Everybody knows about Godzilla. Hell, Microsoft Word doesn’t bother trying to auto-correct the name as I type it. Even little kids know about the big green guy. I guess he’s like Ronald McDonald in that way. I was no exception to this rule as I’ve known about Godzilla (and Ronald McDonald for that matter) for as long as I can remember, though I only just saw the movie from which he originated a few short days ago. Godzilla has become part of our culture, unlike the ideas that lent to creating him. That is to say, though the world is still quite paranoid when it comes to others having absolute power, unlike when Godzilla was made, an all out nuclear apocalypse isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when talking about the end of human civilization – terrorism, obesity, and Justin Beiber have won that title for now.
Because I had never seen Godzilla, I suppose you can’t really blame me for not making the connection between the film and the Cold War. I guess, deep down, I’ve always known that Godzilla came about because of something to do with nuclear testing, but as a kid, the only time I might have ever thought about the green meanie extensively, I had other things on my mind than the Cold War. Things like Ronald McDonald, as I hinted at before.
When I finally got to sit down and see Godzilla in class a few days ago, you can probably imagine my excitement. Perhaps saying that the past twenty years that I had been around to see were merely there to lead me to this moment is a bit of an overstatement, but I can’t say that I wasn’t looking forward to it. With all that being said, I thought the movie was garbage.
That’s the ironic thing about hype: you can always count on it to let you down. I would say that I could give the movie a pass because of the “primitive” time in which it was made, but that’s obviously no excuse. Vertigo, The Bridge on the River Kwai, On the Waterfront: all movies that were made during the fifties and didn’t feature awfully apparent plot holes, lack of characterization, and laughable editing. Even for a B-movie, Godzilla is deficient. So, I presume that a good question to ask is this: what made Godzilla such a big hit for it to still be popular, and possibly still relevant today?
The only thing that really seems like a plausible answer to this question is cultural significance. I mean, what else does this movie have going for it? The film came out within a year of the U.S. tested its hydrogen bomb near Bikini Atoll in 1954 and, of course, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was still on every Japanese mind, even nine years later. Godzilla represented the atom bomb. It’s as simple as that. Even in the first scene of the film, where we are shown a devastated Tokyo, it’s completely ambiguous as to what caused the damage. If you had never heard of Godzilla, as impossible as that is, upon seeing the beginning of the film you would have assumed the travesty had come from a nuclear source. This idea of Godzilla being the most obvious metaphor for an atom bomb is given further evidence when, in the next scene, a group of Japanese fishermen are shown. A flash of bright light over takes the fishing boat, much like the bright light that supposedly appears during a nuclear attack. Then, when the fishermen are later shown, all their injuries match up with injuries that are caused by exposure to radiation. There’s no denying the many metaphors in Godzilla.
Other comparisons between Godzilla and the possibility of nuclear destruction are seen over and over throughout the film. In what I think is the most powerful moment of the film, Godzilla approaches the outskirts of Tokyo which is surrounded by highly electric power lines. The citizens on the city, the military of Japan, and what seems like the world, can do nothing but wait in anticipation of the inevitable. This brief scene captures the true essence of the Cold War better than any other part of the film. Much like the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., the Japanese military could do nothing but point their guns at the unavoidable threat and try to last as long as they could without provoking the omnipresent danger any more than they had to, for doing so meant guaranteed death. Pretty deep for an outdated movie starring a guy who stomps around in a rubber suit, huh.
Like the movie, the reading also touched on several interesting analogies that I didn’t pick up on my own. In particular, the ironic idea that the only way to kill the creature created by a bomb is with another bomb. It kind of implies that evil can only be killed by a greater evil, which is a scary thought. If this thought were true, does that mean the only way to win a war is with more wars? I’m sure if you asked anyone who lived during the Cold War, they might say this is true. Another really interesting idea that came from the reading that I think could very well hold true is a bit more meta than the previous analogies mentioned. Much like terrible Godzilla movies are guaranteed to come back until the end of time, so is the threat of a nuclear war. Maybe this idea is a bit farfetched and unintentional, but it certainly has some merit.
Just because Godzilla is a terrible movie doesn’t mean it can’t hold a strong message. We must be careful of nuclear warfare, not only because it is a terrible thing in and of itself, but because, if we aren’t careful, a rubber dinosaur will come out of the ocean and eat us all.
In the words of Raymond Burr, “I’m saying a prayer. A prayer for the whole world.”
