a post 1970 kind of world, then it would have to be returned to Peru and then Peru would get to decide its fate.

00;19;29;12 - 00;19;52;08

Lucas Lixinski

So it's a very different logic, and it's what some people have called a quote unquote nationalist or even retention. It's kind of approach which some people are critical of. But on the other hand, it's fair enough. It's that countries stop. You should automatically go to what you ask museum just because the US archeologist happened to dig it up or, you know, find it after escaping a boulder.

00;19;52;10 - 00;20;01;22

Jonathan Hafetz

What about if it was recovered in the pre-World War Two period? What if it was recovered in 1970? The golden idol or the cross? What if, like in the movie, they were uncovered in the free World War Two era.

00;20;01;24 - 00;20;26;28

Lucas Lixinski

Right. So and that meant essentially that as long as they respected domestic law, you were all good. And most countries had very loose regulations. Right? Let's not forget that in 1970, especially in a pre Second World War kind of universe, most of those countries where you find a lot of antiquities were colonies, right? So they didn't have a lot of autonomy, decide on their own laws.

00;20;26;28 - 00;20;45;19

Lucas Lixinski

And it was all hunky dory for them to move, especially to the colonial metropolis. Then that's how a lot of museums kind of made their names, and that's how they were even created. Right? The British Museum is families. The museum created to showcase the empire where the sun never sets. So there was a lot of that movement.

00;20;45;19 - 00;21;12;19

Lucas Lixinski

It was all awful. But of course, then as those countries started to gain independence, they wanted their stuff back. And that was kind of the big push to create what became the 1970 convention. Right? It was these big colonizing countries which we would call quote unquote, source countries wanting their stuff back. But then the countries that had the objects, which we usually call market nations or market countries, they did not want to give stuff back.

00;21;12;21 - 00;21;32;07

Lucas Lixinski

And they essentially said, look, yeah, that's a cute little idea, but we're not going to ratify the treaty if it is made retroactive, because we're not going to give you your stuff. So they made the treaty not retroactive, which kind of puts it in the fought a little bit. And in a response to that, by the countries that wanted their stuff back, I could say, look, okay, we cannot get our stuff anymore.

00;21;32;09 - 00;21;54;19

Lucas Lixinski

So said we're going to prevent anything from leaving this country again. So they created this super strict kind of legislation, which in some ways is responsible for, if not creating at least growing tremendously, the black market in antiquities, because then what starts happening is that people start declaring these movements, of course, or they start forging a lot of paperwork.

00;21;54;21 - 00;22;18;28

Lucas Lixinski

You know, looting one on one these days is to come up with some dodgy letter written by your great grandfather, who allegedly was a diplomat in that country and who just so happened to leave that country in 1968 or 1969. Therefore, you have a quote unquote, provenance history of the object without having to give it back, because then the treaty doesn't apply.

00;22;19;00 - 00;22;35;26

Jonathan Hafetz

To the extent that you have the disputes you have today involving often art, the culture, property as well. It's about the provenance and basically tracing it back to the point where the legal regulation comes in. It was prohibited to show that it was lawfully, quote unquote, lawfully obtained.

00;22;35;28 - 00;23;09;05

Lucas Lixinski

Exactly. You have to show this provenance history. Then you have to do a due diligence in obtaining or fact checking that provenance history. But then what happens a lot of the time is that there's no diligence. Standard is overseen by museums and collectors themselves, which means that there is a an incentive for enforcement to be relatively lax. And then we end up with a lot of, you know, it's just kind of accepting those stories that some dodgy dealer kind of presents to us.

00;23;09;07 - 00;23;32;11

Lucas Lixinski

And it happens a lot. Right. And there's a guy, an Indian citizen, Subhash, before who for that case, we're at a gallery dark, which was kind of known for having the best South Asian antiquities that anyone could get right. And museums and governments poured millions and millions of dollars into Subhash Kapoor's business trying to acquire the best antiquities.

