Episode 180: Godzilla & Kaiju (Myth Movie Night)
/The Godzilla and Kaiju movies are inextricably linked to a lot of difficult topics, but we have cocktails in hand and we feel ready to talk about them. Learn about the history of the Big Monster movies, the funny 70s franchises, and how Godzilla can teach us all a lesson about how to better talk about environmentalism.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of nuclear war/bombs/explosions, environmental fascism, terrorism, anxiety, radiation poisoning, the military industrial complex, kidnapping, fire/volcanoes erupting, death, corporate greed, and politics/elections.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends the Library Lovers Mystery series by Jenn McKinlay. Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Multitude: Digital merch for all shows, including new Spirits phone wallpapers, are available at http://multitude.productions/merch. Listen to Meddling Adults in your podcast app starting today, May 13, 2020!
Sponsors
- Stitch Fix is an online personal styling service that finds and delivers clothes, shoes, and accessories to fit your body, budget, and lifestyle. Get started at stitchfix.com/spirits for 25% off when you keep your whole box!
- BetterHelp is a secure online counseling service. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/spirits
Find Us Online
If you like Spirits, help us grow by spreading the word! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. You can support us on Patreon to unlock bonus Your Urban Legends episodes, director’s commentaries, custom recipe cards, and so much more. We also have lists of our book recommendations and previous guests’ books at spiritspodcast.com/books.
Transcripts are available at spiritspodcast.com/episodes. To buy merch, hear us on other podcasts, contact us, find our mailing address, or download our press kit, head on over to SpiritsPodcast.com.
Transcript
Amanda: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I’m Amanda.
Julia: And I’m Julia!
Amanda: And this is Episode 180, Godzilla and Kaiju for Myth Movie Night.
Julia: Yeah! Just a heads-up, this one gets a little bit dark. We talk a lot about how nuclear war and the threat of the nuclear age kind of formed a very well-known monster, so if that is not your cup of tea--I mention it also in the episode--but just be careful.
Amanda: Yeah. We really enjoyed our conversation, but if this is not the thing that you should be listening to right now, that’s totally cool. We are so pleased to have some new Patrons with us--some more folks who are pledging support with their dollars to help make Spirits a thing. Thank you so much to Tank-a-Roonie, Hannah, Alicia, Justine, Kaylee, Łukasz (Like Lucas, Woo-cash), Ashley, Alexis, Emma, Sarah, Chris, Rosie, Lauren, and Leena. You join the ranks of such distinguished folks as our Supporting Producer level Patrons: Sarah, Landon, Niki, Megan, Debra, Molly, Skyla, Samantha, Sammie, Neal, Jessica, and Phil Fresh.
Julia: As well as our Legend level Patrons: Clara, Stephen, Frances, Brittany, Josie, Kylie, Morgan, Bea Me Up Scotty, Audra, Chris, Mark, Mr. Folk, Sarah, and Jack Marie. I think Tank-a-Roonie might be coming for Bea Me Up Scotty’s title as Best Named Patron who we say all the time.
Amanda: We appreciate it. There are room for lots of folks at the top but Tank-a-Roonie you’re getting up there. Thank you for joining
Julia: It’s very good.
Amanda: And Julia remind us what we were drinking during this episode.
Julia: We made the “Lady Godzilla” which I’ll tell you a little bit more about during the refill, but it’s minty, it’s a little bit tart, it’s a recipe that I got from Yuri Kato’s “Japanese Cocktails” book. If that’s something that interests you--Japanese flavors in cocktails--definitely pick that up.
Amanda: Fabulous, and I would, Julia, like to recommend for you a sort of light-hearted, but also kind of intriguing series that I literally read ten books of in the last week.
Julia: Ooooh. Ten books in the past week, Amanda? How? HOW? How do you do?
Amanda: Yes. Well, they are fairly short and they’re extremely sort of like page-turners. It’s “The Library Lover’s Mysteries” by Jenn McKinlay. This is a series about a small town librarian who somehow keeps discovering bodies places.
Julia: I love it!
Amanda: And it is like an extremely slow-burn chaste romance between her and somebody in town, and it’s just delightful. Every book her ‘crafternoon’ club reads a different literary classic and then, of course, those lessons apply to the mystery at hand. It’s just extremely pure.
Julia: I wanna read--okay I wanna read these EXTREMELY badly--
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: --but also I want this to be my life.
Amanda: I know, I know! I looked up during the book and was just like, “can we move to rural Connecticut?” I don’t wanna move to rural Connecticut, but I was still like, “ah! This is amazing!” It’s just very pastoral, and it’s just--it was wonderful. I love it.
Julia: That sounds incredible. I will have to take a look at those immediately.
Amanda: Absolutely. So, check out your local library or go to spiritspodcast.com/books to get a list of all of the books we’ve recommended.
Julia: Yes, and support your indie bookstores!
Amanda: Absolutely! Bookshop.org, which is the service we use to collect all of these, gives basically a dividend to all of their members every month, and it is already changing the game for indie bookstores, so I am very happy that we can collect all of our recommendations in one place and also give you a chance to--at no cost to you--support indie bookstores all around the world.
