Indy & Dr. Mike: Is Boy to Global World History as Woman is to Domestic National Myth?

White I lndy & Dr. Mike: Is Boy to Global World History as Woman is to Domestic National Myth? Mimi White lndy & Dr. Mike: Is Boy to Global World History as Woman is to Domestic National Myth? Young Indiana Jones (Sean Patrick Flanery) is fully involved in the forces ofculture as a participant observer in historical events. 24 I Film & History Television as Historian | Special In-Depth Section Introducing lndy & Dr. Mike For several months in 1993 on Saturday nights, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles aired on ABC at the same time that Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was shown on CBS. Dr. Quinn was introduced mid-season , and its immediate ratings success secured its renewal for the following season, concomitant with the cancellation of the ratings-weak Indiana Jones Chronicles. In this context, both programs project a sense of "quality family television," deploying a specific range of referential and aesthetic markers while aiming to attract younger viewers along with their parents. More crucially, both programs are historical fictions offering revisionist histories, broadly conceived , and incorporating a sense of progressive multiculturalism into their respective historical constructions . This conjunction of institutional placement and multicultural historical narrative content presents an interesting case for comparative analysis. Both programs elaborate shifting perspectives on nationalism, internationalism, and multicultural understanding, engendering history for popular consumption in the process. Reading these programs in relation to one another demonstrates how primetime dramatic television series not only represent history, but also negotiate terms for historical understanding. Strategies introduced in this context include using the past as a site for investigating social-cultural concerns of the present; critiquing and revising the past from the perspective of the present; and even suggesting that the present is open to reexamination, from the perspective of a revised past. To the extent that these operations occur simultaneously, even in contradiction, the programs enact the limits and possibilities of historical fiction in commercial prime-time television. In this context, the question posed by this article's title can be answered in brief: yes. The glibness of this response can be gauged in direct proportion to the obvious theoretical implications of the title's interrogative ploy;1 but it does not begin to adequately account for the systematic ways in which the two programs revise history for contemporary viewers through their respective fictional narratives. A comparative analysis of the two programs discerns the manner in which television's multicultural historical fictions simultaneously articulate gender with ideas of progressive enlightenment on the one hand, and enact containments of diversity on the other. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1991-1993)2 lndy is the eponymous boy hero of YoungIndianaJones Chronicles. In the series he was originally portrayed by two different actors, each embodying the character at different ages. The younger lndy (Corey Carrier), about ten, travels around the world with his parents as his father, a Princeton professor, pursues lectures and research during a professional leave ofabsence. The older lndy (Sean Patrick Flanery), between 17 and 20, is an independent adventurer, who rebels against his father byjoining the Belgian army under an assumed name. He ends up fighting in Africa and at Verdun, becomes a spy, and works as a translator after the war. As a result lndy is placed in various global locales where he encounters famous historical figures including: Sigmund Freud, CarlJung, and Alfred Adler in Vienna (1908); TE. Lawrence first in Egypt (1908) and years later in Palestine (1917) and then in Paris (1919);Jiddu Krishnamurti in Benares, India (1910); Pablo Picasso and Norman Rockwell, along with Georges Braque, Edgar Degas, and Henri Rousseau in Paris (1908); Serge Diaghilev and Pablo Picasso in Barcelona (1917); Thomas Edison in NewJersey (1916); Kemal Ataturk in Istanbul (1918); Theodore Roosevelt in British East Africa (1909); Ho Chi Minh in Paris (1919); and Mata Hari in Paris (1916), to name only a few. Ifa boy (Corey Carrier as a younger lndy) is going to have a hunting teacher-who betterthan Teddy Roosevelt? Vol. 30.1 (March, 2000) | 25 White I lndy & Dr. Mike: Is Boy to Global World History as Woman is to Domestic National Myth? Through the course of these encounters, Indiana Jones (who uses the self-selected nickname in lieu of his father...