Box 1.4
Anthropology and Popular
Culture
Anthropology has an interesting relationship
with popular culture. Anthropology and
anthropologists are firmly embedded in popular
culture, and popular culture is a topic of interest
that anthropologists study.
Real anthropological work, featuring the work
of real archaeologists, is often featured in semischolarly publications like National Geographic.
Anthropological research, especially the work
of palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists,
often reaches mainstream media, albeit usually
through the filters of journalists or social media,
and often with lack of a critical perspective.
Anthropology has become firmly embedded in
movies, television, and video games. Popular
examples include the Indiana Jones series
of movies and the Tomb Raider/Lara Croft
video game and movie franchise. Fictional
anthropologists have been portrayed in popular
television series, including Star Trek, Dr. Who, The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and many more.
Figure 1.9 Indiana Jones
Fictional anthropologists are embedded in popular
culture, including movies, television, novels, comic
books, and video games. One of the best-known fictional
anthropologists is Indiana Jones.
Credit: Courtesy of the Everett Collection
Anthropologists are occasionally involved in
the creation of movies. Primatologist Michael
Reid, for example, served as a consultant on ape
behavior for the Hollywood production of Rise
of the Planet of the Apes (2011), and linguistic
anthropologist Christine Schreyer created the
Kryptonian language for the Superman movie
Man of Steel (2013). Keeping with the theme
of artificially created languages, Schreyer
also studies the community of contemporary
speakers who have learned the Na’vi language
created for the movie Avatar (2009).
Sometimes anthropology is associated with
popular culture through its link with celebrities and
politics. Ann Dunham and her work, for example,
became popularized after the election of Barack
Obama, the 44th President of the United States.
Obama is the son of Dunham, who primarily
practiced applied anthropology in Indonesia. In
2014, Ashraf Ghani, who achieved his PhD and
taught anthropology in the United States, was
elected president of Afghanistan, a fact that
became well known in mainstream media.
Many anthropologists focus on popular culture
as a scholarly area of interest. Anthropologist
Shirley Fedorak (2009), for example, has
authored a book called Pop Culture: The Culture
of Everyday Life, in which she explores such
topics as television, music, the Internet, folk
and body art, sports, food, and wedding
rituals through the lens of anthropology. There
are also many other books offering critical
perspectives on the portrayal of anthropology,
especially archaeology, in popular culture.
Examples include Box Office Archaeology:
Refining Hollywood’s Portrayals of the Past by Julie
Schablitsky (2007); Digging Holes in Popular
Culture: Archaeology and Science Fiction by Miles
Russell (2002); From Stonehenge to Las Vegas:
Archaeology as Popular Culture by Cornelius
Holtorf (2005); and Archaeology and the Media
by Timothy Clack and Marcus Brittain (2007).
© 2016 University of Toronto Press
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Through the Lens of Anthropology: An Introduction to Human Evolution and Culture
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