Julia: Shoutout, Amanda, to our incredible Patrons as well. I know we listed out our new ones, and our Supporting Producers, and our Legends, but we just hit 350 Patrons on Patreon!
Amanda: Ayy!
Julia: So we’re going to be sharing kind of a spooky video with our current Patrons.
Amanda: Absolutely! If you join you’ll be able to see it as well, we’re gonna have that out to you by next week and we are just SO excited! Julia and I did a, uh, spooky romp around our hometown stomping grounds. I had long hair, my brother was there, it was just a whole thing. It was so much fun and we’re really, really excited and I’m also kind of nervous to rewatch the video but…
Julia: I’m not going to. It’s fine.
Amanda: --it’s so fun. There’s a graveyard. It’s amazing. So if you join as a Patron at ANY level you'll have access to that video starting next week!
Julia: Yeah, we talk about all of the urban legends of our hometown and go and visit them, so if that is something that interests you, hit us up on Patreon.
Amanda: I am so proud of that video still. I’m sorry that no one wanted to turn it into a TV show as we hoped and intended.
Julia: It’s okay. Someone will eventually.
Amanda: It’s not too late! Not too late….not too late.
Julia: Not too late. Hit us up.
Amanda: And finally we would like to let you know that if you are into mysteries, boy do we have a new show for you. We are, as Multitude, launching a show called “Meddling Adults” that is coming out THIS Wednesday, May 13th, 2020. Mike Schubert created and is hosting the show, and it is all about solving children’s mysteries as adults.
Julia: I’ve now listened to the trailer and I heard other people’s scores and I’m wholly embarrassed by the lack of points that I got, so get ready for me to fail at solving puzzles for children.
Amanda: I had a very good time, I feel like I am an intellectual peer with Encyclopedia Brown, which, frankly, is everything I have wanted and it is so fun and also benefits charity. All the proceeds from the podcast are going to be donated to a charity of the winner’s choosing of each episode, and the first ten episodes in our first season are going to be coming out weekly starting May 13th. So find “Meddling Adults” by looking up the word “multitude” in Spotify, in Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to your pods, or going to multitude.productions to read more about the show.
Well, without any further ado, we hope you enjoy episode 180, Godzilla and Kaiju for Myth Movie Night.
[Theme Music]
Julia: Amanda, I made you watch another movie, this time, for Myth Movie Night, that I don’t think--have you seen any of the Godzilla films before?
Amanda: Nary a one, Julia.
Julia: Nary a one. Interesting. Have you seen any of the legendary big monster or Kaiju films before?
Amanda: Well...I saw a play about Godzilla once…
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: And I also saw “Pacific Rim” and then wrote a lot of fan-fiction about it.
Julia: Okay. You know what, “Pacific Rim” is a good example. You know, it’s definitely a modernization of the Kaiju film, but first, let’s talk about “Godzilla: King of Monsters.” The 2019 one, not the one from 1956.
Amanda: It was entertaining and I had to take an extraordinary amount of notes to be able to do this two minute summary for you. So, folks, if you want to stay spoiler-free please skip ahead about two and a half minutes, and uh, you will save yourself from me stumbling through this plot.
Julia: All right. I’m gonna put the timer on the clock real quick...are you ready, Amanda?
Amanda: Okay. Let’s see if I can do this...ready
Julia: Ready. Set...go.
Amanda: So we learn through some exposition that five years ago the world found out about giant monsters now known as Titans. In that first attack, Dr. Emma Russel’s son was killed, but now she works for this organization called ‘Monarch.’ She made a device called ‘The Orca’ which can kind of communicate with Titans. A group of eco-terrorists, though, attacks the base where she is working. There’s a cool kind of pan backward where what we think is a normal house ends up being in the middle of China, in a research base and Eleven is her daughter. However, when the terrorists attack they kill everybody except for kidnapping Emma and her daughter, Madison.
So, we cut to Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights taking cute pictures of wolves in Colorado or Wyoming or some shit, and some of the Monarch scientists approach him in a helicopter, scaring off the wolves, ‘cause he’s Emma’s ex-husband. The terrorists casually follow Godzilla to Antarctica where the terrorists intend to free a three-headed titan called ‘Monster Zero.’ Emma frees and awakens this monster, he battles Godzilla, eats a scientist, escapes, and we learn then that Emma is secretly working with the terrorists. Oh no. Plot twist.
From a Monarch bunker in Boston, Emma contacts Monarch and argues that the Titans must be awakened in order to heal the earth from the damages that humans have caused. So super-villain Emma then awakens another Titan, Rodan, in Mexico. Monster Zero defeats Rodan but then gets one of its heads cut off by Godzilla. He regrows it and it’s very scary and then awakens all other dormant titans around the world.
And through mythology, Dr. Chen discovers that Monster Zero is King...Guh-dorra? Gah-door-uh? I forget how they said it--an ancient alien seeking to terraform the earth to its liking. Mothra, the one from the very beginning, teams up with Godzilla in an ancient underwater city--very Atlantis vibes--they have to help Godzilla heal by detonating a nuke and Godzilla then goes super saiyan and defeats Monster Zero becoming a kind of ‘King of monsters’ and then in the credits there are some plot seeds for the next movie.
