Raiders of the Lost Pause Button

How is he a bad guy?

I am in the “driving and crying while listening to Sinead O’Connor’s Black Boys on Mopeds” part of my cycle. It was a…hard weekend. Urgent care for Rowan, a double playdate that went horribly awry, laughably awry if I weren’t premenstrual and somehow left alone with 4 kids……but before all that…!

Fridays are HALLOWED MOVIE NIGHTS in this household, and this weekend we decided to introduce the kids to the Indiana Jones series. Zoe may still be too short for the Disneyland ride, but it became quickly apparent that is because she is also too smol to understand a single frame of this movie, or at least watch it without interrupting no less than 9 thousand times.

Here are the questions our 4 and 5 year olds asked within the first - and ONLY - five minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark:

Are those monkeys?
Where did the donkey go?
Are those monkeys still?
Why did they shoot him??
Where are they?
Is that a Mexican statue?
How is he going to get through there?
Is that a spiderweb?
What could he do?
Are those happy tears?
Is there going to be a girl in here?
What’s her name?
What was that?
Why is he taking out sand?
How did a poison dart go out of there?
What is down there?
Is the sand not equal weight?!
How is he a bad guy??

Attempting to quiet an audience member while appeasing their expositional needs is not for the faint of heart. The barrage of situational interrogation was like a World War I fusillade coming at me so fast I, myself, felt not unlike like Indiana Jones. One hand gripping a slice of frozen (heated) pizza, the other fist wrapped tightly around our universal remote, I swatted away the more answerable questions (“Are those monkeys still?”) while leaping my nimble fingers to the pause button to attend to the more impossible questions (“What could he do?”).

Lightly sweating, about 4 minutes in I finally asked them if they really wanted me to answer these questions or if they were just talking to themselves, in a way. They assured me they wanted answers. I panicked over the existential nature of a question like “How is he a bad guy” — I just don’t know Alfred Molina’s (Satipo’s) back story, I don’t know what kind of parents or childhood he had, or why his interests led him to betraying Indiana Jones, though now that I think about it maybe he was pissed he was being likely paid pennies to have the spoils of his native land excavated and stolen right out from under him. Now that I think about it, that moment is a great lesson in post-colonial theory and greed, which both of my FAIRNESS-obsessed children could stand to hear another lecture on despite me donating one into the ether every day before the sun sets yet again.

I was inspired to show them Raiders of the Lost Ark because last week, I had the good fortune of observing a callback session for an UNNAMED FILM PROJECT, where woman after woman had to come into the room and be, in effect, Indiana Jones. They wore tank tops and tight cargo pants, their hair carefully tousled (“MUST LOOK JUNGLE FUCKABLE - PERFECT TEETH AND TITS” the casting notice may well have read). Dozens of them took to the camera, attempting to deliver us from galumphing dialogue on a page to the South American jungle, all from the confines of a creaky chair. I will never get over the majesty of watching 30 people do the same exact dialogue, though at the end of it I’m always left with more questions than answers. Why some leap off the screen better than others, grab you and don’t let you go, and why they’re not always the ones that get the job. What never ceases to fascinate me when watching acting, though - how IS he going to get through there?

This week my essay for Romper was published, on the humbling tyranny of the photos our kids take of us. Inspired by a thread in my mom group, it took on a life of its own. Honored that

Culture Study

and

So Many Thoughts

linked to it in their last posts! You can read it here! Feel free to send me a DM with a horrible pic your kids have taken of you, I’m @flamelikeme on IG, I so love and cherish the ones I’ve already received.