Godzilla at 70: The monster’s warning to humanity is still urgent

The monster in the 2023 movie “Godzilla Minus One.”
Toho Co. Ltd., CC BY-ND

Amanda Kennell, University of Notre Dame and Jessica McManus Warnell, University of Notre Dame

The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-bomb Sufferers Organizations. Many of these witnesses have spent their lives warning of the dangers of nuclear war – but initially, much of the world didn’t want to hear it.

“The fates of those who survived the infernos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were long concealed and neglected,” the Nobel committee noted in its announcement. Local groups of nuclear survivors created Nihon Hidankyo in 1956 to fight back against this erasure.

An elderly man gestures in front of a bomb-damaged building
Atomic bomb survivor Masao Ito, 82, speaks at the park across from the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima in May 15, 2023.
Richard A. Brooks/AFP via Getty Images

Around the same time that Nihon Hidankyo was formed, Japan produced another warning: a towering monster who topples Tokyo with blasts of irradiated breath. The 1954 film “Godzilla” launched a franchise that has been warning viewers to take better care of the Earth for the past 70 years.

We study popular Japanese media and business ethics and sustainability, but we found a common interest in Godzilla after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. In our view, these films convey a vital message about Earth’s creeping environmental catastrophe. Few survivors are left to warn humanity about the effects of nuclear weapons, but Godzilla remains eternal.

Into the atomic age

By 1954, Japan had survived almost a decade of nuclear exposure. In addition to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese people were affected by a series of U.S. nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll.

When the U.S. tested the world’s first hydrogen bomb in 1954, its devastation reached far outside the expected damage zone. Though it was far from the restricted zone, the Lucky Dragon No. 5 Japanese fishing boat and its crew were doused with irradiated ash. All fell ill, and one fisherman died within the year. Their tragedy was widely covered in the Japanese press as it unfolded.

The Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test on March 1, 1954, produced an explosion equivalent to 15 megatons of TNT, more than 2.5 times what scientists had expected. It released large quantities of radioactive debris into the atmosphere.

This event is echoed in a scene at the beginning of “Godzilla” in which helpless Japanese boats are destroyed by an invisible force.

“Godzilla” is full of deep social debates, complex characters and cutting-edge special effects for its time. Much of the film involves characters discussing their responsibilities – to each other, to society and to the environment.

This seriousness, like the film itself, was practically buried outside of Japan by an alter ego, 1956’s “Godzilla, King of the Monsters!” American licensors cut the 1954 film apart, removed slow scenes, shot new footage featuring Canadian actor Raymond Burr, spliced it all together and dubbed their creation in English with an action-oriented script they wrote themselves.

This version was what people outside of Japan knew as “Godzilla” until the Japanese film was released internationally for its 50th anniversary in 2004.

From radiation to pollution

While “King of the Monsters!” traveled the world, “Godzilla” spawned dozens of Japanese sequels and spinoffs. Godzilla slowly morphed from a murderous monster into a monstrous defender of humanity in the Japanese films, a transition that was also reflected in the later U.S.-made films.

In 1971, a new, younger creative team tried to define Godzilla for a new era with “Godzilla vs. Hedorah.” Director Yoshimitsu Banno joined the movie’s crew while he was promoting a recently completed documentary about natural disasters. That experience inspired him to redirect Godzilla from nuclear issues to pollution.

World War II was fading from public memory. So were the massive Anpo protests of 1959 and 1960, which had mobilized up to one-third of the Japanese people to oppose renewal of the U.S.-Japan security treaty. Participants included housewives concerned by the news that fish caught by the Lucky Dragon No. 5 had been sold in Japanese grocery stores.

At the same time, pollution was soaring. In 1969, Michiko Ishimure published “Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow: Our Minamata Disease,” a book that’s often viewed as a Japanese counterpart to “Silent Spring,” Rachel Carson’s environmental classic. Ishimure’s poetic descriptions of lives ruined by the Chisso Corp.’s dumping of methyl mercury into the Shiranui Sea awoke many in Japan to their government’s numerous failures to protect the public from industrial pollution.

The Chisso Corp. released toxic methylmercury into Minamata Bay from 1932 to 1968, poisoning tens of thousands of people who ate local seafood.

“Godzilla vs. Hedorah” is about Godzilla’s battles against Hedorah, a crash-landed alien that grows to monstrous size by feeding on toxic sludge and other forms of pollution. The film opens with a woman singing jazzily about environmental apocalypse as young people dance with abandon in an underground club.