Julia: Yes. The “King Kong versus Godzilla” one which is gonna be great. You’re actually, you got it under two minutes, Amanda, that was incredible! Great job.
Amanda: Thank you! Thank you so much!
Julia: The plot is very meandering in this film so you did a great job kind of reeling it in.
Amanda: There’s very many layers and I don’t think they quite needed all those layers, but we got them anyway
Julia: Yeah. Fun fact about this movie: it is the sequel to the 2015?--or 2014 film that had Brian Cranston in it, both the actor and actress that played Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver in the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie. Fun fact about that. I also didn’t realize that guy was Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights, so you enlightened me.
Amanda: Oh, he sure is. Ageless.
Julia: So, Amanda, I would love to talk about Godzilla and the development of the big monster or Kaiju film and also kind of the tie-in between those films and both the anti-nuclear movement and also environmentalism. So, just a heads up at the top here, we’re going to be talking a lot in this episode about atomic weaponry and the threat of nuclear attacks. I personally know that that’s a topic that gives me a lot of anxiety, so if that’s something that you also feel, it is totally okay to skip this episode. Don’t worry about it, we can talk about it another time--or, don’t talk about it at all. Up to you guys. Doesn’t really matter.
So, Amanda, arguably the “giant monster movie” started in 1933 with King Kong and became really popular--both in the United States and in Japan. For example, that 1933 King Kong movie led to the 1938 “King Kong Appears in Edo” in Japan, which is really cool. I love that like--there’s a lot of going back and forth between Japan and the United States when it comes to big monster or Kaiju films. Most of these early monster movies tended to have a sort of imperialism focused plot. So it’s like...exploring unknown regions,and then fights with big monsters as the climactic scene, and then also, you know, the white nationalists get to do what they want. It’s terrible. But, shortly after that, in the 1940s, the development of the atomic bomb would lead to themes around that to surround Giant Monster, or Kaiju films as they’re known in Japan, to this day.
So, the first kaiju movie to explore themes around nuclear testing actually came out of the United States in 1953, with “The Beast from 2,000 Fathoms,” where a giant dinosaur awakens to wreak havoc after its resting place in the Arctic is distrubed by nuclear testing. So, actually the Japanese name for this film featured the first use of the word Kaiju in a film title, as it was called “An Atomic Kaiju Appears”.
Amanda: And does Kaiju mean “big monster” in Japanese?
Julia: Kaiju, just to clarify, means “strange beast”--
Amanda: Aww, very good.
Julia: --was the next line in my notes .So, just a year later, in 1954, was the first appearance of Godzilla, and the plot of the first Godzilla film is very much informed by these post-war cultural fears of Japan. In the story, Godzilla is said to be an ancient sea creature or a dinosaur that was distrubed by underwater hydrogen bomb testing. So, he has resistance to radiation, he has “atomic breath”, which is when you see Godzilla breathing fire--it’s atomic breath, and he leaves survivors with radiation sickness. And the movie ends with a character warning that if nuclear weapon testing continues, another Godzilla or Godzilla-like creature could rise in the future.
Amanda: See, I didn’t know any of that context. So, to me, the fact that they had to detonate a nuke to help Godzilla heal was extremely puzzling, but it makes a lot of sense that that would be something that’s on people’s minds and a way to both kind of engage with this topic in a sort of safer way which is through the lens of story-telling and through something that’s almost so fantastical that you sort of forget that it’s a real threat that’s facing the world, but also to kind of hammer that message home in the end.
Julia: Yeah and it’s really interesting--I’ll talk a little more about this later, but the legendary-verse, which is what we’ll call these kind of revived movies about Godzilla and the other Kaiju, including “Kong: Skull Island” which was an earlier version in this universe--they talk about how the Titans, which is their name for the Kaiju, basically subsist and gain power from radiation which is really interesting and an interesting way to play with the original concept established in the 1954 Godzilla film.
Amanda: Yeah, and it’s--I can’t decide if it’s almost, like...absolving humanity of the fact that they are, in most cases, just irrevocably harming the planet? Like, what if these things that are so destructive instead kind of gave rise to another sort of life that wasn’t disease or cancerous materials? But….it’s also bad.
Julia: Oh, don’t worry, Amanda. We’re going to have a very intense conversation about environmentalism at the end.
Amanda: Okay.
Julia: So that is the first Godzilla movie, most Americans, however, are more familiar with the American version of the film, which was released as “Godzilla, King of Monsters” in the United States on April 27, 1956. This version of the film cuts the original down to 80 minutes, from 96, and adds new footage to include a plot surrounding an American reporter who is covering the Godzilla attacks in Japan, and originally the film got negative reviews in Japan--like the original Godzilla got negative reviews in Japan--with reviewers kind of criticizing the film for exploiting the devastation of World War II on Japan and also the fallout of the Castle Bravo nuclear weapon test that had happened only a few months before Godzilla’s original filming. However, the US was much kinder to the film, because they actually praised the depictions of the horrors of the nuclear bomb.
