Gojira/Godzilla: Some Thoughts about Discussion Board Posts

Here are some thoughts in response to the discussion board posts that were assigned for Thursday, February 13, along with some other thoughts STILL PROVISIONAL AND SUBJECT TO EDITING:

1.   One regret about the canceled class is that I was going to show some clips from the American version of Gojira.  When we speak of the Japanese original film, we should refer to it as "Gojira."  The American "revision" of the film is "Godzilla."  As you are all aware, these are very different films.

2.  Melodrama, acting, and laughter:  As I've discussed in class, there is a great tradition in Japan of melodramatic acting.  This style is particularly noticeable in genre films such as "Gojira," but is also visible even in "serious" films like "Seven Samurai."  What 21st-century American audiences may consider to be "over-the-top" acting was not necessarily seen that way by Japanese audiences in the 1950s.  In Japan, moments of high drama in films were presented through intense acting that signified extreme emotion.  It's all a matter of coding, as I noted in class.  Acting, like all forms of communication, is a language, and one needs to be versed in the coding that is used to express and convey meaning.  One of the best examples of a "traditional/melodramatic" acting trope is the body language used by Emiko at the most intense moment of the fight in the lab.  Her puppet-like movements as she conveys her anguish are exactly taken from kabuki acting.  Her movements were "over-the-top" in our contemporary terms, but they were extremely effective in conveying intense emotion to the Japanese audience in 1954.

I should also note that I have found it interesting that some members of the class have "outed" themselves as having thought, at least initially, that "Gojira" was kitschy or simply over-the-top.  Which makes me glad that I was so emphatic in asking the class members to react to the film in a measured fashion.

3.  Lexi makes a good comment that Gojira (and emphatically NOT Godzilla) is at once a commercial and an artistic film.  Well, "artistic" may be pushing it, but it certainly is "serious."  Most of the rest of the "Gojira" films are pretty shallow and very commercial, and when they do have "messages" (such as "Godzilla and the Smog Monster--the American title), the messages themselves are pretty simplistic and not particularly thought-provoking (the way "Gojira" is).

4.  In the sociohistorical context of Gojira, the main referent is the H-bomb (and by extension, the A-bombs), but it is also important to note that purely natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunami, volcanic eruptions, typhoons) are also very much a part of Japanese imagination about their country.  Before the U.S. leveled Tokyo in 1945, it was utterly destroyed by an earthquake in 1923.  Thus, many in the audience at screenings of "Gojira" had endured two destructions of Tokyo, with huge loss of life each time.  And in both cases (the bombings and the earthquake), the major damage to property and life was caused by fire.  So for audience members of middle age and older, the fires rampaging through Tokyo evoke not only the bombing, but also the earthquake.  Thus, when we think about why Gojira was so effective as a force of both technology and nature, we must keep both the earthquake and the fire-bombings in mind.  The constant presence of natural disasters in Japan helps to contextualize the early part of the film in which Gojira is thought to be a kind of evil, destructive deity that has to be appeased.

5.  Chris has an interesting interpretation of the "semiotics" of Gojira's "decision" not to attack the Imperial Palace or destroy the Diet Building, suggesting that doing either or both would have been too much for the audience to bear.  Considering the fact that Japan had only recently reacquired its sovereignty as an independent nation, this point is well-taken.  Yet, like so much of this film, it is also ambiguous.  For example, the Diet itself was shown as torn between a reactionary and a progressive wing, intriguingly made gender-specific.  Yes, the Diet is the place where such debates can take place (and is thus a symbol of "democracy" or "freedom"), but it was also the seat of government while fascist Japan was waging total war.  Moreover, the Emperor was seen by large numbers of Japanese (mostly on the left) as a war criminal.  (This issue has still not been satisfactorily resolved in Japan, and probably never will be.)  So, it would be very intriguing if Gojira had destroyed both sites.  But that would have made it too radical a film, perhaps.

6.  "Modernity" and "tradition":  It's hard to imagine two more contestable and ambiguous terms.  What do they actually mean?  I would hold that their meaning depends on the point of view--including the agenda--of the person using them.  It can be argued that the representation of Odo Island in the film is either a somewhat nostalgic invocation of "traditional" religious (or superstitious) beliefs, presented in the context of "age-old" practices in a relatively strong "traditional" community.  Or, it can be seen as a representation of atavistic beliefs and practices that are "other" to the largely urban producers and viewers of the film.  In other words, the Odo islanders are not all that different from the "natives" in Africa.  So on the one hand, in nostalgic terms, they are "closer" to nature, etc., but at the same time, they are "primitive" and superstitious and uneducated, etc.  It's interesting (and telling?) that Odo is the first place destroyed by Gojira.  Is it because they haven't sacrificed any virgins lately?  (This could perhaps be the case in the view of some of the older islanders.)  And should "modern" Japan be making "sacrifices" in some way?  Or perhaps they did (the fisherman who died in the real world, or the older brother and mother of Shinkichi in the film's world), but the sacrifices no longer work.

So if Gojira is in some way "Japan," then the Japan of animistic folk beliefs and practices, representative of "tradition," is dying, while modernity produces mostly ambivalence, alienation, and concern for the future.  And further, if Gojira is "Japan," then Japan itself is not only a "victim" of nuclear technology, but also a potential "monster" in the future (thus Serizawa's concerns which, at first glance, seem to be about the U.S. and/or Russia exploiting his research, but could just as easily be about Japan--perhaps about the kind of reactionary, macho politicians shown in the film).