Escapist: Christianity and "All Myths are True" collection

Hinduism seems to have the distinction of being one of the msot widely worshipped religions on the planet, yet is consistently represented in media (particulalry in the fantasy/science fiction/supernatural genres) in a manner that is insensitive at the least. Off the top of my head, there is Indiana Jones which shows Hindus practicing human sacrifice among other things, ther is the tv show 'Supernatural' which has an episode where assorted ancient gods along with hindu gods are shown to be cannibalistic spirits, then are later killed easily by an abrahamic angel. The show Show 'Sanctuary' had Kali as a giant psychic crab, and Stargate had hindu gods and godesses as parasitic evil megalomaniac worms. A lot of modern media tends to represent Hinduism as if there aren't Hindus around to get upset by this sort of thing. Yes, Christianity is sometimes targetted, but rarely to the same degree as ancient religions or non-abrahamic religions.

Honestly, the msot suprising thing about this situation is that people are suprised that some Hindus might be upset about their religion being misrepresented (again).
Stargate used ALL forms of gods. Including but not limited to. Celtic, Egyptian, greek, Sumarian, babylonian, Irish (different then celtic), African, Slavic, Mayan, and of course chinese. Needless to say they covered their bases. Kinda makes it justified if they get everyone LOL. But we didn't exactly see a big cry of outrage against them did we? they did 218 episodes and how many spin offs? and of course the first movie was a great sci fi/fantasy original.

Also in stargate all original myths were left as being considered factual in the show. The story begins after all other historical event had factually occurred. Therefore, its kinda like fan fiction or a phyical continuation of what and where the gods all ended up. So, I don't know, its just creativity taken places. Its hard to take it serious.
Note however that there was only one abrahamic 'god' on the show, who doesn't even go by that name for most of his appearence, using the egyptian name of 'Sokar' instead of 'Satan'. They were very diplomatic with their handling of him, saying he was 'impersonating' Satan instead of being the source of the myths, note the difference. In the entire series, I can only remember one time where the implications of living in a galaxy full of god-impersonators for the abrahamic religions is questioned-at which point it is essentially dismissed with 'that's different' and never mentioned again. There aren't Free Jaffa trying to get members of the stargate program to 'renounce their false gods', wheras pagan gods are routinely questioned. While the Ori seem to fill the abrahamic gap thematically in many ways with their religion, they are never stated or implied that they are christians or that the Ori founded christianity. Even so, their hilarious technology of the obviously christian-inspired gods over the disorganised, impotent technological magpie pagan gods could be interpreted as beign some sort of symbolic victory of christiantiy over the old religions.

Basically, the legitimacy of the Abrahamic faiths is never seriously questioned, despite being exactly the sort of settign where one would expect it to be, whereas every pagan god bar the Asgard and lord Yu is debased and evil by assumption, including ones that are currently widely worshipped, the implication being that it's OK to portray Hindu gods in a bad light, but questioning the legitimacy of the Abrahamic religions is a no-go.
Very accurately put, but (other then my joke that its okay if you cover all your bases) I still stand by that its simply creativity put forward. There are plenty of instances where other religions are inaccurately assaulted. Your own point is that stargate had only a few instances where they went against the original lore. Since they are the stardard with which we are discussing many other medias actually fall far far short of this mark. If you think about it, there's about 16 books of the bible, of which only several are integral to the over all conception of the religion. Proving that tangential work has been arbitrated since the beginning of writing. All of which are positive and negative in nature. Its conjecture to assume since one instance is sited that a group is being targeted. nor multiple uses either since our world has grown small and originality in short supply.


The examples were Hindu because the article is about Hinduism, I would contest that it is not unique in being targetted, only in that it is the one of the largest religions that it is acceptable to target. I would also contest that it is 'simply creativity put forward', as when abrahamic religions are targetted, they are usually targetted more subtly. For example, Breath of Fire II used a lot of catholic symbolism and had an antagonist styled off of the abrahamic god, but they avoided using the names of christian figures directly, in this way, the viewer knows that it is inspired by christianity, but not intended to be representative of christianity. This allows for the exploration of traits of said religious structure without outright condemning it. In video games and TV shows however, Greek, Babylonian, Norse, Hindu etc gods are often used without any alteration of the structure of the religious pantheon or so much as a name change, thus these characters aren't intended to be inspired by their source material, but rather are intended to be representative of their source material, typically with some altercations to make them 'fit' better-usually at a cost of the meaning behind these gods. This shows either a profound ignorance or disintrest in faithful representation of these gods and goddesses.

In short, non-abrahamic deities have been essentially commodified into stock characters. Add to this the fact that these deities are almost always cast in a negative light and are frequently portrayed as killable entities (not divine) and you have systemic religious ethnocentrism when it comes to religious characters in video games, TV, and movies. Additionally, it cannot be stressed enough that Hinduism, unlike many of the other religions cast in this role, is one of the most prominant religions in the world, yet is treated as if it is a relic of the past alongside the likes of Zeus and Ishtar, which displays a flagrant disregard for the religion and cultural identity of a large portion of the world's inabitants.