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Indiana Jones and the Illicit Trafficking and Repatriation… 159

significant requests by indigenous peoples for the repatriation of their
traditional objects at the international level. The vast bulk of these objects left
their possession long before the UNESCO and UNIDROIT Conventions came
into effect. It is this division or lack within this broader repatriation legislation
which forces attention to informal sources in popular culture.
Such sources simultaneously reflect both the ideologies of cultural
nationalism and cultural internationalism. Ideology refers to a way of
understanding reality and society which assumes that some ideas are self-
evidently true while others are self-evidently biased if not untrue. Always
shared by members of a group or groups in society, one group‘s ideology often
conflicts with another‘s [Bignell, 2002, p. 24].
Coined by a leading scholar in the field of art law, John Merryman‘s
binary categorization of the broader repatriation debate has become dominant
in the field and permeates almost all of the research it has spawned. Cultural
internationalism involves ―thinking about cultural property… as components
of a common human culture, whatever their places of origin or present
location, independent of property rights or national jurisdiction‖ [Merryman,
p. 831]. Ultimately, it always denies demands for repatriation. On the other
hand, cultural nationalism involves thinking about cultural property ―as part of
a national cultural heritage. This gives nations a special interest, implies the
attribution of national character to objects, independently of their location or
ownership, and legitimizes national export controls and demands for the
‗repatriation‘ of cultural property‖ [Merryman, p. 832].
The Indiana Jones trilogy illustrates such diametrically opposed
ideologies. For instance, the depiction of archaeologists through Indiana Jones
reflects both stress on keeping the treasures at the center of these films in a
museum and also returning them to source peoples. Similarly, the
representation of the profession of archaeology on the one hand as a legitimate
scientific pursuit and on the other hand as sheer unadulterated adventure, often
little more than legitimized looting, provides an imaginary expression of actual
separation between archeologists, divided between cultural internationalists
and nationalists. Finally, the representation of cultural objects and their
repatriation through various treasures and their final dispositions in both
museums and with various source reflects the contrary ideologies.
Drawing heavily on the concept of legal semiotics as developed by
Duncan Kennedy [Kennedy], Alan Audi set the foundation for exposing this
divided community and its discourse through a legal semiotic analysis of
conventional sources that comprise research into what he terms the ―cultural
property argument‖, which essentially reflects the research into the broader