This combination of hopelessness and hedonism continues in an uneven film that includes everything from an extended shot of an oil slick-covered kitten to an animated sequence to Godzilla awkwardly levitating itself with its irradiated breath.

After Godzilla defeats Hedorah at the end of the film, it pulls a handful of toxic sludge out of Hedorah’s torso, gazes at the sludge, then turns to stare at its human spectators – both those onscreen and the film’s audience. The message is clear: Don’t just lazily sing about imminent doom – shape up and do something.

Official Japanese trailer for ‘Godzilla vs. Hedorah’

“Godzilla vs. Hedorah” bombed at the box office but became a cult hit over time. Its positioning of Godzilla between Earth and those who would harm it resonates today in two separate Godzilla franchises.

One line of movies comes from the original Japanese studio that produced “Godzilla.” The other line is produced by U.S. licensors making eco-blockbusters that merge the environmentalism of “Godzilla” with the spectacle of “King of the Monsters.”

A meltdown of public trust

The 2011 Fukushima disaster has now become part of the Japanese people’s collective memory. Cleanup and decommissioning of the damaged nuclear plant continues, amid controversies around ongoing releases of radioactive water used to cool the plant. Some residents are allowed to visit their homes but can’t move back there while thousands of workers remove topsoil, branches and other materials to decontaminate these areas.

Before Fukushima, Japan derived one-third of its electricity from nuclear power. Public attitudes toward nuclear energy hardened after the disaster, especially as investigations showed that regulators had underestimated risks at the site. Although Japan needs to import about 90% of the energy it uses, today over 70% of the public opposes nuclear power.

The first Japanese “Godzilla” film released after the Fukushima disaster, “Shin Godzilla” (2016), reboots the franchise in a contemporary Japan with a new type of Godzilla, in an eerie echo of the damages of and governmental response to Fukushima’s triple disaster. When the Japanese government is left leaderless and in disarray following initial counterattacks on Godzilla, a Japanese government official teams up with an American special envoy to freeze the newly named Godzilla in its tracks, before a fearful world unleashes its nuclear weapons once again.

Their success suggests that while national governments have an important role to play in major disasters, successful recovery requires people who are empowered to act as individuals.The Conversation

Amanda Kennell, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Notre Dame and Jessica McManus Warnell, Teaching Professor of Management and Organization, University of Notre Dame

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Reeling religion: From anime and sci-fi to rom-coms, films are full of faith in unexpected places

An alien sitting in a theater eating popcorn watching a movie

 

By David W. Stowe, Michigan State University

In some movies, religion hits viewers over the head – including films that take home the industry’s biggest prizes. No one could miss religion’s importance in “The Exorcist” or “Jesus Christ Superstar,” both nominated for Oscars 50 years ago. Martin Scorsese, whose “Killers of the Flower Moon” is up for 10 at the 2024 Academy Awards, is working on a new project on the life of Jesus.

Anyone can find a religious meaning in “Kundun,” Scorsese’s epic about the Dalai Lama’s youth, or “Fiddler on the Roof,” the story of life in a Russian Jewish shtetl at the turn of the 20th century. Cinematic Christ figures are a dime a dozen.

But for scholars of religion and popular culture like myself, movies that engage religion less directly are often more intriguing.

Free from illusion

Take the hugely influential science fiction franchise “The Matrix.” Depicting characters caught in a diabolical computer simulation, held prisoner to AI, the film feels particularly timely in 2024.

Seeing past illusions to a deeper cosmic reality, as the film’s protagonists must do, is of course a theme of many faiths. “The Matrix” is peppered with many other allusions to religion and mythology. Main character Neo, referred to as “the One,” is killed and resurrected. A hacker even tells him, “You’re my savior, man, my own personal Jesus Christ.” One central character is named Trinity. Another is called Morpheus, after the Greek god of dreams.

More specifically, religion scholars see explicit themes of Gnosticism, a variant of Christianity that flourished during the faith’s first few centuries. A central focus of Gnostic texts is attaining liberation from worldly illusion through direct inner knowledge of truth. Its teachings include stark dualism – light vs. dark, mind vs. body, good vs. evil – and belief in a hidden God operating in a hostile cosmos, both of which have analogues in “The Matrix.”

