Godzilla says trans rights

July 7, 2020 5:40 PM

Coming Out is a stop-motion short film by Cressa Maeve Beer, officially endorsed by Toho.
posted by brook horse (19 comments total)

I am crying radioactive tears.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:54 PM on July 7, 2020 [7 favorites]

Godzilla Says "Trans Rights"!
posted by SansPoint at 5:56 PM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

Never you mind why.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:56 PM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

This is the sweetest.
posted by lunasol at 6:13 PM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

Excellent. And excellent use of Baragon.
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:20 PM on July 7, 2020 [3 favorites]

This is very sweet.
posted by brundlefly at 6:25 PM on July 7, 2020

It's that moment when Godzilla stops, and listens, and then goes to the laptop, and learns, and thinks about it all, and moves forward.
Totally lovely. Thanks for posting.
posted by winesong at 7:03 PM on July 7, 2020 [15 favorites]

I loved this. It's now part of my headcanon for the Godzilla movies.

(I'm also obsessed with Godzilla's tea pot because yes, kaiju should all be drinking tea, as you do.)
posted by so much modern time at 7:08 PM on July 7, 2020 [8 favorites]

Oh my God yes
posted by Kitchen Witch at 7:22 PM on July 7, 2020

Godzilla wearing reading glasses and knitting is the best.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:24 PM on July 7, 2020 [10 favorites]

TVTropes calls the use of a bow on a character's head/hair to designate the character as female a tertiary sexual characteristic. (There are plenty of other examples given, but it's hard to think of a more prototypical one than bows.) This short is probably the most I've seen a text directly engaging with that image. If there's a bow on your head, suddenly you pass as female. The larger (older?) monsters don't have bows on their heads, therefore they're presenting as male.

Seeing a fictional world where transition is effortless¹ and even immediate always presents conflicting feelings. It's great for some fictional character that this single solitary part of their life can be simple, but it's not like that for the real people watching. Is the representation cheapened by this shorthand, or does it not matter because the identity is the important thing, not all the messy chemical work needed to get other people to take you seriously? Would a more realistic portrayal be supportive or voyeuristic? It's easy to feel both things.

¹ Physically effortless. Obviously there's still a lot of mental/emotional work being carried out in this short.
posted by one for the books at 7:50 PM on July 7, 2020 [9 favorites]

I kinda love how Barragon pauses when G obviously has something going on with their kid. And then B just chills with a book and a cup of coffee until they come back.

There’s something very... domestically working class about it. Like fighting in downtown Tokyo is a job that one shows up for. like that cartoon of the sheepdogs and coyotes clocking in and out for their shift.

And when your colleague is going through some family shit, you give them support the space they need and wait for them to come back. “Your kid’s a girl now? Ok... LET’S FIGHT!”

Barragon, I like to think, is being a good ally.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 9:28 PM on July 7, 2020 [22 favorites]

This is Oscar-worthy.

Thank you for posting it.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:25 PM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

I've watched this a few times in recent weeks as various waves of friends discover it and link it into group chats, and while one on level it's lovely and affirming (including the small bits of coding, like the idea above that trashing downtown Tokyo is a job you show up for and the Sailor Moon sequence), one another level it feels kind of personally tragic that fuckin' Godzilla is a better dad than my own actual dad was ever capable of being (and he's dead now, so no do-over).

Godzilla looks like a monster but is capable of bringing decent humanity into his relationship with the person he made; my dad looked like a decent human but was only capable of bringing monstrosity into his relationship with the person he made.
posted by terretu at 12:39 AM on July 8, 2020 [20 favorites]

Godzilla is a role model.

Barragon too.
posted by bile and syntax at 7:32 AM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

I thought this was very cute. I am glad Godzilla is a good parent here. I'm sorry for folks who don't have Godzilla as a parent.
posted by dismas at 7:51 AM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

Loved this. So sweet.
posted by sonascope at 10:01 AM on July 8, 2020

Thanks for bringing those points up, one for the books, captain afab, terretu. I too get a bittersweet feeling from media with accepting parents/friends/etc. I remember experiencing it most strongly with Love, Simon--I was pissed off and snarky the whole first half of the movie, I wouldn't shut up about how "unrelatable" it was that literally everyone supported this kid. His parents were great, his friends were great, his teachers were great. Unrealistic bullshit, I said.

Then I realized, oh. This is what I asked for when I said I wanted happy queer stories that weren't about homophobia/transphobia. And it was just so absolutely foreign to me, I was ready to dismiss it out of hand. That hit me a little. The fact that I couldn't even imagine that kind of world. That it made me angry to see a kid who didn't grow up abused for his sexuality/gender, because how dare he get all that love and support that I never got.

So yeah. It's always a little hard for me to see kids in media being instantly accepted. But, I think for that same tragic reason, it's important we keep creating it. What we can imagine matters, which is something any queer kid that never imagined living past 18 can tell you. It took me a long time to be able to imagine any kind of happy queer adulthood for myself. I'm still working on imagining a happy queer childhood for the next generation. I am getting some hope, though--I know a few trans teens with fully supportive parents, now getting top surgery or starting HRT, and it's the same bittersweet feeling. I'm a little sad and bitter that I couldn't have that, but also so, so happy for them. Hopefully, with time, the latter will firmly outweigh the former.
posted by brook horse at 12:20 PM on July 8, 2020 [11 favorites]

Brook horse, I have the same response. Part of my issue with it is that I think cis straight people see the full acceptance response and they think that it reflects what they did, and what things are like for us, instead of being a fantasy. And that makes me angry, because things were really hard for me and I didn't have much support - my best friend from grade school never spoke to me again after I came out, my parents weren't good about it, and the only reason I wasn't socially ostracized was that I was already an outsider. So... mixed feelings, because obviously I want to see happy shit, but I don't want cis straight people to mistake that fantasy for reality.
posted by bile and syntax at 7:38 AM on July 9, 2020 [6 favorites]