00;23;32;13 - 00;23;48;20

Lucas Lixinski

Turns out he was just looting and laundering those items, and he was actually using for a while his then partner as the person who had, you know, this diplomat grandfather who happened to then have taken these things just before the law entered into force.

00;23;48;22 - 00;23;58;19

Jonathan Hafetz

Speaking of dodgy British practices, just a shout out to another podcast you may or may not called Stuff The British Stall, which is Australian produced. You know, the podcast, which is, yeah.

00;23;58;21 - 00;24;04;22

Lucas Lixinski

Australian and Canadian. But I, the guy who's Australian, Mark Finnell it's a great podcast everyone check it out.

00;24;04;24 - 00;24;25;23

Jonathan Hafetz

Talking about all the things the British talk, you know, in this backdrop of the pre UNSCOM legal framework and various efforts to get them back. There are arguments, maybe they're more political than legal, that if the various items, especially in the pre-World War Two period, are going back further 19th century have not been taken and collected and put in museums, they would have been destroyed.

00;24;25;27 - 00;24;45;06

Jonathan Hafetz

Now, film doesn't directly engage with that, although to some extent it raises that question in a different way, because there's a sense there's a race to get these objects like invaders. There's a race for the art between India, the Americans and the Nazis. Well, it's a little complicated because the Nazis want to use it as like a weapon as opposed to something to boost their sort of cultural standing.

00;24;45;11 - 00;25;01;21

Jonathan Hafetz

But in a sense, if Egypt, which is where the arc they learned is located, is letting the Nazis hunt for it, you know, with the Americans be justified in getting it in. And what do you think of this argument more generally, if we don't get it, it'll be destroyed. Or in the Raiders framework, it'll be put to nefarious purposes.

00;25;01;24 - 00;25;33;20

Lucas Lixinski

The argument circulates a lot. Right? And I think it's tricky because sure, it would have been destroyed. But there's what if the British Museum had been bombed during the Blitz? Then would Grace then have a reason to be really, really mad at the Brits? The British would say no. So yes, I think the consequence of if we hadn't taken it, it would have been destroyed, I think to the actual logical consequence, say, okay, thank you very much for taking it down and looking after it.

00;25;33;22 - 00;26;00;27

Lucas Lixinski

It's okay for us to have it back now. Thank you very much. So I think that argument can only go as far as to say we were a temporary haven for this object. It shouldn't translate into property or ownership the way that people see it and translate it into. So I don't buy it at all. And by the way, it also ignores the fact that a lot of harm happens to these objects as well, or used to happen to these objects anyway, when they were being transported.

00;26;00;27 - 00;26;21;00

Lucas Lixinski

There were no guarantees that the Parthenon Marbles would have survived to travel to the UK. They did. And then when they got to the British Museum, one of the first things that the team at a British Museum did was to actually scrap those marbles with iron wool to make them lighter, because that's what they thought that Greek art was supposed to look like.

00;26;21;02 - 00;26;46;10

Lucas Lixinski

And in the process, they erased a lot of the fine detail. First of all. But I also erase a lot of archeological evidence of the fact that those marbles had been painted and they were multicolored. The Greek certainly sculpted marble because it was white and pure. That's a very racist thing that we chose to believe in. When scientific racism was all the rage and fashionable they just use marble because that's what they had lying around.

00;26;46;14 - 00;27;05;09

Lucas Lixinski

And to ancient Greeks, what made those sculptures beautiful was not just a sculpting, it was actually also painting them. And all of that was erase used by the British Museum, quote unquote, taking really good care of those marbles. So I don't buy that logic for a number of reasons.

00;27;05;12 - 00;27;22;05

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, it's great you point that out, too. And as an aside, there was an excellent exhibition of the various Greek statues in the Metropolitan Museum of Art a year or two ago. We'll put aside the question of ownership for a moment, but where they actually had the items restored in the sense that they to look as they were painted extremely colorful.