Buddhist themes are also unmistakable. The film begins with Neo waking up, both literally and figuratively, as he discovers the truth: Machines have trapped humanity in pods to harvest their energy. The world in which humans believe they are living is actually “the matrix,” an illusory world created to distract them.

“Buddha” means “awakened one,” and many viewers have drawn comparisons between Keanu Reeves’ character’s journey and Buddhism. Once awakened to reality, Neo is no longer bound to the illusions of ignorance and desire. Just as importantly, he must help other humans awaken and escape the cycle of suffering.

Spirits on screen

Even apart from specific allusions like these, cinema shares something important with religion.

S. B. Rodriguez-Plate, a religion scholar at Hamilton College, argues that films can function something like religions in the lives of their audiences, “playing God” by creating imaginary worlds – worlds that may make viewers see their real lives in a different light.

That power is nowhere more evident than in animated films, which create vivid realms that live action can only dream of. In films like “Spirited Away” and “Howl’s Moving Castle,” legendary anime director Hayao Miyazaki creates his own mythic worlds populated with fanciful “yōkai”: creatures that are inspired by Japanese legends but not quite Shinto or Buddhist.

Many of Miyazaki’s films also include spirits that inhabit inanimate objects, which he associates with Japanese tradition. “In my grandparents’ time … it was believed that spirits (kami) existed everywhere – in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything,” he once said. “My own religion, if you can call it that, has no practice, no Bible, no saints, only a desire to keep certain places and my own self as pure and holy as possible.”

Princess Mononoke,” Miyazaki’s 1997 film set in medieval Japan, tells the story of a young prince drawn into an epic struggle between forest gods and humans who exploit natural resources. It’s a challenge religions have often ignored but are increasingly trying to engage: how to live responsibly in the natural world.

While the movie has an environmental message, it avoids oversimplifying the struggle to “good nature” besieged by “bad humans.” San, a human girl who leads an army of wolves, tries to kill the prince, while Iron Town provides support for lepers and outcasts, even as it degrades the environment.


A.O. Scott reviews ‘Princess Mononoke,’ which highlights environmental themes.

Birth and rebirth – and groundhogs

 

What about comedy, though? Can a religious film be funny? Could a romantic comedy have religious overtones?

Each February, many Americans celebrate Groundhog Day, waiting to see if the famous Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow. But for some, Feb. 2 is a day to celebrate “Groundhog Day” – the film about the moral evolution of an arrogant Pittsburgh weatherman sent to report on the groundhog but forced to live the same day over and over again until he gets it right.

Given “Groundhog Day’s” cult-classic status, it evidently speaks to followers of many religions and none. But it’s hard to think of a film that better captures the concept of samsara: the Sanskrit term for the tedious human condition, with its endless cycles of birth and rebirth. Helping people find release from samsara is central to both Hinduism and Buddhism. Phil, the weatherman stuck reliving Feb. 2 over and over, is caught on such a treadmill.

Only by gradually transforming himself into a more virtuous person – performing acts of merit among the people of Punxsutawney – does he finally escape from the nightmare of recurring Groundhog Days.

Director Harold Ramis was brought up Jewish but became a Buddhist who carried a laminated card, “The 5 Minute Buddhist”: a kind of cheat sheet of core ideas of Buddhism. So it’s not surprising to find them in his movie.

One is “pratītyasamutpāda,” another Sanskrit term: the idea that everything in the cosmos is linked by causal chains. All causes and effects are connected; nothing stands wholly apart on its own. By the end of “Groundhog Day,” the prideful Phil has fully connected with people in the quaint Pennsylvania village – and won his love, Rita – having learned how his own well-being depends on the well-being of everyone around him.

Close to awe

There’s one more way to think about religion in film. Apart from specific spiritual themes, a powerful movie can offer an almost religious experience.

Nathaniel Dorsky, an experimental filmmaker influenced by Buddhism, writes of cinema as a devotional experience. The act of sitting in darkness, watching an illuminated world flicker by, Dorsky says, may be as close to approaching the transcendent as many of us will come – getting a glimpse of something beyond our normal range of experience.

Of course, all these films can be enjoyed fully without reading them on this religious level. Some movie fans would object that these interpretations spoil the fun, and they may have a point. But part of the excitement of studying religion in popular culture is to be aware of its many permutations, hidden in plain view.

This article has been updated to correct the name of religion scholar S. B. Rodriguez-Plate.The Conversation

David W. Stowe, Professor of Religious Studies, Michigan State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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