Comments on: MY NEW MONSTER-FIGHTING TECHNIQUE IS UNSTOPPABLE

MY NEW MONSTER-FIGHTING TECHNIQUE IS UNSTOPPABLE

matteo — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:05:36 -0800

INCREDIBLE, UNSTOPPABLE TITAN OF TERROR! He's attacked other monsters and terrorized Japan for decades. Now Godzilla is confronting academics who want to wrestle with his legacy. The University of Kansas plans to pay homage to the giant lizard later this month, organizing a three-day scholarly conference for the 50th anniversary of his first film. Planners want to provoke discussion of globalization, Japanese pop culture and Japanese-American relations after World War II. "I would like people to take Godzilla more seriously," said Bill Tsutsui, a history professor at the University of Kansas and author of the book "Godzilla on My Mind". (more inside)

By: matteo

matteo — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:10:25 -0800

Info on the Festival here Joe R Lansdale's masterful story, Godzilla's Twelve-Step Program

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:38:11 -0800

The original Godzilla's a pretty heavy movie. Less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you've got a movie about a giant monster, created by the bomb, kicking the shit out of Tokyo. Imagine a 2010 movie about a giant mechanical Osama Bin Laden fucking with New York. Even if Ben Affleck figures out how to stop MechOsama by the end of the movie, it's a pretty ballsy act of cultural scab-picking... The movie even sets up some really interesting parellels with the Manhattan project. The guy who builds the weapon they use to stop Godzilla stumbles across a huge source of energy, and then hushes it up for fear of it being used as a weapon. But in extremis, he agrees that the greater good requires him to weaponize it. I almost read this as saying that, well, the Manhattan project is understandable. And coming from postwar Japan, that's a pretty hardcore statement.

By: Miles Long

Miles Long — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:49:30 -0800

yeah. i think because the original was such a heavy movie, the sequels had to be 'sillified'. That's one of the positive uses of art, working out big cultural fears in the open, instead of hiding them and letting them fester. Metafilter: cultural scab-picking.

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 12:04:42 -0800

It is interesting to compare the Japanese version of the Godzilla and the way that they were edited to be American movies for the North American market. Stripped of its social commentary, the American version (with Raymond Burr) is just plain awful (still cool to see Godzilla). Secondly, the recent US version of Godzilla from 2000 was a meditation on completely missing the point. "Hey, lets take Godzilla, and make him FAST!!" This is a fantastic post, thank you.

By: adamms222

adamms222 — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 12:38:03 -0800

At this time of year, us NYers are only interested in one Godzilla.

By: logovisual

logovisual — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 12:38:03 -0800

Wow, that Lansdale story is great.

By: MrBadExample

MrBadExample — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 17:31:18 -0800

Oh, no, there goes Tokyo... I was lucky enough to catch the restored version of the original Japanese film a couple of months ago. You all are right--that film is deep. It was an odd experience to see it in a theater with an audience, though. The audience was plainly expecting cheezy rubber-monster silliness, and they didn't quite know whether to laugh or not.

By: DyRE

DyRE — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 18:42:27 -0800

Interesting. Happy birthday, big guy. And that Lansdale story totally rocks. In honour of Godzilla's big five-oh, there's also an art show in San Francisco, California and a film festival in Portland, both called Fifty Years of Godzilla.

By: greasepig

greasepig — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 00:10:11 -0800

San Francisco is having a film festival, too. It will give us Americans a chance to see, IMHO, the greatest movie of all time.

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 20:48:33 -0800

Is Godzilla Born-Again ?