00;27;22;06 - 00;27;48;08

Jonathan Hafetz

And it's kind of revelatory. So you thought that British etc. at all were great caretakers, but they weren't necessarily to some extent. It's lucky they were preserved and they didn't preserve the necessarily the way they were supposed to be preserved. The Indiana Jones films, it's an easier issue for them to navigate, because in the first and the third and Raiders in The Last Crusade, the items that Ark in Raiders and the Holy Grail in Last Crusade are being chased by the Nazis.

00;27;48;11 - 00;28;06;15

Jonathan Hafetz

So the Nazis are going to get them. They're aren't you going to hoard them? They're going to use them to amass power and take over the planet. So it's a little bit different. But, you know, you talk a little bit about them in your paper and the fact that they're these Christian artifacts, religious artifacts. I wonder if the ark in Raiders and then the Holy Grail in The Last Crusade.

00;28;06;18 - 00;28;12;18

Jonathan Hafetz

You talk a little bit about their significance in terms of being these religious, in particular Christian artifacts.

00;28;12;21 - 00;28;45;09

Lucas Lixinski

They are religious, right? They're very fundamental to Judeo Christian ethics and mythology. And that's lovely, right? And in many ways, what makes them so exciting and so important to try and justify is this reckless expenditure of time and resources to go after them. We must have them at all costs. Sort of thing, I said heightens the stakes of a chase both times, but then it also helps portray the Nazis as bad Christians in some way.

00;28;45;09 - 00;29;06;00

Lucas Lixinski

So guess it helps with their badness because they want them for the wrong reasons. They want them not out of respect for a greater power. They want them for the power itself so they can wield it. So there is a complicated kind of relationship there. And I think the Christian themes helps tighten them. And even the establishing sequence in Last Crusade.

00;29;06;01 - 00;29;20;27

Lucas Lixinski

Right. It's still also about a crucifix. So I think it helps cast Indiana Jones as a as a good Christian boy. And people who want to use Christian artifacts for the wrong reasons as bad Christians and therefore, villains also on those grounds.

00;29;20;29 - 00;29;45;20

Jonathan Hafetz

I want to go back to Raiders for a moment. There's a really interesting moment from a character development perspective, and maybe from an international law perspective, when near the end of Raiders Indiana, it threatens to destroy the Ark unless the Nazis free Marion because love interest played by Karen Allen and Renee Bullock challenges Indy to carry out the threat, basically tells the Nazis, hey, put your guns down and calls Indiana and says, I dare you.

00;29;45;21 - 00;29;52;13

Jonathan Hafetz

I'll play the clip of this exchange now.

00;29;52;16 - 00;30;21;15

Film Dialogue

Jones, Jones, I'm going to blow up the ark. Renee, your persistence surprises even me. You're going to give mercenaries a bad name. Doctor Jones. Surely you don't think you can escape from this island. It depends on how reasonable not willing to be. All I want is the girl. If we refuse, then your Führer has no prize. Okay, Jones, you in?

00;30;21;18 - 00;30;47;25

Film Dialogue

Blow it up. Let's blow it up. Right back to God. All your life has been spent in pursuit of archeological relics inside the Ark. I treasures beyond your wildest aspirations. You want to see it open as well as I Indiana, we are simply passing through history. This. This is history. As you will.

00;30;47;27 - 00;31;13;08

Jonathan Hafetz

So this is an effective dramatic moment, I think, but it also surfaces a question in international heritage law, albeit through the prism of Indiana Jones. His love for Marion. And that is what value should be placed on human life in the effort to protect valuable cultural and historical artifacts. I mean, isn't it true that sometimes tradeoffs need to be made to preserve a certain structure or item?

00;31;13;08 - 00;31;19;13

Jonathan Hafetz

You may end up using some additional life. How does that tradeoff play out in international law?