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: Let’s talk about Castle Bravo for a second, because one, they make reference to it as one of the bases in the film that we just watched, which I think is wild, but also I think it’s really important to understanding the historical context of it because it informs so much about the Godzilla story. Again, this is going to be talking a lot about nuclear bombing, nuclear testing, stuff like that. A lot of the nuclear fears out of Japan come from, obviously, the United States bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they continued far after that because the United States was testing thermonuclear weapons in the Pacific, specifically in Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954. During that testing, radiation spread and contaminated an area of the Pacific of more than 7,000 square miles. For context, that’s about the size of New Jersey.
Amanda: Wow.
Julia: The testing itself was incredibly frightening, just given the sight of the blast itself, but at the same time as the testing, there was a Japanese fishing boat in the area of contamination called the Fukuryu Maru, which is “The Lucky Dragon.” They had been notified that they were outside the danger zone by the United States government in advance, but it turned out that the explosion was close to three times more powerful than the scientists originally anticipated, which is wild...wild to me--
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: --that it’s...that they could create something so dangerous and so large beyond what they imagined at first.
Amanda: And had the hubris of their own predictions not to be like, “Hey we think it’s going to be this big, let’s clear an area ten times the size of that.”
Julia: Yeah! You would think that that would be safety protocol at it’s finest, but no. So, by the time that the Lucky Dragon returned to Japan, all of the crew were suffering from acute radiation syndrome, or ARS, and the boat’s chief radioman died a few months later because of complications from ARS. So, this incident was considered and used as a banner and a turning point for the anti-nuclear movement in Japan, and it would also inspire the plot and rhetoric behind the original Godzilla. Later films would, as we see with the film that we watched, they would tie environmental protection into this conversation as well, much like the anti-nuclear movement did themselves. Most famously, Rachel Carson, who wrote Silent Spring--which is about the overuse of pesticides destroying the environment--states that “The parallel between radiation and chemicals is exact and inescapable.”
Amanda: Wow.
Julia: I had to read a lot of Rachel Carson as part of a environmental history and also apocalypticism classes, and especially, like, during the 60s, 70s and 80s, and...ugh. Her work is heartbreaking in a lot of ways because while her work did shine a light on a lot of the things that we were doing wrong, it’s also a lot of the things that she pointed out we’re still doing, which is rough in itself.
Amanda: I’m sure we’ll talk about this more at the end as well, but there are so many ways in which there is no other place, there are no other people, there is no consequence-free use of other people’s land, environment, bodies, and that is so relevant right now in a way that is shocking and heartbreaking.
Julia: Yeah. To turn to a slightly lighter note, because I think we need a little levity after that, we’ll talk a little bit more about the adaptations and re-adaptations of the Godzilla franchise.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: They have been made over and over and over again. That’s why there’s so many Godzilla movies. But when the TV market started to grow in the 1970s, Godzilla’s image kind of switched from a destructive force to a more heroic monster aimed to appeal to children, which we kind of saw in this film as well. Like, Godzilla is fighting the bigger monster to help kind of save humanity, which is interesting.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: There was a American “Son of Godzilla” which was a movie that was released for TV and it removed a lot of the plots of the movie in order to make it more easily digestible for audiences. There was also the Godzilla animated series from 1978, wherein Godzilla partnered with a team of helpful scientists and also his flying nephew, Godzooky, as they traveled the world to fight monsters and solve crimes.
Amanda: Awww. Adorable.
Julia: It’s incredible. There was another Japanese TV show called “Son of Godzilla” --not to be confused with the American “Son of Godzilla” that I mentioned earlier --where a character named Mini-illa is introduced as Godzilla’s son, and is portrayed as a sort of comical character. There’s also another mini-godzilla child that was featured in a 1969 Japanese series called “All Monsters Attack” where the character teaches children how to handle bullies and also to escape from comical kidnappings.
Amanda: Very cute.
Julia: A little bit lighter, which is nice, it kind of gets away from the--
Amanda: [in an accent] Street smarts!
Julia: Here’s what you gotta do, you gotta breathe atomic breath onto them, kick ‘em in the shins and run away!
Amanda: Exactly. Money clip!
Julia: Your….Lion King wallet….ten dollars and your Lion King wallet….anyway. Doing enough John Mulaney bits. From this period we kind of move from the more comical 1970s versions of Godzilla and we return with the 30th anniversary film, which was titled “Return of Godzilla”, where Godzilla’s ties to nuclear war are again touched upon. So in this film, which came out in 1984 in Japan, features a Soviet Union submarine that is lost in an attack by Godzilla, and in retaliation the Soviets send a nuclear missile towards Japan, only for it to be blocked by American anti-ballistic missile technology. Oh, the Cold War...the Cold War, man.
Amanda: Yeah….also, what an American self-redemption arc. I don’t think we deserve that.
