Very bad snowclone New Crowner: 02/15/12: Token Deity

Okay, fair point.

BTW, we're supposed to leave the crowner running for at least three days, right?

Yes, we are. Otherwise I would have called it by now.

Yeah, I just wasn't sure if it was just three days or a whole week. We really need a stickied thread or a guidelines page that codifies the typical (but reasonably flexible) procedure(s) for the various kinds of crowners here.

Three days or until there's consensus. Sometimes they need a little more time.

Do we have a trope about the stereotypical portrayal of deities (ex. a white male)? Basically, the opposite of this trope.

"God looks like people in my culture/ethnic/nationality group" is so common as to be barely worth mentioning.

You might be looking for Grandpa God, the subversion of which is part of the trope's reason for existence according to its description.

edited 13th Feb '12 11:37:55 AM by MarqFJA

That seems like it. Thank you.

Crowner locked.

Okay, current suggestions for alternate names: God Is Not A White Male, Divine Token Minority, and Alternate Deity Appearance Interpretation.

Created the alt titles crowner here with a few of the suggestions there.

Any new name suggestions that any of you think are better than the current ones? Just checking, that's all.

edited 16th Feb '12 9:59:10 AM by MarqFJA

Why "token"? That word has many definitions, notably "Done for the sake of appearances or as a symbolic gesture" and "as a matter of form only; nominal", and the trope doesn't fit any of them.

Because the trope has NOTHING to do with Tokens or Minorities but people keep trying to make the title more misleading.

edited 16th Feb '12 7:34:09 PM by shimaspawn

I don't like Divine Token Minority. This trope really does not have much to do with any of the token tropes. If you had a movie with an all black cast and a black God, it would still be this trope, but they wouldn't be a token minority there.

Why "token"? That word has many definitions, notably "Done for the sake of appearances or as a symbolic gesture" and "as a matter of form only; nominal", and the trope doesn't fit any of them.

Those definitions describe this trope exactly!

It's a trope about casting God as a minority for the sake of appearance, or as a symbolic gesture. It's making God a minority as a token gesture.

If there's a clear reason for making God a minority, I would even say that it doesn't count as this trope. This is just about having a minority God for the sake of appearing not racist, or, in other words, for the sake tokenism.

I like "God is not ___" for a name, since this trope is about playing with people's conceptions of how God will look

edited 16th Feb '12 7:52:26 PM by abk0100

The trope description does not agree.

"Done badly, it comes across as an Anvilicious attempt at generating liberal guilt, and a particularly extreme use of the Magical Negro trope."

I don't know, that seems like exactly what I was talking about.

That's only when it's done badly, though.

Still, if the creators of a movie specifically make sure not to cast God as a white man, and there's no in-story justification for it, it's tokenism.

But half (more? when this is "done well" anyway) of the time there is some reason God is black (or whatever).

Is that true?

Just going through the Film section, every example besides 2 has a minority God just for the sake of having a minority God. (Baggar Vance and Major League are the ones I'm not including)

edit: and going trough the TV section, about 7 have no justification, and the rest are just people discussing the trope.

edited 16th Feb '12 8:24:54 PM by abk0100

"Done well, it can be a subtle and humorous take on discrimination."

Having a title that refers specifically to the trope being "done badly" is... bad.

I'd say that doing this trope "badly" is just the most basic way to play this trope.

If there's a problem, it's just the fact that the description is worded the way it is.

Changing the description from "sometimes there is a good reason for the deity to be black (etc), but sometimes that is nominal" to "the deity is black (etc) and that is nominal" is a pretty major shift in meaning.