One Man's Rubbish Is Another Man's Religion: The Podcast

Contemporary Design Culture: Week 12

Please see "How making a podcast about WWII Pacific Cults made me a more Eco focused designer" for my post-podcast reflection

Below is the Script for the 1940s to 1950s podcast on The Untold Story of The Pacific Cargo Cults of World War 2 by Leah O'Donoghue, Matthew Patterson, Gráinne Tyrell and myself.

*Audio Starts* A coke bottle washes ashore on a Melanesian Island and is quickly collected by a local man. He can hardly contain his excitement as he returns to the village, eager to show the gift and wondering what this offering could mean *Audio Fades*

Leah: Hi guys welcome to our podcast. I’m Leah…

Grainne: and I’m Grainne…

Leah: and over in the corner we have Matthew and John, our producers. Today we’re going to be discussing Cargo Cults the untold story of WW2. So Grainne you’re going to have to give me a little bit of context because I’m not really sure what’s going on here

Grainne: Ok I’m going to tell you about three cases and then I’ll explain a bit more. So on the island of Tanna, which is within the islands of Vanatua, there is a group of islanders who worship John Frum. Now, John from isn't a real person and he never was but he represents an American soldier and they worshipped this American soldier. Similarly on the same island there's a Prince Phillip movement, who is the husband of a Queen Elizabeth 2nd. On another island Yali, about Papua New Guinea, they were worship Tom Navy who was a real American. So these are called cargo cults and they’re focused in the Melanesian islands which is located in Oceana, it includes Fiji, Papua New Guinea, The Solomon Islands amongst others and basically these cargo cults, also known as Pacific island cults of World War Two, started popping up in the past century but we're going to focus mainly on the 1940s to the 1950s when they really became prevalent and why we think that was and it was closely related to World War Two.

Leah: How did these Islanders live before the soldiers arrived?

Grainne: That is a good question and is also very relevant. So they had a very basic lifestyle and it was quite Neolithic they didn't have any beasts of burden, everything that they had they had made by hand and they work hard to gather basic ingredients or the basic materials needed for it and they have very basic diet of vegetables and grains and so on. So you can imagine that they really gave worth to their belongings, they really had an importance to them and their social system is actually really important. So in these islands people’s social status is defined by how much others are indebted to them, so the more wealthy or more goods they have the more they can offer to others and then the more they offer to others, others are intended to them. So they have a very high standing.

Leah: That’s starting to sound very familiar

Grainne: Yes, so you can imagine when American soldiers set up the base camp during World War Two on these islands they actually had a common language.

Leah: So I guess in the same way that rich people are idolized in the media, on these islands the people who have the most material, maybe the biggest house or the most hunted food, would have been held to the same esteem.

Grainne: Yeah definitely, so then World War Two American soldiers set up base and suddenly they have more goods than anyone on these islands and not only do they have more goods they have so highly manufactured and advanced technology behind their goods that they are automatically top dog. To these Islanders they can never own more than them and based on their social status the soldiers give them food they give him Coke which is a sugary drink that they never experienced before and suddenly all these Islanders are indebted to the soldiers, so the soldiers are up there.

Leah: Ok so I think this is probably a good time to take a break

Grainne: Yeah, when we come back we can get a bit more design focused so stay tuned.

*Transition Music*

Leah: Ok so welcome back. So Grainne, the war is over and the Americans leave what do the Islanders do now?

Grainne: Good question, so after the war the Americans left fairly abruptly. They didn't even stop to consider what to do with all their stuff, they dumped half their machinery into the ocean off the coast of these islands and left a lot of goods and a lot of clothing etc behind. The Islanders they were distraught by these God-like people leaving all the sudden and they tried to recreate some of the goods that they left behind. They try to make radios out of coconuts and sticks and they couldn't do it because they had such rudimentary tools that they couldn't recreate such high tech goods and because of that they deemed the goods to be of otherworldly creation. This made The American soldiers prophets or Gods and thus, the cargo cults became religions on these islands.

Leah: So you say that the people in these cults worshiped these American soldiers but how do they do it?

Grainne: So a lot of the goods that were left behind and clothing became key parts of religious ceremonies and religious rituals. Wrangler jeans became a form of religious dress including any uniforms that were left behind by the soldiers and they wore this clothing to religious ceremonies they developed from the soldiers after they left. They started to mimic their drills and they started to recreate the daily rituals of the soldiers and they would paint bamboo sticks to recreate guns and they could use them for these drills. The Red Cross became the religious symbol, not the Christianity Cross which the soldiers would have wanted them to adopt, it was actually the Red Cross which would have been on their tents, on their uniforms and such, that would’ve became the religious symbol of some of these cults.

Leah: So, was all this worship to get his soldiers back or to get the supplies that the soldiers provided?

