A rebuttal to the Raiders Minimization episode of the Big Bang Theory

Amy's thoughts on Raiders of the Lost Ark caused Sheldon's jaw to drop. Here
she is closing his mouth, but he's still none too happy about her ruining his favorite movie.

Last night, The Big Bang Theory aired an episode called "The Raiders Minimization." Sheldon Cooper and girlfriend Amy Farrah Fowler finished watching the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which it turns out is one of Sheldon's favorites. Amy "ruined" it for Sheldon by saying that Indiana Jones is completely unnecessary to the plot. "With or without Indiana Jones, the Nazis would have still gotten the ark, they still would have opened it, and they still would have gotten their faces melted off. He contributed nothing to the overall story."

It's an interesting premise, but as a writer, I immediately did not like what she was saying. And for a room of supposedly high IQ's, they should have seen this fallacy in Amy's argument. Allow me to explain through example. If Amy had been in my home and said this, my rebuttal would have been thus: "Without Indiana Jones, no one would have known about the story. Therefore he is actually the most important person to the plot. He's the active narrator."

Indiana Jones and Marion in Raiders of the Lost Ark

There are many examples of this kind of storytelling. Moby Dick has a narrator called Ishmael who ends up being the only survivor after the white whale kills everyone. Raiders of the Lost Ark is the same kind of story. If you remove the narrator, Indiana Jones, then the whole story collapses because no one knows about it because no one survives to tell the tale. In other words, he's the point of view character through which we see everything. Even Marion couldn't have been a stand-in because had Indy not been around to save her, the Nazis would have killed her in Nepal and then taken the amulet for themselves.

So how do you like them apples, Amy Farrah Fowler? It looks like Raiders of the Lost Ark is not so minimal after all (and in my opinion) remains one of the great triumphs of fiction. I do have to admit though, that until Amy brought it up in last night's episode, I never realized that Indiana Jones is completely unnecessary to the ultimate outcome (and that is probably much closer to what she meant).

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