00;31;19;15 - 00;31;50;02

Lucas Lixinski

I get this question often enough, and you see it a lot in debates around emergencies, right? Both conflicts and disasters for the most part. And I have a two part answer to that first, which is that I tend to reject the premise that it's more often than not an either or, because that's a zero sum mentality that works when you drill down on the specifics of one small example, but in the broader context of an emergency and as a matter of law and policy setting, there's plenty of room for both to be executed and sometimes actually both at once.

00;31;50;09 - 00;32;11;03

Lucas Lixinski

The second part of the answer is that there's often a bit of a shortsightedness to this kind of argument, just because it assumes that a priority should always be the human being as a biological entity. And once we focus on that, we downplay the importance of heritage as the thing that turns us from a bunch of biological entities into a society.

00;32;11;03 - 00;32;38;09

Lucas Lixinski

So heritage is the glue that makes us work as a group, and we cannot really downplay its role. This story is really well known, or I read it too many times, perhaps so it's well-known to me, but probably to many others as well. Listening. So Raphael Lemkin, who is the key drafter of the what became the 1948 Genocide Convention, going on 75 years of age this year, you already knew that conversation right here.

00;32;38;09 - 00;33;07;28

Lucas Lixinski

I had very in mind that genocide hinges critically on the destruction of culture, destruction of collective identity. And so he already knew that. But he did the work that ultimately became the Genocide Convention. But then the states negotiated in the treaty after Lemkin had done his. That ignored all of that, mostly because they were trying to avoid scrutiny of their own records, vis-a-vis their internal minorities, and then they left it out of the ultimate text of the treaty.

00;33;08;00 - 00;33;39;06

Lucas Lixinski

But Lemkin insight is still very much true today, and we can see it playing out everywhere right? Plus, heritage plays a really important role in helping societies bounce back in the aftermath of an emergency because it gives people around which really and it's important to remember that. And even one specific example. Right. I don't know if you remember all these videos on YouTube and social media of people in Italy singing traditional songs from their windows when they were first locked down because of Covid, right.

00;33;39;07 - 00;34;00;28

Lucas Lixinski

Which is where the pandemic began in Europe. And they did that around cultural heritage, Rite Aid to help them survive, but was a really tough and scary time. And so to sum up my answer, then we don't need to choose first of all, more often than not. And secondly, we need to remember that cultural heritage is what makes us a society worth protecting.

00;34;01;00 - 00;34;26;21

Jonathan Hafetz

Great point and really eloquently put in Europe we just banged pots, but I think that's a form of cultural heritage performance as well. Can we talk about the ending of Raiders a little bit? You know Guy, it is a great ending where Indiana foils the Nazis, the Ark's recovered and he is rewarded handsomely for his efforts. But the art, which is an object of tremendous historical religious importance as well as being uniquely powerful, doesn't end up in a museum for study.

00;34;26;26 - 00;34;46;01

Jonathan Hafetz

Instead, the film ends with the shot of the ark in a crate being taken to this sort of like a warehouse in an undisclosed location, along with other bits, presumably of other cultural artifacts where they said it's going to be studied. It's going to be studied solely by US government, U.S. military. So the public is not going to get to view or share in this unique item.

00;34;46;03 - 00;34;49;19

Jonathan Hafetz

What did you make of that? From a cultural heritage perspective?

00;34;49;21 - 00;35;12;01

Lucas Lixinski

It's funny. It reminds me a little bit of this, scene in Monuments Man, which is a different movie, right? It's a lot of George Clooney and stuff. And, Cate Blanchett character, who's a French Resistance, person. She asks, you know, the Monuments Men who are about to take, to help save all this heritage out of the Nazis hands.

00;35;12;03 - 00;35;33;20

Lucas Lixinski

So she's like, help me steal our heritage back from those who stole it or something like that. Butchering the quote, but it's essentially this idea that somehow in the morality of warfare, the U.S. stealing those artifacts is justified because its power is too great to be in the wrong hands. And we somehow assume that the US is the right hands.

