Misused: Cannibal Tribe

This is a quite specific subgenre of exploitation film (so correct uses are references to a specific kind of movie about cannibals), but lots of the examples are, as you could imagine, about tribes of cannibals appearing in any work. (We don't seem to have a general trope for that — we have Captured by Cannibals for when someone is, well, captured by them, and Cannibal Clan is about otherwise-civilised families With A Dark Secret).

First 15 related tropes:

Aguirre, the Wrath of God: Incorrect — tribe of cannibals
Music/Aqua: Incorrect — tribe of cannibals
Arabian Nights: Incorrect — tribe of cannibals
Artificial Zombie: Correct — cannibal B movie
B-Movie: Correct — cannibal B movie
Cannibal Clan: No context — mentioned as a related trope
Cannibal Ferox: Correct — cannibal B movie
Cannibal Holocaust: Correct — cannibal B movie
Cannibalism Superpower: Incorrect — tribe of cannibals
Carnivore Confusion: Incorrect — tribe of cannibals
Film/Casanova: Incorrect — tribe of cannibals
Chased by Angry Natives: Incorrect — tribe of cannibals
Colliding Criminal C Onspiracies: Incorrect — tribe of cannibals
Conan The Barbarian: Incorrect — tribe of cannibals
Crapsaccharine World: Incorrect — tribe of cannibals

So, that's 4 correct uses and one contextless one out of fifteen.

I'd suggest;
1) either Trope Transplant Captured by Cannibals to Cannibal Tribe, or keep them separate but redefine the latter to be exactly what it says on the tin.
2) Rename Cannibal Tribe (Cannibal Movie, Cannibal B Movie or something similar).

edited 8th Oct '12 5:09:00 PM by johnnye

Even assuming all not incorrect tropes are correct, there are still 20% incorrect ones, and the name seems to be the cause.

The question relevant to whether we should transplant or just rename seems to be "Is a clan of cannibals a trope in itself?" Well, it is a stock threat, though discredited now, so that probably counts as a trope.

edited 8th Oct '12 9:55:29 PM by AnotherDuck

Another possibility is to broaden the trope, so that it covers more than just this specific subgenre, and simply mention that there is a subgenre of films built around the trope, rather than having a separate article about the subgenre.

I think it is a trope. I was originally thinking we could just move all the examples to Captured by Cannibals, but that rules out times where they appear as merely a vague threat and never actually catch anyone.

We could do that, but it seems a shame as the article goes into such detail describing the subgenre. Some of that stuff could be moved to an article about the general trope, but a lot would have to be deleted.

Well, we could always make a Cannibal Tribe Genre page.

A transplant, yes. I think that may be the best solution, if we're to have a trope about cannibal tribes in general.

The Other Wiki calls this Cannibal film.

I think the genre should probably be Cannibal Film or Cannibal Tribe Genre. Transplant it to something clearer and make this about the tribe, which doesn't have to capture anyone.

Cannibal Film sounds good.

Cannibal Film is pretty decent. It seems a little narrow to be called a 'genre'.

Well, are there examples that aren't films of this genre? None on the page, but there might be some forgotten literature that plays with the same concept and tropes. On the other hand, I wouldn't see a problem with including those, if they appear at all, even if we rename it to Cannibal Film.

I have to wonder where Courtship Rite would fit in all of this. It's listed on the Eats Babies page as "the extremely rare non-evil, non-comedic version". Here, it could either be a subversion, or simply an extremely unusual version.

I think Cannibal Clan would cover that.

Really borderline. Yes, they're technically called clans in Courtship Rite, but Cannibal Clan seems to be more a straight horror trope about cannibal families, and tribe seems closer to what the work actually features.

(Technically, it's No Party Like a Donner Party, where the "party" has gone on for countless generations. I'm still curious how it might relate to these tropes, especially the new version of Cannibal Tribe.)

I'd say, from a brief overview of the page, that's just a fairly original variation on Cannibal Tribe. It doesn't sound like a pseudo-pornographic exploitation horror story; if it was more along the lines of Gor, I could see including it in Cannibal Film, but even then I don't think a couple of odd examples would be enough to pitch the trope as being a multi-media genre, it seems pretty solidly rooted in cinema.

What should we do with Captured by Cannibals? Keep it as a subtrope of the new Cannibal Tribe, or just make it a redirect, expand the definition and move over the examples? For reference, 33 wicks, 12 inbounds.

edited 14th Oct '12 3:48:44 AM by johnnye

I think it would be a new subtrope. There are canibal tribes that are just sort of generic enemies that don't end up capturing the heroes. One of them is a collective character trope. The other is an event trope.

Yes, but is it a necessary subtrope? If we have a trope for "there's a tribe of cannibals, with an implied threat that the heroes might be captured by them", do we need a separate trope for "a tribe of cannibals captures the heroes"?

Ok, I support Cannibal Film for the genre page, if that's what The Other Wiki calls it. We can even put it on the We Are Not Alone Index.

I agree that Captured by Cannibals should be a subtrope of the new Cannibal Tribe.

Basically, I think we need a description for the transplant, and some wick-sorting, and we should be good to go.

We should make sure that Cannibal Clan mentions how Cannibal Tribe differs.

edited 14th Oct '12 7:04:56 PM by Xtifr

Actually, thinking about it, Cannibal Culture might be a better name for the trope we're going for. It's basically a civilization that eats people. That way it's sort of the high level supertrope. There are lots of cultures that are cannibalistic that show up in fiction. Not all of them are tribal.

That may be true (can't think of any examples off the top of my head), but there's definitely a stereotype when you mention "cannibals" of a savage tribe on some undiscovered island with bones through their noses and a big cooking pot on a fire. That's the basic trope Cannibal Film and Captured by Cannibals are playing off. So if we're going to have the supertrope, it should be in addition to that, not instead of.

Here's a Sandbox for Cannibal Tribe.

Looking through the examples on Captured by Cannibals, I think it'll be tough to keep the two tropes distinct. A Cannibal Tribe is basically a Chekhov's Gun, after all — even if nobody's ever caught by them, the only purpose for their existence is to suggest that threat.

For example, there are several examples of Dicussed Trope on CBC; people worried they'll be captured by hypothetical cannibals, but it never happens. Do those stay where they are, move to Cannibal Tribe, or go on both? If the cannibals are there, but they don't eat anyone, do we take it off CBC altogether or leave it as a discussed trope? In the latter case, that would apply to most examples of Cannibal Tribe, because if they exist, someone's going to talk about being caught by them.

I tend to suspect that most of the Discussed Trope examples on Captured by Cannibals are only there because we didn't have a proper Cannibal Tribe trope, and should probably be moved there. Exceptions, of course, are those that don't involve a tribe; where the cannibal(s) in question are either a Cannibal Clan or simply an individual cannibal (serial killers and the like).

Which is a point worth remembering: Captured by Cannibals is not strictly a subtrope of Cannibal Tribe because it can involve a Cannibal Clan instead.

Someone just sent the sandbox to the cutlist under the mistaken impression that it was an old relic. I pushed the big red button and left a note, but if any mods are around who can do something more to make the sandbox not get cut, it would be nice.

Sandbox restored, let's move.

Is johnnye still around? The sandbox only has five examples, which seems a little sparse.

The big open question seems to be: should we move the "discussed" examples from Captured by Cannibals to here, making them just regular examples? I'm in favor, but it would be nice to have a second opinion. And if not, do we need to go to YKTTW?

(It's possible we'll need YKTTW in any case, but I'm trying to be optimistic that we can get this resolved sooner rather than later.)