Julia: Well, interestingly, that was...Japan made the movie, and then later it was released in America under the title Godzilla 1985, and both these films kind of change the origins of Godzilla. So rather than Godzilla being reawakened by nuclear testing, Godzilla is retconned to have been CREATED by exposure to radiation during nuclear testing. These films that resulted from this--they’re known as the Heisei series--they include extraterrestrials coming to earth to try to prevent the creation of Godzilla, and in the process introducing and creating the character King Ghidorah, which is the three-headed dragon that we saw in our film. The Heisei period also expanded the role of Mothra, who is longtime foe and also sometimes ally to Godzilla, and I love her so much. She’s just a big giant moth.
Amanda: Yeah. Mothra is good people.
Julia: Mothra--only good Kaiju. I’m gonna call it now. I have big feelings about Mothra and I love her to bits.
Amanda: Mothra and Madea. Those are your ride-or-dies.
Julia: They are. They are my ride-or-dies. So, we’ll talk a little bit more about America’s expansion of the franchise as soon as we get back from the refill!
[Theme Music]
Julia: Amanda, I can’t shop in stores anymore and I am fine with that because I have been spoiled, Amanda. Spoiled because every couple of months a package is sent to my door where my clothes have been picked out for me, and that’s ‘cause I have Stitch Fix!
Amanda: Hell yeah! I just recently dug out my summer clothes from my underbed storage, my seasonal wardrobe came out, and I was reminded how many incredible jumpsuits and dresses I’ve gotten from Stitch Fix over the years.
Julia: So, Stitch Fix is a personal styling company that brings you the world in fashion and style. It’s a completely different and fun way to find clothes that you’ll love and it’s all about you every time! I love being told that things are about me! To get started you just have to go to stitchfix.com/spirits to set up your profile and they’ll deliver great personalized looks just for you in colors, in styles, and in budgets that you like. You pay a $20 styling fee for each fix which is credited towards anything you keep, so, keep a shirt, keep some pants, that $20 is going straight to those shirts and those pants. You can schedule it at any time, there’s no subscription required, plus shipping, returns and exchanges are always free. Stitch Fix does the hard work for you, it makes great style effortless for everybody involved, including men, women, kids, non-binary folks.
Amanda: Absolutely! You can switch between masculine and femenine styles month-to-month which I really appreciate as well.
Julia: Yeah, like, I asked for some suiting and Stitch Fix was like, “hey, how about some awesome blazers that you can wear to professional settings and also sometimes you just wanna look cool in a suit and tie” and I’m like, “yes, Stitch Fix, thank you! Thank you for understanding!”
Amanda: We did have a triple date night recently with friend of the show Kristen and her girlfriend Grizelle and it was incredibly fun to just look a little fancy for a night and I enjoyed your Stitch Fix blazer.
Julia: Thank you.So, you can get started today at stitchfix.com/spirits where you’ll get 25% off when you keep everything in your fix. Again, that’s stitchfix.com/spirits for 25% off when you keep everything in your fix.
Amanda: That is stitchfix.com/spirits for 25% off when you keep everything in your box.
We are also sponsored this week by BetterHelp, and we talk on the show all the time about how important therapy and mental health care are to us., and I have really appreciated how over the last year that as my schedule has been strange and I’ve done lots of travel and now I just have unpredicatable working hours because sometimes you wake up and feel like doing nothing except for, I don’t know, laying on the couch and watching old murder mysteries, and other times I am working later or earlier than I’m used to, I really appreciate that I now have therapy through BetterHelp. My therapist is a certified, licensed professional. We started communicating in less than 24 hours after I signed up for the app, and if I ever--for whatever reason--felt like changing providers, BetterHelp makes that really easy to do. They want to help everybody start living a happier life, and being able to talk through the stuff that’s on my mind--my anxieties, my worries--with someone who’s just there to listen and help me sort things out is an absolute game changer. I can schedule phone calls or video calls with my therapist, but in-between appointments I can also message with her, and being able to sort of send her something throughout the day saying,, “hey this came up, I was thinking about it,” or record something that I was thinking or feeling to talk about in my next sessions makes it a lot easier for me to remember what it is that I wanna talk about to feel like I’m really making progress from week to week, instead of showing up and sitting there and just being like “uhhh, I’m not really sure what I want to talk about,” which has definitely happened to me in the past.
Julia: And I have read so many reviews where people are so satisfied with their therapist. One I’m looking at right now says that, “She’s great! Very balanced and logical. Sensitive but straight-forward. Highly recommend.”
Amanda: Absolutely, and I really love, as well, that it’s more affordable than traditional offline counseling, but they also provide financial aid. So BetterHelp understands that mental health care is something that everybody could benefit from and they try to make it as easy as possible for you to start living a happier life today. So you can visit betterhelp.com/spirits, that’s better, H-E-L-P, .com/spirits to get 10% off your first month.
Julia: Yeah, join over 800,000 people who are taking charge of their mental health with the help of experienced professionals.
Amanda: At betterhelp.com/spirits for 10% off your first month...and now let’s get back to the show.
Julia: So, Amanda, there are a lot of Godzilla cocktails out there in the world, unsurprisingly. It’s been around for decades now at this point. I was going to suggest a Kaiju Bloody Mary, but I also didn’t have enough prep time so I went with a simpler option that I found in a book called “Japanese Cocktails” by Yuri Kato. The only ingredient that you might have a little trouble finding is Umeshu, which is a japanese plum liquor. Other than that, the cocktail has tequila, it’s got melon liqueur, it’s got lemon juice, and then a little bit of fresh mint.