00;35;33;27 - 00;35;55;14

Lucas Lixinski

But I would say that perhaps the answer is not. To keep it in a storage unit is to actually destroy it, to be honest, or at least drop it to the bottom of the ocean. But this decision that also brings to mind the practice of these major museum, what I was referring to earlier is the quote unquote, universal museums, which is hoard things away from communities and countries just so they can say they have them.

00;35;55;14 - 00;36;17;16

Lucas Lixinski

And major museums, they tend to keep upwards of 80% of their collections in storage. And so what you see in a museum, overwhelming as it is in a large museum, like the match in New York or the British Museum or Duluth or what have you, is only a very small fraction of what they actually own. And then keeping all of that in storage as opposed to in a country of origin.

00;36;17;16 - 00;36;32;24

Lucas Lixinski

And how exactly is that supposed to be benefiting humanity in the way that Indiana Jones and his colleagues think it does? So there's a lot of to think about in terms of whether a storage room is the right fate for an artifact.

00;36;32;26 - 00;36;49;13

Jonathan Hafetz

There's a new developed, which I'm sure you're familiar with in terms of, virtual reality. I'm curious about your thoughts about that, where it's recreated in the country through virtual reality. Maybe the Ark would have been a good vehicle for that, given its potential destructive power. The VR trends is interesting, right?

00;36;49;15 - 00;37;20;05

Lucas Lixinski

Yeah. I yeah, the digital repatriation I think is fascinating. And the VR recreation that a lot of stories about. That's right. And I think it would have been very suitable for the Ark. But when people try to do it to the best of the fatigue, which is in a museum in Berlin, and some Egyptian artist slash activists that did a 3D scan, they were actually prosecuted by the museum in Berlin for stealing their quote unquote, intellectual property, or something to that effect, which was the likeness of for Katie.

00;37;20;05 - 00;37;43;14

Lucas Lixinski

Never mind that she's actually Egyptian. And then there's also this whole conversation about instead of sending objects back to communities of origin, sending out just a virtual replica of it, and museum somehow trying to convince communities of origin that the virtual or the digital copy is just as good, if it is just as good. And we'll keep the digital copy, which is something that then the French government is going for.

00;37;43;17 - 00;38;13;10

Lucas Lixinski

That was a whole report by two academics, a Senegalese and a French. It's not. It's a sort of Y report. And it's something that Emmanuel Macron commissioned, which is actually said that everything should be sent back to the countries of origin in Africa. Great. But then it goes on to say that before anything is sent back, a digital copy must be made and kept in a French museum to institute a quote unquote, radical practice of sharing, okay, with the radical practice of sharing as a principle.

00;38;13;12 - 00;38;38;01

Lucas Lixinski

But I don't think it should be the rule because it's not for the museum sending the thing back to decide what happens to it. That's not restitution, right? Or that's half past restitution. So I love the conversations about VR and what happens in restitution more generally. But sometimes they just drive me up the wall. When we have people trying to control what happens when I object, because that's not really restitution.

00;38;38;03 - 00;39;00;12

Jonathan Hafetz

Those are putting strings on something you can't put strings on. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Why don't you jump to the second movie in the trilogy for a minute, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is interesting when you juxtapose it with the first and the third, because it offers a portrayal of Indiana Jones somewhat at odds with his prior portrayal as a servant of Western museum interests.

00;39;00;14 - 00;39;22;17

Jonathan Hafetz

In Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones is tasked by a community in impoverished part of India, where he winds up after narrowly escaping death. When the plane small plane escape from Shanghai and his sabotaging crashes, and the community asks him to return their sacred stone, their sacred artifact, and he does, and he gives it back at the end to the community and the community.

00;39;22;19 - 00;39;33;27

Jonathan Hafetz

There's sort of healing and restoration within the community, so I don't know if it's in your take on this different portrayal of Indiana Jones or more layered portrayal from an international heritage law perspective.

