Godzilla

One of my earliest memories was watching Godzilla versus Megalon in a drive in monster feature with my parents, along with some other nameless horror movie. It was about a race of honkey toga-wearing Atlanteans/Seatopians with pencil moustaches and Japanese girlfriends who sicced a giant metal space bug on poor innocent Tokyo. It was and is an insanely retarded (yes I use word of power u mad) movie, and I still love it.

 

Godzilla (ゴ ジ ラ) is great because he represents America. The very first Godzilla movie was made in 1954, when America was a scary alien country who had recently brought radioactive death to the sons of the Sun Goddess. Later, Godzilla becomes a good natured giant beast who occasionally destroys Tokyo by accident, while saving the Japanese from far worse fates; not a bad representation of what America has been doing in Japan’s part of the world for the last 80 years. Godzilla movies also are one of the few places where Japanese military might is seen in a positive light. Godzilla always kicks the ass of the Japanese military (sorta like America did, not so sure now), but at least they get to roll around in the military porn a little bit. The mighty Japanese air force, shooting rockets with abandon, as if they were strafing Chinese peasants like in the good old days! Japanese lightning beams! Whatever you may think of past Japanese militarism, they are a warrior race, and it’s nice to see them enjoying themselves in a way that doesn’t involve cutting Yukio Mishima’s guts out.

Fun things about watching old Godzilla movies … sometimes the cars are American cars. In Japan. When humans fight, the fight scenes are often incredibly violent and realistic. None of the “stand there and get punched” crap of American violent action; in Japanese movies, people go all out; clawing, ear boxing, strangling, wrestling -just like real fighting. This isn’t some feature of Japanese cinema (maybe in “Violent Cop” -an ATF for me) -for some reason it seems unique to Godzilla movies, sort of like the way modern Japanese military violence is only shown in Godzilla movies. Godzilla movies also often feature topical current events that Japanese people don’t ordinarily deal with in an honest way; in one movie, Godzilla fights pollution monsters and listens to silly hippy disco music about saving the earth.

Most of you probably haven’t seen the original Godzilla movie from 1954. It is a very serious and scary movie. It’s considered one of the 20 best movies Japan has ever produced -this is the country that produced Daibatsu Toge, Kwaidan and the Musashi films, so that’s high praise. It’s complicated, and very Japanese, when you watch it, there is none of the cheese and camp of the later Godzilla movies. It’s very somber like old Outer Limits episodes, and it probably embodies similar cultural neuroses as these, though the Japanese version. Certainly, it’s all about nuclear war, and the recent destruction of Japan; it even contains references to a radioactive Japanese fishing boat; that was contaminated by nuclear testing the same year as the movie was made. The images of mass destruction aren’t fun like the later films; they’re grim, and not too far off from what happened to Japan only a few years earlier. You can really hear the difference in Godzilla’s war cry; it’s scarier in the old one.

Godzilla movies are great because they’re the creature from the Id. Who doesn’t want to chew up the damn subway train after riding around in it for a while? Who doesn’t want to breathe radiation on that stupid set of neon signs you have to look at all day? Little kids love Godzilla because they imagine what it would be like if they were big … really big. Kids love Godzilla for the same reason they love Hulk Hogan; he’s big and loud and good-natured and awesome and retarded. I think it’s OK to dislike professional wrestling, especially if you are a woman or a shitlib, but if you don’t like Godzilla movies, I see this as a very serious character flaw. People who don’t like Godzilla have no medulla oblongata and no sense of fun. I mean, come on; it’s a guy in a rubber suit stomping on modern life! What is not to love? if you don’t like Godzilla movies, especially if you are a flippin adult Harry Potter fan, you’re probably one of those horrible flabby people with glandular issues I am always complaining about.

The proper and awesome Godzilla movies are the Showa movies from 1954 to 1975; it’s not me being a Godzilla hipster; Criterion released them as a boxed set, so important expert people of excellent taste agree with me. The subsequent Heisei era movies are also semi-canonical. Everything else is shit. In the 1970s and presumably before, Japan might as well have been Mars to people in the US. We had fought a horrific war with Japan a mere 25-30 years earlier, and the main reputation of Japan in America was manufacturers of cheap plastic tchotchkes and inexpensive but awesome optical equipment (presently peerless optical equipment). No doubt art-fags had some conception of Kurasawa films and so on, but Godzilla was most people’s first real exposure to Japanese culture. The terrible dubbing and lack of white people in most of the movies (excepting as villains; I mean we did nuke them), didn’t matter. Godzilla was amazing and awesome and probably did more for the US/Japan relationship than the eventual export of Sushi, Karate and Anime.

A highlight of Heisei period Godzilla movies is Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. It’s mostly a highlight for being completely bonkers Japanese nationalism. The hero is an alcoholic Japanese nationalist who witnessed Godzilla defending them from Americans in Kwajalein. Ever been to Tokyo? If you have, you’ve probably seen the crazy black vans driven around by Mishima-esque ultra nationalists, spouting off insane Japanese propaganda, demanding they go back to Emperor worship and the glories of Imperial Japan. I’m pretty sure these guys took over production of this film. Shitlib Americans from the future (really, I’m not exaggerating) steal a time machine, and wreak havoc on Japan, to prevent Japan’s inevitable rise to the biggest and most powerful nation on earth by the 22nd century (their overwhelming might being driven by economic growth: a plausible scenario in 1990). They bring along a token race-traitor in the guise of a curly haired Japanese woman, and the shitlibs make fun of her a lot for having sympathy for her countrymen whose annihilation she somehow supported for a while. This is normal shitlib behavior, for example if you watch shitlib interactions with Russians in current year.

They go back in time to witness a heartless American attack on innocent Japanese soldiers, thwarted by a proto-Godzilla dinosaur! The Japanese in this movie even have a secret privately owned nuclear missile submarine “of course, we haven’t kept this submarine in Japanese waters; it’s somewhere not to far away from us … in southeast Asia…” What glorious fantasy! Also, there is an institute for superscience, and I’m pretty sure Terminator-2 stole a scene from this movie where robot shitlib-American villain runs real fast and stops a jeep.

They’re all (in the limits I mention) pretty fun. Watch one of them instead of superhero movies or Disney star wars dreck. If you complain about the special effects or any lack of “realism” you should consider seppuku. These movies are great entertainment and some of them rise to the level of great art, and if you don’t watch them you should submit.