Hijacked by Natter: Hijacked By Jesus

I posted about this in the natter thread, but I was taking a deeper look at the article and the examples list is... well, let's just say that over two-thirds of the examples have multiple sub-bullets. This page seems to attract natter like flies to rotting meat. Is there anything salvageable? I guess it's a trope in the sense of being a documented phenomenon in fiction, but if you strip out all the contested examples there might be a dozen left.

I have a hankering to chainsaw every example that's even slightly inaccurate, but before I do it I want some folks to weigh in.

edited 8th Jun '11 6:53:52 AM by Fighteer

I would say that before you do so, try to incorporate the legitimate sub-points into the main bullet entry, then slash the Actually's and walls of text. I'd offer to do it myself but I have to leave for work in 45 minutes...

I'll take a run through it and consolidate what's worth consolidating, Fighteer.

edited 8th Jun '11 7:17:42 AM by Madrugada

I cleaned up a lot of the examples. I stopped at Kingdom Of Heaven in film. Didn't really know what to do with that one.

The Disney Hercules and Temple of Doom examples still have multiple sub-bullets. There's got to be a way to consolidate them. I'm not even sure that the Temple of Doom example is legit.

Wow, I don't know how I missed those. Well, Hercules is one bullet now, and Indiana Jones is two—which I think is as small as it gets, since the second point is important, but only tangentially related to the first.

Removed the Kingdom Of Heaven example entirely. Yes, bad movie is bad, but it's only tangentially related to this trope.

Hmm, the Example Indentation is still all wrong.

Page still need help

Actually, I'm wondering if maybe the actual definition of the trope needs some help as well. As far as I can tell, it's just basically saying "A non-Christian god of death is made out to be Satan." However, I think the trope should ALSO focus on whether any additional non-Judeo-Christian figures have been transplanted into the Judeo-Christian cosmology, made to be expys or replacements for already established figures.

For example, with American Born Chinese, the graphic novel features the Monkey King and the other members of his party goin on their Journey to the West. But instead of helping the monk reach India, the birthplace of Buddhism, the journey is towards Israel, to act as the Three Wise Men in the Nativity Story.

I think we could avoid a lot of misconceptions with the trope if we didn't focus so much on the god of death = Satan thing, which might help out with the natter as well.

Isn't "death gods are evil" Everyone Hates Hades anyway?

Everyone Hates Hades was spun off as a subtrope of this trope, actually.

Um, what?

I'm pretty sure that makes it pretty clear that this isn't just "death god = Satan". That the examples may hew too close to that is not the description's problem.

I'm removing some nonexamples.

• Alladin: While the Catholic wedding is an example, simply removing Islam is not this trope.
• Beowulf (Lit): Changing the characters' religion isn't this trope.
• Twilight: Hades is a common euphemism for Hell. This is just nitpicking because it's Twilight.

Wow. Those examples were bad.

Agree with this.

Took out some of the natter in the Oral Traditions folder. Ugh. There's still quite a bit left that I didn't want to touch though.

edited 16th Oct '11 2:27:34 PM by Gillespie

I know Tropes Are Flexible, but many of the examples in the Oral Tradition section aren't even about Christianity. Some that are don't seem to fit either - Christianity in Japan disguising its symbols as Buddhist ones (and Buddhism borrowing symbolic elements from Christianity, such as a portraits of a young, pious-looking woman holding a child) somehow seems very different from what this trope is really about, which seems to be heavy localization of an existing religion in a work of fiction to make it more acceptable/relatable for the audience.

In fact, I'm not even sure we should have an Oral Tradition section here - it's pretty much a Real Life section, and has gone the same way those tend to go.

Buddhism could spawn a companion trope of its own if only I could think of any modern work examples: As it spread through Asia from India to China, Japan, Tibet and all the southeast Asian countries, it absorbed and integrated many of the places native deities and worship traditions along the way. However, on the whole, these changed Buddhism more than Buddhism changed them.

The oral tradition section is looking very cut-worthy, in my honest opinion. I mean, one of the examples basically says "this is a sensitive topic and probably shouldn't be discussed in-depth here" followed by several bulletpoints of natter.

I cleaned up the Oral Tradition section, but I still think a bit more could be done to improve it.

It doesn't really help that the laconic says "Every religion is just like Christianity", either. That's pretty much what most of the bad examples amount to.

Some of the examples in Oral tradition, such as the Holy Grail, are valid and should be kept. I'd be all for cutting examples about other actual religions being hijacked by Christianity (deities being identified as the Christian God, or Lucifer, for example).

Wow, mega fail.

Just cleaned up Live Action TV (except for Stargate, which I know very little about), and also took out a misused semi-colon. Permission to move all those orphaned Everyone Hates Hades examples onto the page they're supposed to be on?

I don't see why not. Go for it. Cleaned up the Western Animation section, removing the second mention of Disney's Hercules. Remind me, if it's an animated western film, does it go under films or western animation?

Films -- Animated

In response to the first post, this is a real trope and it legitimately happens, so it shouldn't be cut. It seems like the sort of page that would attract massive natter, though. Might be the sort of page that shouldn't have any Real Life section.

I also wonder what else belongs here. For example, the later seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess became a bizarre plot in which Xena and Gabrielle got the "job" of killing all the gods so Christianity could replace them. They also got crucified and resurrected, and Xena gave birth to a fatherless baby who was Eve. Is that this trope or something else?

Is there anymore work to be done here?