Amanda: I have a mint plant and some plum sauce in my cabinet. So, I think we can improvise.
Julia: Yeah, we can make that work! I like that. So with those in hand, let’s talk about America’s Godzillas, and then back to Japan, because it’s a lot of back and forth here in the history of Godzilla.
Amanda: Very suitable. A nice little meta-textual commentary that you’re making here.
Julia: Thank you. So, we can start by talking about the 1998 Godzilla which was from Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. It was a financial success, but it was panned by critics and fans alike.
Amanda: Ahh. Gotta love it.
Julia: It also had Matthew Broderick in it for some reason. Don’t know why.
Amanda: Every time someone says his name I remember that he’s married to Sarah Jessica Parker and it’s so mind-blowing.
Julia: So part of the reason that fans and critics didn’t like the film was that it lacked the Japanese origins of the monster, instead they kind of turned them French? For some reason? So the film moves the 1954 opening that happens in Japan but instead moves it to French Polynesia, and then blames nuclear testing in Tahiti mutating iguanas into Godzilla as a result.
Amanda: Okay…
Julia: Yeah...however, while Japan and America disliked the film immensely--because we had an actual history with the films--it did make a splash in foreign markets. In particular, non-East Asian and none-North American markets which is really, really interesting. Following the movie, “Godzilla: The Series” was an animated sequel in many ways. It ran for a season,but because of its association with the film, and also the fact that it was competing with Pokemon and Digimon in the Saturday morning cartoon slot, it was doomed to fail.
Amanda: We’ve been watching a lot of Drawfee lately on Dropout and the amount that I have forgotten about Digimon staggers me. It is so much weirder than I ever remembered.
Julia: I need at least one fun, weird fact you remember about Digimon now. Or that you rediscovered watching Drawfee.
Amanda: Uh, some of them just look like MEN, Julia. They go from animals to their “digivolved” form which I had forgotten was a word--they’re just like….angel dudes in armor.
Julia: Oh, you mean Patamon to Angemon.
Amanda: Yes. Exactly.
Julia: He’s just like a litte--
Amanda: Connor was more into Digimon, I was more into Pokemon, but I’m gonna need to dive right back in.
Julia: No...Digimon’s definitely like...hornier in a lot of ways--
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: --because they’re just like, “well, you know….your small pet friend is now a very hot, handsome MAN with no shirt on! And he’s got a lot of muscles!”
Amanda: Apparently. Listen, I mean, I’m sure for a lot of us going through adolescence that would have been a great combo.
Julia: It would. It would be. Now, going away from Digimon and getting back to Godzilla--Japan soon gained back the rights to Godzilla after they lapsed in the United States ‘cause no one wanted to touch it because they did bad with it, and so because of that, the Millenium Series was created. So, this version retains the origins of the Kaiju, awoken by nuclear testing, and interestingly, Godzilla is portrayed as something that the Japanese public just has become used to. So its attacks are predicted and it’s kind of dealt with much like seasonal typhoons are, which personally I think is really, really interesting if you think about Godzilla moving away from simple anti-nuclear rhetoric and now moving towards one of environmentalism. So if Godzilla’s attacks were like super storms, we can make a parallel to climate change and global warming.
Amanda: Exactly. You can, you know, understand and advocate for changing it but at a certain point the effects are no longer reversible and so it is a kind of question of like adaptation and not just sort of like “let’s prevent this before something irrevocable happens” because it already did.
Julia: And I think that’s a great time to kind of transition into our film and the Legendary-verse. So we’re going to talk about “Godzilla, King of Monsters” and, like I said earlier, this movie was a sequel to the 2014 Godzilla, and the 2014 Godzilla is poignant and clear in its message of acknowledging the deliberate exposure of humans to radiation in nuclear testing--which is bad--which the US government has not really openly admitted to.
Amanda: Not surprising.
Julia: One of the things I found interesting in this film was that it features several other mythological names that we’ve discussed on this show before, so they’re kind of little cameos on the computer screen and you can dig into more research, there’s plenty of articles written online about it, like “what’s the deal with THIS Kaiju or THIS Titan”, so you might recognize some of the names like Leviathan, Baphomet, Sekhmet, Mokele-Mbembe, Typhon, Bunyip, Tiamat, Quetzalcoatl... I have mixed feelings about this, as all these creatures being listed as Titans or Kaiju. I don’t really love the idea of these gods or spirits from folklore being portrayed as monsters, and destructive monsters at that. It seems kind of disrespectful to the cultures that they are from by using them in this way. But again, that’s just me, I think it’s just that they just wanted to tie them in as “oh these stories have been happening all over the world and they did coexist at one point,” but I’ll get into that in a little bit.