00;39;33;29 - 00;39;59;06

Lucas Lixinski

Yeah. So Temple of Doom puts Indiana Jones at the service, not of a Western institution, but instead of a community that lives in, with or around the heritage. Right? So it kind of really centers why we do this. It's not for the glory of your museum. It's not for the glory of an unspecified humanity that just so happens to be accounted for by advice of a Western archeologist working for a Western institution.

00;39;59;09 - 00;40;22;05

Lucas Lixinski

Instead, look, it's the community, right? And we're doing it for them. And so it reminds us of that heritage means something not just for our gaze. As the Western collector or the western visitor to a museum, but also for the people who created that artifact and cap those artifacts generation after generation. So the movie shifts our discussion about why we care about heritage and for whom we care about heritage.

00;40;22;08 - 00;40;48;00

Lucas Lixinski

And it also shows Indiana Jones is capable of that level of empathy towards people who otherwise appear in the other movies simply as background. So in many ways, it's a very progressive movie. If I were to read it from an international heritage law perspective, because it does things that even international heritage law didn't really do at the time and still barely does today, which is to really focus on what the community wants.

00;40;48;03 - 00;41;14;02

Jonathan Hafetz

It's interesting. It happens in the one of the three films of the trilogy, where Indiana Jones is not against the Nazis, instead it's against this indigenous community. I think it was Lucas who specifically didn't want the second film to be about the Nazis. So for whatever reason, I think that facilitate that message. And I think the fact that if Indiana Jones was taking this valuable item from the community back to the West, it would have, I think, colored the portrayal of Indiana Jones as a hero more.

00;41;14;02 - 00;41;21;28

Jonathan Hafetz

It's easier to be a hero when you're snatching it from the Nazis, even if it's for a museum, than when you're snatching it from this tribe in rural India.

00;41;22;01 - 00;41;40;02

Lucas Lixinski

Exactly. But let's not forget also that at the end of the day, the saviors of the community as a whole, right after the artifact issue is resolved, is the British Army. So we're not upsetting the international order quite as much in the 40s. But this movie.

00;41;40;05 - 00;42;12;06

Jonathan Hafetz

Each of the films involved in one way or another, Indiana Jones's interaction with indigenous or non-Western populations and sometimes their friends or allies. You have Salah, the Egyptian excavator played by John Rhys-Davies, who appears in Raiders and Last Crusade, or Short Round, the 11 year old taxi driver in Shanghai who helps Indy escape from the crime boss Lao Che in the Temple of Doom, who's played by Cui Guan, who are thrilled to see won acclaim many decades later for his recent role in Everything Everywhere, All at Once and won an Oscar for that.

00;42;12;06 - 00;42;42;20

Jonathan Hafetz

So it's really nice to see that sometimes they're allies, and I think there's some problematic issues around some of the casting, the stereotypes. But another question is often the indigenous or non-Western characters are opponents, and they're seeking to kill Indiana Jones to prevent him from recovering the various cultural treasures. So can you talk a little bit about Indiana Jones's interaction with these indigenous and non-Western people, and the contrast between Western scientific archeology, investigations and local practices and views and claims to possess these cultural and religious treasures.

00;42;42;22 - 00;43;02;05

Lucas Lixinski

Of course. It was lovely to see, okay, Hooper actually thank him. Skill work and his acceptance speech rising up. You're the guy who gave me a shot and Steven Spielberg was up for Best director. He didn't get it. Actually, the director is off everything everywhere at once. Got that one as well. But it was lovely to see that kind of moment playing out at the ceremony.

00;43;02;08 - 00;43;39;24

Lucas Lixinski

But then back to Indiana Jones. So the indigenous or non-Western or nonwhite kind of characters in the movies, they tend to be background a lot of the time, unfortunately, or they play small roles to kind of nudge ethics in the right direction and sort of falling into that trope of the wise person of color that Hollywood loves, at least in its early and unfortunately so some of its current attempts at diversity and just playing off this, noble, savage kind of idea over and over because of all of that, because of all that load that we open with, the interactions tend not to be too great as a result.

