Matchstick Men in Picture and Song

Matchstick men in fluid convergence

I was not quite 3 years old when Status Quo released their song "Pictures of Matchstick Men." Not quite 3 years into college (a time I refer to as my Second Sophomore Year), I heard the Camper Van Beethoven version. I love both, and not quite 3 decades later, it's about time to tackle the topic here.

In the usual google lead-up, I learned that there is a Nick Cage (not his real name) movie called "Matchstick Men," but I've never seen it, and cannot stand that guy. So much so that I will not succumb to the temptation to snark the hell out of him. Nick who? I forget, except for the withered appendix of my memory that still hates him for turning into such utter shit after getting my hopes up with Raising Arizona.

The other web-search surprise was learning about L. S. Lowry, the British artist whose paintings were chock full of angular people who came to be termed "matchstick men." I've not read art critics take him on, but wikipedia implies that quite a few of them wrote him off as a naive, not highly accomplished, artist of the ilk that insiders like to call Outsider (but without the allure of insanity or melanin-enriched ethnicity). Apparently he refused a knighthood and several other honors, so I'm inclined to admire his outsiderness.

What strikes me, though, about his paintings is not the angularity of the individuals, but the fluidity of the collective. Dozens or even hundreds of people walk through the frame, stiff in microscopic isolation, perhaps, but in the whole view of the painting, they illustrate the fluid dynamics of crowds. Converging on a football game as above, or streaming out of factories, weaving through plazas, eccentrically erasing grids.

Crowds of individuals, each maybe set on a line, collectively chaotic, but still expressing a Flow. Good paintings to squint at or view from across the room. Approach closer if you want, focus on an individual or a family (despite their simplicity of form, they are individuals, not a Waldo among them), but for me, the box of Matchstick Men scattered across the canvas of industrial Britain is more interesting.

I cannot really guess what Status Quo was aiming for with their song. Maybe just fame and money, maybe a message. What they hit was a psychedaelic nerve, and their song has been played and played again for decades. Not complex, "naive" perhaps, but an alluring and persistent flow.

Lowery with an "e" and Campany

Then there's these guys. Older than when they covered Pictures of Matchstick Men, and apparently much more sensitive to light, what with the sunglasses. The Camper Van Beethoven version of the song is one of those few covers that exceeds the original without being a radical departure. Faithful covers so often fall into the tepid soup of mediocrity, but not this one. Not that it's without original flourishes (especially live), but the simple power of the original riff cannot be abandoned and still be the same song. Alls I ever hear is it and you.

Nemesis: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Ready, set, steal!

Even for a procrastinator, I've put off facing off with my nemesis long enough. So long I had to rent the movie to remember anything beyond the melting nazi (but not enough after that to suppress memory once more). Enough years between release and review for me to have kids who can mock the old-timeyness of the production values and special effects. Nearly long enough for the movie to meet the federal threshold for being historic.

Until such time as archaeologists can officially start considering the locations (AD 2031), they must satisfy themselves with the film. Raiders sits proudly astride the canon of Archaeology Training Films, if only because we cannot avoid it, along with Planet of the Apes (for the second smartest character in the movie, an archaeologist chimp, and of course for the material culture images from another branch of the primate evolutionary tree), Platoon (for the jungle-stalking hand gestures), and,...and some other stuff.

Archaeologists cannot escape Dr. Jones. People always ask where my whip is (I got your bullwhip right here, buddy), and about the hardest thing this non-conformist ever did was buy a hat that vaguely resembles what everyone thinks I am supposed to wear. [For the record, it is a locally made Filson, whose rain-shedding sun-shading excellence makes the inevitable calls of "Hey, Indiana!" bearable.] Most Americans, and plenty of the rest of the world at this late date, know about as much about archaeology from the Indiana Jones movies as from anywhere else.

From the base of excavation to the top of the ivory tower, we archaeologists cringe at what the public thinks of us based on these blockbuster figments. Other than chrono-stupidity of biblical proportions ("Hey, you finding any dinosaurs?"), the perception that archaeologists hunt treasure ranks high among our existential banes. An interesting thing about the movie (oh yeah, I'm supposed to be writing a movie review) is that the protagonist is in fact presented as a procurer-for-hire, an expert in the occult, and to the extent he is a professor of archaeology at all, it is only so that he may cause coeds to swoon until he is called out on feats of daring-do. Neither 'raider' nor 'occulticist' has yet made it onto the list of sub-disciplines recognized by academe, and the fact that this flick shows him being recruited by spooks (who inexplicably demand to hold a top-secret conversation ins a large echo-ey hall) absolutely hammers home that Indy is to get the goods before the Germans, not stop and take notes, screen all the dirt, and all that other boring shit. Under no circumstances is he to waste time mapping a site, other than to find treasure. [Ahh, treasure, the worst of archaeotropes.]

There is, of course, a love interest, as is so often not the case for dedicated shovelbums, nomad-ing their way through their region of choice, living in cheap motels and on cheapskates' checks. No, it is not one of the college girls. Indiana Jones needs something more complex and mature than that: his professor's daughter. Who, I was surprised to learn upon consulting imdb, is not played by Deborah Winger. No, it is Karen Allen, who to my knowledge has never posed for a magazine spread french-kissing a dog, which helps distinguish her from Deb. Whoever it is, the character turns out to be a far more accurate take on an archaeologist man's mate: she can drink her weight in the alcohol of any nation, she looks good in a dress but prefers more practical wear, and she can hold her own in a fight. Come to think of it, those are also the qualifications for a pirate's girlfriend.

At this point in this post, I cannot see the sense in trying to summarize the action or the plot, or to aim for literary criticism. What's the value in pointing out that Natives are portrayed as bloodthirsty, Mestizos as duplicitous, African skippers as good-hearted slave-traders, and Arab shovelbums as cowardly buffoons? Or plodding my way through the large data set of un-archaeological actions, noting each and every professional and technical objection? [OK, maybe just one: after uttering the most hilarious line he gets--"Belloq's staff is too long"--Indy uses a staff that is even longer still, based on the units specified on the Staff of Ra, yet I am asked to suspend disbelief... Oh yeah, that's some prime geek-crit there.]

Belloq, the obligatory nemesis. Like all European stereotypes deployed for this film--the Frenchman is a conniving lightweight, the Nazi is enamored with sado-masochistic coat-hangers--his is entirely accurate. A bad guy not because he steals priceless cultural heritage, but because he steals it for the wrong people. At least he managed to convince those wrong people to make a pit stop on some island to engage in a fake Jewish ritual so that Indy and his androgynously-monikered Marion could have a conversation while tied up together, just before denouement. Unlike most US presidents, I have decided that the nemesis of my nemesis is not my friend.

Oh, Doc Jones, what am I to make of you? The franchise eventually had archaeologists doing all sorts of offensive things, from using femurs for torches to enrolling a spunky kid and an addled Sean Connery in his adventures. Oh, and most of all, making Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull...unforgivable. Snatching treasure you don't need, Harrison?

But on the other hand, there's Indiana Jones, making archaeology cool. Had Hollywood inexplicably portrayed archaeologists doing what they normally do: digging slowly, taking notes, spending untold hours weighing, illustrating, researching and writing,...if they'd showed all that, nobody would think our job is interesting. And Indiana Jones hates nazis, like most archaeologists; that's a good thing.

So yeah. Raiders of the Lost Ark kicked off one of those sprees that alters culture, that casts a type so solidly the populace cannot escape. Archaeologists are stuck with Indiana Jones like Nixon had Rich Little and comedians have Seinfeld. [Yes, there are more up-to-date analogs, but dammit, I am an archaeologist.]