But, the movie did bring back several Kaiju from the original series. Obviously we see Godzilla, we have Ghidorah, we have Mothra, and you mentioned Rodan in your summary of the movie. I haven’t talked about Rodan and Rodan’s history in the Kaiju film industry. He is, as you saw in the film, kind of like this flying dinosaur-esque creature, and he made his film debut back in 1956, which I think was only two years after the first Godzilla film. He’s a bit unique from other Kaiju in that because of his standalone movie, he has a mate, he has another Rodan, there’s more than one of them.
Amanda: Aww.
Julia: In that original standalone film, the two Rodan fall into a volcano and perish, but you see that, as a nod in “Godzilla, King of Monsters”, the Rodan in this film has a volcanic design and erupts from a volcano so it’s kind of like, “oh, they fell in there and they laid an egg and now that’s what this Rodan is,” which I think is very adorable. So according to the lore that is established in “Godzilla, King of Monsters”--’cause I think movie lore is just as important as the original 1954 lore--
Amanda: Yeah!
Julia: --so there are 19 of these Kaiju, or Titans, that are known to the scientific organization Monarch. Titans specifically sustain themselves on radiation and emit a type of radiation that is supposed to have restorative effects on ecosystems. Again, really getting into that environmentalism angle in this film. The movie also claims that Titans and humans co-existed during ancient times, which the Titans were worshipped as gods which is the reason that the movie uses several names from mythology and ancient religions for their monsters. In the film, the Titans are in deep hibernation, but are re-awoken by the exterrestrial force of King Ghidorah, who is acting as the Alpha for the Titans until he is killed by Godzilla, and Godzilla kind of prevents the Titans from attacking humanity any more and returns them to their resting places so they can heal the damage to the ecosystems caused by human activity. Plot of the movie.Great. This is where I’m gonna spin a little bit here about the environmental message of this particular film and then just the Godzilla films as a whole.
So, I think we have to be very careful in how we frame those conversations around environmentalism in particular. I’ve seen a lot of this on social media, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, about “nature healing itself because human beings aren’t interfering.” Which gets away from the point of it. Calling back to Rachel Carson’s statement earlier that I mentioned-- for Carson and environmentalism it’s not about individuals not doing their part to restore humanity and the environment, but rather it’s corporations, and capitalism, and the military industrial complex that care more about profit than preserving life and nature. Individuals AND the environment suffer when corporations are given free reign to do whatever they want in order to increase their profit, and we need to remember that as we watch movies with a pro-environmental message. The answer is not “humanity is the virus or disease or whatever”, the answer is “greed corrupts lives and our environment.” Both the environment and humans suffer when we allow corporations like this to be greedy. And humans are not separate from the
natural world, they’re a part of it.
I actually really liked a comment made by Ken Watanabe, who is the actor who played Dr. Serizawa in the film. He’s the one who sacrifices himself to explode the nuclear warhead to revive Godzilla. So, “In the 21st century we need to think about natural disasters. This creature is”--this creature being Godzilla--“this creature is symbolic of that natural disaster. We cannot control them, but we must live on this planet." Which I think is a great callback to the way that it’s portrayed in the Millenium series, where Godzilla is almost comparable to this horrific storm or typhoon. They can be predicted and anticipated, but at the end of the day it’s something that we have to prepare for and live with.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: I think it’s really great and I think that we’re lucky to have these films because they kind of create these conversations around environmentalism and it’s a discussion that is fundamental to the creation and continuing story of Godzilla.
Amanda: Absolutely, and I kind of share your discomfort with that idea that “oh, there are elk in people’s backyards in Scotland” and “the world is just repairing itself.” Because while it is important to have hope and to look for those little signs that even after, in the immediate term, this particular challenge is past us or even over the medium term, you know, after human beings as one of the many species on this planet perishes or whatever and then different things happen this planet will be filled by life in some way. I get that that’s a kind of fundamentally optimistic message and finding hope is really important, but we also are irrevocably ruining things to the point where we can’t just, you know, stop buying plastic water bottles or shut down whatever it might be, like carcinogenic plants that are polluting water, and everything will go back to normal. Because we are way past that, and so to kind of assume that that would happen and that all we would have to do is just stop and then everything will be fine is unrealistic. And I think there is a way to kind of face those realities and to listen to people who are advocating for the urgency, for example, of removing carbon emissions before more and more damage is done, and also be able to look at your house plants and see new leaves sprouting and find something to smile about that morning.
Julia: Yeah, and I think that it’s foolish and also harmful to put the blame on individuals and not hold corporations and businesses accountable for their actions in pollution. And a great way of making sure that you are helping to make those companies accountable is by making sure to vote in representatives even in your local elections as well as your national elections to make sure that they hold those businesses accountable via legislation and new laws.
Amanda: Yeah, and something, again, that’s giving me a little bit of hope right now is the fact that people who have not until now needed to look into things like civil disobedience, like strikes, like rent strikes, are learning about those things, some of them for the first time, and the fact is that following a system that has led us here is not always the way that we are going to dismantle or fundamentally change that system. And just staying really aware, educated, reaching outside of your particular network to see what people are doing and to try to put your little bit of energy into getting us to a place that is better than this one, is so important. Like we said earlier in the show, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but there are ethical ways to use your time and energy to try to advance life for all of us.