00;43;39;24 - 00;44;01;21

Lucas Lixinski

And even when we have these iconic and fully fleshed out characters like Short Ground or for that matter, Sallah, right, which also comes back in dial of, Destiny. There are still sidekicks all the time, and I can get that from a storytelling perspective. It is in this story, after all, and his worldview is a central one. Everything else is a side character.

00;44;01;23 - 00;44;21;05

Lucas Lixinski

But then Indy could also afford to be even more sympathetic to those views coming from elsewhere. And really lean more heavily on those voices and those ideas about what to do with heritage and why we're doing this, and much in the way that our culture in general is now learning and starting to do, because they're learning that their view is not the one that matters most.

00;44;21;11 - 00;44;37;00

Lucas Lixinski

It's that really confronting realization in a lot of archeological circles and lore is starting to get on board. Catch up with that as well that archeologists, they work for the people at the end of the day and ask for the heritage, which is a very important kind of distinction.

00;44;37;03 - 00;44;59;04

Jonathan Hafetz

I really like how you frame the way that those characters, like characters operate in the films as well. And it's true, two of the various female characters do. I mean, everyone is kind of serving in these worldview. So Indiana Jones has become like an icon of American, I think, world cinema. And he's also, I've read, apparently increase the popularity of archeology as a profession.

00;44;59;06 - 00;45;18;23

Jonathan Hafetz

In what way? You think he's like a fitting or problematic character for an exploration of themes around international heritage, law, cultural preservation. I mean, obviously he's fictional and I don't know any archeologist who's, quite the James Bond character he is. But still, what do you think of India as the vessel for archeology?

00;45;18;25 - 00;45;38;17

Lucas Lixinski

I think it's really fascinating. Right. I need to get into heritage lore because of Indiana Jones. I must declare, it was for other reasons, but I do distinctly remember right after I got into heritage lore, I rewatched these movies because they were on TV or because of just fun kind of things. I started feeling kind of differently about the whole thing, right?

00;45;38;17 - 00;46;00;21

Lucas Lixinski

I mean, they're still delightful romps, but. So I started learning a little bit more about the ethics and what was happening to those artifacts, but also then kind of having that presence, right, and having that knowledge a little bit more. You know, I went to see Indiana Jones as a much more complex and therefore richer character to explore many facets of what heritage like that.

00;46;00;23 - 00;46;18;23

Lucas Lixinski

So Indiana Jones in many ways primarily focuses a lot of heritage, like the arts, which is to protect heritage or safeguard heritage. And for the most part, it conflicts to what we do, which is to protect the heritage with why we do it right. We protect heritage for its own sake, and because we need knowledge, we need it for the museums and all of that.

00;46;18;25 - 00;46;38;14

Lucas Lixinski

But every now and then, like in, Temple of Doom, we have a complicating factor, right? And something that makes us think that the why we protect heritage can be very different. There's a community in Temple of Doom, or there's a ghost in Last Crusade. Right. Whose legacy merits respect even at the expense of the beautiful, powerful, and priceless artifacts?

00;46;38;22 - 00;46;53;05

Lucas Lixinski

Or to bring back to the 2020s for you on the timeline to be protected. In the Isle of Destiny, which kind of overrides Indiana Jones aspiration to just kind of see all of that unraveling in antiquity.

00;46;53;08 - 00;47;13;08

Jonathan Hafetz

And perspectives on heritage lore, as you discussed in your article, often written in frame by the victors. And this certainly would apply to the US versus Nazis and World War Two, but also to the US and the West more generally versus non-Western nations that they colonized. Did other films had this kind of victors perspective? Do you think?

00;47;13;10 - 00;47;33;20

Lucas Lixinski

Yeah, a little bit. And that's the thing in Temple of Doom at the end, you know, the British Army actually saved the community from the evil invaders. And I think that once we buy Indiana Jones as the hero and the people with whom he works as being on the quote unquote, right side, then we end up having as victors justice conversation almost normalized.

