Godzilla
We took the kids to see
Godzilla today. They loved it, mostly
because they got to see a movie rated PG13 (they’re 8, nephew is 9). Judging
by our many trips to the lobby, they really weren’t so much engaged with what
was on the screen, as with the entire theater experience, which is good,
because I regret their seeing Godzilla.
When my daughter leaned over and said the words “good that he killed all those babies!” I started thinking and still
can’t stop thinking about the movie that inspired that sentence.
The basic plot is that
supposedly there was an earthquake near a Japanese nuclear power plant
(Janjira, the only power company evoked at all in the movie, and it is defunct about
10 minutes in), which triggered a meltdown and quarantine of the area. One surviving scientist can’t get over it,
and he pursues his theory that it was not a natural disaster but something
else. Turns out he was right. It was an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) from
something alive. The pulse is repeating
and getting stronger, so a repeat of the earthquake event is imminent. The
ultimate EMP disrupts power. All
electric things go dead, even cars stop running.
Joe, the aged scientist and
a Japanese scientist named Serizawa discover that a massive unidentified terrestrial
organism (MUTO) is awakening, it eats nuclear power and waste, is hungry, and also is trying to signal a mate. The MUTO emerges, Godzilla follows him. The MUTOs search for more nuclear meals and
his mate take him and Godzilla through Hawaii and towards Nevada. Joe dies and his grown son takes over in the
role of scientist who understands what is happening and how to stop it. So, these MUTOs are after our nuclear power
and waste, and they are Godzilla’s prey.
At this point, my daughter pointed out that the female had babies in her
belly, which was uncomfortable for me.
Wait, what? A pregnant female is
the biggest menace in the movie? Cue heightened awareness and now mama is
watching for subtext.
The military decides to
attack the MUTOs with nuclear warheads, which doesn’t work several times, since
the MUTOs just eat them. The Japanese
scientist, Serizawa, notifies everyone that Godzilla is hunting the MUTOs and
will restore balance to the earth if just allowed to follow through. The military hesitates a little too long to
adopt this philosophy, attacking good Godzilla for a good while. The lady MUTO lays her eggs underground, but
the military, led by Joe’s son, firebombs them and burns them up. Godzilla first kills the male MUTO and then
the female. Godzilla is knocked out for
a while and then gets up and returns to the sea.
My most immediate concern
is that no person, no American is being attacked or threatened. These unidentified
terrestrial organisms (just to see what happens, I’m leaving out massive) are just hungry. They happen to eat nuclear power and waste,
and it just so happens that US power companies have lots of that, so they are
coming for it. Since Godzilla has historically
worked as an extended metaphor for fears, is it logical to see this as a
metaphor for America’s xenophobic attitudes around immigration? Yes, especially since the biggest menace,
being a pregnant female, has laid her eggs on U.S. soil. Luckily/sadly, as my sweet, innocent daughter
pointed out, all the babies have been killed so we won’t face a “dreamer”
dilemma around those MUTO babies in the future.
Now, to the unbearable
memory of having to look at the profiles of my son and nephew as the glow of
scene after scene of beautiful, godlike soldiers doing cool looking military
things washed over them and they, unprotected, absorbed the cell changing rays
that said; you could be a soldier! Being a soldier is cool, if they are
saving and protecting people. But in
Godzilla they are not protecting
people. People are not being attacked at
all. The soldiers are protecting the
interests of power companies (unless, in this movie utilities have been
nationalized; there is no evidence either way). Nuclear power is sort of
conflated with the U.S. in general in Godzilla, so we are supposed to just
think of it as “ours” I guess. Are we
not to question the use of the lives of our most precious young people to defend
nuclear power? Dying in battle is sold to little boys as the greatest thing you
could do. The troubling thing here is
that the enely does not pose a direct threat to people.
Never is the existence of
nuclear power questioned or alternatives posed and I guess that is okay, this
is a Godzilla movie after all, and nuclear power is essential to the
story. So, this would be okay, but the
movie goes just one step outside the realm of remaining neutral about our
nuclear situation. One scientist, I
can’t remember which (Sally Hawkins?) lectures during the movie and tells us
that radiation loving Godzilla is a vestige of life long ago, when the earth
was very radioactive, much more so than it is today, suggesting that radiation
is natural. This is a convenient truth,
right? Maybe so, maybe when the planet
was young it was radioactive, but the threat that radioactivity poses today is not the same thing. Today, nuclear threats exist due to military
paranoia, corporate greed, and the deregulation craze we are currently enduring. It is definitely not natural, and we could
take steps to minimize and eventually eliminate it. That little blurring of the line, suggesting
that this all is just the way that the earth is, is the tactic of climate
change deniers. It is just slipped in
there to plant in our minds the idea that nuclear power is natural, just like
climate change. Human activity has had
nothing to do with it.
Next, I want to address
the many children separated from their parents in the movie. First, the young scientist’s son is separated
from mom and dad during the nuclear plant crisis in 1999. Next the protagonist’s young son is separated
from his parents for much of the movie.
We also see a young boy separated from mom and dad on the train in San
Francisco, and in Hawaii a little girl and her father are separated from the
mother during the tsunami. As
manipulative and political as this movie is, this cannot be an accidental
element. American families get used to
the idea; you will suffer for the causes of and convenience of the powers that
be.
Finally, just so you know
America, the worst thing that could happen is a power outage. The EMPs disrupt all power, even
batteries. The film maximizes the
effect. Over and over, we see the
progression of lights going out and hear the powering down chunk chunk and
silence that accompanies a total power outage.
The panicked faces, the screaming and running hordes, the paralyzed
traffic, it is overwhelming and horrifying, and it inspires the soldiers to
give their all. These episodes function
as mini-crises throughout the movie.
Like so many other contrived situations in Godzilla, this is a
manipulation, because I can think of worse things than power outages; for
instance, another Fukushima style nuclear incident or a nuclear or any other
type of bomb.
I shouldn’t have brought
such young kids to a PG – 13 movie, so I take full responsibility. I just thought, well its Godzilla, it’ll be
fun and how much damage can it do? Turns
out, it did a lot of damage. The
vilification of women and foreigners, the normalization of nuclear power, the
sneak recruitment of bomb fodder, the lowering of expectations for quality of
life, and all for what? So that we
accept, even become grateful for a world full of nuclear power and perpetually
engaged in war to defend our sources of it.
In the wake of the
experience, I take comfort in three things: First, my kids, like so many out
there are critical thinkers who will be able to read this movie for its subtext
and analyze the heck out of it, when they are older and engaged in film
study. Second teachers have embraced
Common Core and will churn out careful readers and writers who will critique
and create all kinds of exciting films in the coming years. We are in an educational renaissance that is
real and exciting. Third, I realize that
as usual, I may have over-reacted, as the discussion in the back seat on the
way home was; who would win, Godzilla or
King Kong? The twins’ dad chimed in with
“Historically, King Kong wins that fight.”
I didn’t know, and wouldn’t have guessed that that was the answer, or
that sweet Rick knew it. But I’m
comforted by the old school little kid perspective and apparently genuine
deflection of subtext.
