The Problem with Adventure

And can it be fixed?

I grew up wanting an adventure. To this day I still want to go an adventure. But not the dull ‘adventures’ that Instagram influencers and Google sell you, which amount to nothing more than a ride on a rollercoaster or a trip to an overpopulated tourist destination somewhere in Europe. No I mean adventure. Action! Excitement! Daring do! Life or death moments of suspense. The thrill of the chase. In short, I watched a lot of Indiana Jones as a kid, and it’s been a depressing realisation as an adult that I will never get to go on that kind of adventure. Though that’s probably a good thing. But recently I was given pause to think about why I don’t see adventures like this depicted in media today (or at least not in the same way as when I was a kid).

After reading yet another article about how problematic Temple of Doom is, I wanted to examine the rationale behind the constant finger wagging over that film specifically, but also about the genre as a whole. This got me to thinking about the fact that the whole genre of adventure fiction is problematic. And the reason why being that, they always involve some sort of activity that negatively impacts innocent people.

Indiana Jones invades foreign countries and steals their historic artefacts, demanding they “belong in a museum”. There’s usually some form of property…