Message from rwalcott

[Anonymous]

mferi, I enjoyed your contribution on Godzilla 5-24-04. This mornig I heard the following NPR broadcast which may bring some of the points that you made more into focus. Steve Ryfle seems to disagree with you about Godzilla’s movement in the 1954 film.

National Public Radio, Morning Edition, May 25, 2004.
“Original ‘Godzilla’ to Make Uncut Debut in U.S.”

David D'Arcy reports.

D’Arcy: “The story was inspired in part by a real American nuclear test in 1954 that irradiated the crew of a Japanese fishing boat. “

D’Arcy: (Talking about Crieg [Gregory] Pflugfelder, Professor of Japanese History at Cornell University) “He calls Godzilla the most important post war film made in Japan and a daring critique of American global hegemony. “

Pflugfelder, “It’s very clearly imbedded that if they [America], and more broadly, we [the free world] continue down this path of destruction in developing nuclear weaponry who knows what the result might be. And we as Japanese have a particular role to play within the free world as the one nation whose experienced nuclear destruction first hand.”

D’Arcy: “That’s not the message American audiences got when Godzilla opened here in 1956.
Steve Ryfle, author of “Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star (The Unauthorized biography of Godzilla)”, describes the ingenious way in which Godzilla was transformed into an American monster movie.
D’Arcy: “The original was made by the son of a monk. Ishiro Honda fought in WWII, was imprisoned by the Chinese, and recreated the battle of Midway for Japanese movie audiences.”

D’Arcy: “According to Steve Reifel, Godzilla was never supposed to look real.”

Ryfel: Japanese films routinely criticized by nonfans for not looking real. “I don’t know if the purpose especially of the films from the 1960’s was necessarily to make something look real. I think the purpose was to make something that looked spectacular.

Ryfel: “Honda, in particular viewed the monster as a personification or representation of the atomic bomb. Honda’s hope for the film was that it would inspire people rise up against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And years later in the early 90’s, shortly before he died he regretted that this film had not made more of an impact. After all these years, he said, we haven’t even reduced the number of nuclear weapons by one, and he was quite sad about that.”

Ron Walcott