00;47;33;20 - 00;47;51;21

Lucas Lixinski

Right? We don't really question it anymore because we want to root for the hero. We want the ending to be a satisfying and happy ending. And of course, the arc should go to a storage facility as a result. But doing so is not only what we expect to happen, and also the best possible outcome. Never mind the US effectively looting the artifact.

00;47;51;24 - 00;48;28;26

Lucas Lixinski

So to extrapolate it into heritage lore more broadly, it's this tendency to normalize certain behavior as if it is the best outcome for heritage. So you know that museums get to take artifacts from everywhere that a 1970 convention doesn't. Ritual act that we were talking about earlier and heritage law kind of does a lot of that, because it has a tendency to erase the past and to go with the status quo of the moment when the heritage was neglected, declared to be heritage, which is this whole thing, you know, not because the 1970 convention, as a retro act, the moment it entered into force, what it did.

00;48;28;29 - 00;48;56;03

Lucas Lixinski

And that's not necessarily what people wanted it to do, but it is. What ended up happening is that it's validated everything that happened before 1970. All of that is outside law and therefore validated by the law, because we can't go that far. So the law all the time chooses victors, right? It enforces those narratives and it makes things hard to really discuss and be open, which of course is really complicated with heritage law because we're talking about identity, right.

00;48;56;03 - 00;48;59;12

Lucas Lixinski

And things that people feel very strongly about.

00;48;59;14 - 00;49;20;02

Jonathan Hafetz

Like the scene you mentioned before the outset of Raiders with Indiana Jones and Marcus, where there's that reference to. So, you know, it suggests that what Indiana Jones is doing is supported by morality as well as legally. But it doesn't get into the legal issues in this pre SCA period. But it suggests well and writer both on Indiana Jones aside throughout.

00;49;20;05 - 00;49;29;11

Lucas Lixinski

Exactly right. So as long as Indiana Jones wins then that's the version of history. That's the things we should fight for.

00;49;29;13 - 00;49;34;08

Jonathan Hafetz

So Lucas, I have to ask you, what's your favorite movie of the trilogy and why?

00;49;34;11 - 00;49;54;04

Lucas Lixinski

So as a moviegoer, or someone who wants to be entertained, Raiders is my favorite. It's like by a long shot. I think it's nearly flawless as a ROM, even though famously, there's this argument that if Indiana Jones hadn't been in the movie, the outcome would have been exactly the same. But anyway, leaving that aside, I think it's a fantastic movie.

00;49;54;06 - 00;50;14;19

Lucas Lixinski

But as a heritage lawyer and I know this is controversial as far as movie goers go, I'd say Temple of Doom is my favorite because it's the one movie right at center as a heritage creator and what they want and them keeping their heritage. And that kind of makes us think that heritage life's not just about a thing.

00;50;14;21 - 00;50;27;17

Lucas Lixinski

It's also and most fundamentally about people. So I would have to go with Temple of Doom wearing my academic hat, but my normal person, heart will always go to Raiders very well.

00;50;27;17 - 00;50;51;12

Jonathan Hafetz

But I have a degree in preparing for this podcast, and diving in on this subject really did deepen my appreciation for Temple of Doom, which also has some amazing action sequences. But Raiders of Core is the iconic one. It's been so great to talk with you about this, and, I love that to come out again, talk about monuments, men and women and gold, as well as some other great cultural preservation issues kind of going back, including movies like The Maltese Falcon.

00;50;51;14 - 00;51;02;02

Jonathan Hafetz

Yes, right. I haven't actually looked at it with the International Heritage Law hat on, but as I kind of think about it as you were talking, there's probably a lot there to unpack as well.

00;51;02;05 - 00;51;05;08

Lucas Lixinski

Absolutely. Yeah. And have you back any time.

00;51;05;11 - 00;51;07;15

Jonathan Hafetz

Well thanks again, Lucas. Great chatting with you.

00;51;07;21 - 00;51;08;08

Lucas Lixinski

Thank you.