Grainne: Mainly to get the soldiers to return, to bring with them these goods that brought them prosperity. So they actually would, every now and then, get a Coke and wash ashore or something and this was seen as a sign from the gods or a gift from the gods. A sign of hope that one day they would return. It's kind of interesting to think about how this Coke can, this piece of metal, became so symbolic.

Leah: That's crazy so the rubbish that blows into the water here, washes up on their beach and becomes religious symbolism?

*Transitional Music Starts*

Grainne: Exactly and there's two very different takes on that and I think we can discuss that after the break.

*Transitional Music Fades*

Leah: Ok so, what I’ve learned so far is that ,these soldiers arrived on these not very advanced islands and the Islanders have basically decided that they are gods because they have limitless material, limitless supplies and the supplies and material that they do have are basically magic to them. I wonder what could we learn from the people in the cargo cults? As you were saying a Coke Can washes up on the beach and they see it as religious material, but what about the person on the other side of the world that throws that can into the bin? What is their relationship with the Coke can?

Grainne: Yeah that's a really good point and that's the discussion that I think should start after this podcast, how do we see our goods and materials that have so much technology and so much effort and time got into them to create the technology to make this simple good that we don't appreciate at all?

Leah: Yeah I mean I think that we’re almost numb to the technology that surrounds us. I mean right now we're recording this on a laptop using a microphone and to tell you the truth I’m not entirely sure how either of those things work and if you ask me to build one I definitely couldn't but yet I get a new phone almost every year. I guess I've become numb to the technology and the advancements that are all around me. So I heard an interesting quote from a science fiction writer called Arthur C Clarke, that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ It got me thinking, if we compare magic to technology what do we get? So you have a screen which is looking into crystal balls and seeing the future that's basically just Google. You have levitation, being able to float, airplanes we use them every day. Telekinesis making things move without touching them, sterling engines, cars, motorbikes. So much of our everyday technology that we take for granted is very comparable to this magic that is written about in books and lore and myth.

Grainne: Definitely we don’t see it as magic, we see it as something that we’re entitled to and once it starts not really working as well as we wanted it to or these jeans don't really fit as well as we want them to anymore, they're rubbish and we don't want them anymore and we want them to go into a landfill or just out of sight out of mind.

Leah: I wonder what would happen if we showed these people, in the cargo cults, a picture of a landfill or of our recycling bin or that room in our house that we throw all the stuff that we don't need any more?

Grainne: I wonder would they be excited and in awe and happy? or would they be distraught and concerned as to why we were throwing these religious symbols into a heap in the back of our garden shed or wherever it may be.

Leah: I agree, in the same way maybe if we learn to appreciate objects in the same way that these people do we wouldn't have some of the problems that we have today, such as big islands of rubbish floating around the Pacific or massive human rights issues in sweatshops and factories, mostly in Asia. Maybe if we could look at the objects that we have and understand and have knowledge and appreciate the amount of workmanship that goes into them, then maybe we wouldn’t have any of these issues, what do you think?

Grainne: Yeah that’s definitely a good point, we talked about on these islands they had to work hard for everything that they have, they had to make everything by hand. What if others were forced to make things by hand? it's definitely something that we need to think about more and we need to be more considerate of how things are made and spread the education on how things are made. Just to get the world to appreciate what we have, how we use it, what we do with it when we're done with it.

Leah: Yeah, so these cargo cults have been absolutely crazy. I'm actually mostly blown away by the fact there's an entire island that follows Prince Phillip, that’s completely bonkers to me.

*Outro Music Starts*

Thank you for listening! Next you're going to hear about design from the 1950s to the 1960s. This has been Leah and Grainne and that was our podcasts. Thanks guys!

*Outro Music Fades*

References

Davies, O., 2012. Magic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Foglia, E., Esteve, F., Lijtmaer, L., Paadín, L., Marín Miró, Ó. and Mas Baucells, R., 2018. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”. CCCBLAB, [online] Available at: <http://lab.cccb.org/en/arthur-c-clarke-any-sufficiently-advanced-technology-is-indistinguishable-from-magic/> [Accessed 13 April 2020].

Morton, E., 2014. Holy Materialism: The Cargo Cults of Tanna. [Blog] Your Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders, Available at: <http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/01/22/the_cargo_cults_of_tanna_worship_an_american_wwii_soldier_and_prince_philip.html?via=gdpr-consent> [Accessed 13 April 2020].

Solomon, M., 2017. Materialism: Are You What You Own?. [Blog] Medium, Available at: <https://medium.com/@mikesolo/materialism-are-you-what-you-own-22180f2fab2a> [Accessed 13 April 2020].

Sunkara, L., 2019. The Ultimate Melanesian Islands Travel Guide. [Blog] Zegrahm Expeditions, Available at: <http://zegrahm.com/blog/ultimate-melanesian-islands-travel-guide> [Accessed 13 April 2020].

Worsely, P., 2009. 50 Years Ago: Cargo Cults of Melanesia. [Blog] The Sciences, Available at: <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/1959-cargo-cults-melanesia/> [Accessed 13 April 2020]