Julia: Yeah, absolutely. So Amanda, I prepared a couple of discussion questions for us because I was feeling inspired and like a middle school teacher.
Amanda: Like a book club edition of a best-selling novel.
Julia: Thank you. How do you feel terms of doing the original film and its original intentions justice?
Amanda: My only exposure to those original intentions was in this episode, so I think--the way that you structured that lesson--it seems like it is calling back to some of the intentions of the original work in a way that seems really effective.
Julia: And I had conflict about that because I feel like the argument “oh if we bring these creatures back they’re going to help cure the environment and save the environment” but that’s not getting at the point of like, how we got to this place in the first place, and I think that trying to find a cure or a fix-it to thos environmental issues is not addressing the underlying disease of it. And I think that the message felt jumbled to me in this film because of that.
Amanda: I was also very confused why we ended up at Fenway Park in the end.
Julia: I don’t know. I don’t know. Boston just got wrecked. Just fuckin’ demolished.
Amanda: I was like, “Boston why do you have to get up in the mix? Why?”
Julia: Maybe they were just like, “where’s someplace that people will definitely recognize and we can hold a lot of people there and also, like, I don’t man...they could fight near it? Great. Fenway! Fenway it is!”
Amanda: Also just watched “The Town.” Eric and I are watching a lot of heist movies in our self-isolation, and I was like, “What? What the f--we’re back HERE? WHAT?”
Julia: So, do you think the movie’s handling of environmentalism--I already told you my thoughts on this-- did you think it felt heavy-handed or was it sending the right message?
Amanda: No, I think I’m with you on this one where it’s not sexy and action-packed to talk about capitalism as a fundamentally destructive and immoral system, but any discussion of environmentalism without touching on that is just not getting there in my opinion.
Julia: Yeah. I agree. There’s so much they could have said and then they didn’t say--and I know that it’s supposed to be like an action movie. There are big monsters fighting, we don’t have to really explicitly say, “hey capitalism is the problem,” but--I don’t know, man.
Amanda: But don’t we though? Doesn’t anybody with a platform have an obligation, especially if they are going to make money off of this franchise with roots irrevocably in anti-nuclear and pro-environmental advocacy, to do that?
Julia: Yeah, and I think that kind of comes back to the fact that , yeah, we keep corrupting the message of things that are important, and if we keep making these movies over and over and over again to make more money and make spin-off series where baby Godzilla teaches kids to stand up to bullies we do have some sort of obligation to say something about where the film came from in the first place.
Amanda: Yeah. I agree, and I’m conscious too that a lot of us are kind of relying on single-minded enjoyment of something that lets us escape from the world right now in order to cope, and I also don’t want to imply that that is wrong--that just watching an action movie and enjoying it for what it is, that’s not immoral--but I think from a creator perspective, when you decide to utilize something like that, or something with a history, or to revive a franchise, there are implications to what it is that you make, and there are ever more urgent reasons why it is in everybody’s best interest--in the world’s best interest--to use whatever platform you have to advocate for something important.
Julia: That is great and also leads, as a nice segue, into my last question, which is...the Kaiju movie is a “big monster movie” in general, with big monsters fighting, but it usually has an overarching lesson that it’s trying to teach the audience.So is that something you’re interested in checking out more? Did this movie manage to achieve that for you?
Amanda: I think our discussion did in a way that the movie didn’t. The movie just made me want to re-watch “Pacific Rim” or “Friday Night Lights” because I enjoyed that Kaiju context and I like Coach Taylor and Connie Britton is missing from every movie that I watch, but in that context, that’s why I think that there is both room for enjoying something with your brain shut off and also using that as an opportunity or an invitation to learn more. Like, I can just enjoy the movie for what it is and critique the CGI, you know, and enjoy the pandering acting, and then decide to put something on my reading list or just follow somebody on Instagram who is advocating for environmentalism in a radical, anti-capitalist way that also advocates racial justice and other topics that are inextricable from this.So, it can be an invitation to engage even if, during that moment, you don’t have the energy to do so.
Julia: 100%. Also, CGI was pretty good,huh?
Amanda: CGI was pretty good. It was pretty good.
Julia: Yeah, I’m pretty happy with that.
Amanda: It’s on Hulu. Check it out!
Julia: There you go. It is on Hulu. You do have to have the HBO edition to watch it on Hulu, but it is.
Amanda: OR your partner’s parent’s HBO log-in.
Julia: There you go. Amanda’s got the in! So, Amanda, that is my history of the Godzilla/Kaiju films and environmentalism and anti-nuclear movement. How do we feel?
Amanda: I feel good. Sometimes it feels better to focus on Animal Crossing and leave the rest of the world alone, but sometimes it feels really good to face stuff and particularly to contextualize challenges we’re going through now in the 100-year-long history of other people facing, really bravely, those same things, and sometimes with a lot fewer resources doing a lot more, so it feels a little bit like solidarity in a way that I think I really needed.
Julia: Yeah. So, listeners, if you are looking for a way to help with environmentalism and do your part there are plenty of resources online in order to figure it out--figure out a way you can help out, and remember to stay creepy--
Amanda: --stay cool.