YKTTW clash, possiblly repair?: Cargo Cult

Courtesy links:
Trope: Cargo Cult
YKTTW proposal: God Guise

Background:
While developing the trope "God Guise" in YKTTW, it seems like there's a fair amount of overlap with Cargo Cult. However, upon further investigation, it seems like Cargo Cult itself might need repairs.

As it stands, the trope description refers to a plot where the protagonists are mistaken as gods by a "primitive" culture, and their subsequent actions to fix the confusion (or exploit it). Not only is this a mismatch for the real definition of a "Cargo Cult", but some of the examples listed are for fictional versions of real cargo cults (a group of natives worshiping an inanimate object). Furthermore, the trope doesn't cover smaller-scale instances of this idea, such as Chris Knight pretending to be God in Real Genius...which is what God Guise was trying to cover.

As I see it, there are several possible actions we can take:

• Expand the existing Cargo Cult trope to cover all instances of characters pretending to be gods, and add the God Guise examples into it.
• Narrow down Cargo Cult to instances of natives worshiping inanimate objects, and use God Guise to cover instances of characters pretending to be gods.
• Keep Cargo Cult as it is, and use God Guise for instances when the targets being fooled is a small group (individuals, not entire cultures/countries/worlds).

Thoughts?

—R.J.

edited 28th Feb '11 6:35:37 PM by rjung

Boy they both clash with Clarke's Third Law.

edited 28th Feb '11 6:36:14 PM by Raso

Depends on how the ruse is carried out. The Real Genius and Honey I Shrunk The Kids examples from God Guise don't use any sufficiently advanced technology, for instance.

—R.J.

Its really a lot of overlap take Star Trek TNG.

• Star Trek The Next Generation: The season 4 episode "Devil's Due" has the crew trying to discredit a technological con artist who claims to be the devil of not only the planet of the week, but every planet.
  • Noteworthy in that the technology isn't even sufficiently advanced; it's just been dressed-up to look more impressive than it really is.
  • In "Who Watches The Watchers", Picard deliberately invokes this trope in an attempt to convince the natives that he is not a god.
    • He almost fails.

edited 28th Feb '11 6:44:15 PM by Raso

Clarke's Third Law is about technology being mistaken for magic, not a person being mistaken for a God. You could theoretically pull of a God Guise with actual magic. And technology being mistaken for magic doesn't mean that people think you're a God. They could just think you're a wizard.

edited 28th Feb '11 7:05:41 PM by shimaspawn

Any thoughts? Or is this a "Nobody cares about Cargo Cult, do whatever you want" deal?

—R.J.

edited 1st Mar '11 11:27:35 AM by rjung

I like narrowing it to worshiping cargo. That's closer to the real world definition.

^support

If we go that route, then we can launch God Guise as "characters pretending to be god(s)". Fixing the links will be a bit of work, but that's the way the trope bounces...

—R.J.

Okay, launched God Guise, cleaned up Cargo Cult, and updated a bunch of wicks.

—R.J.

But why did you replace my Cargo Cult link on Parody Religion page?

There's no reason to fight about it. Parody Religions can be either a God Guise or a Cargo Cult. It doesn't have to be only one.

I'm hoping Wiki Magic(tm)(R)(c) will fix my ham-fisted errors.

—R.J.

^It already did. . I changed the page to list both.