Giant Monsters Attack!

Just back from a talk – very appropriately, in Japantown – called Giant Monsters Attack, part three in the TokyoScope Talk series (the next, on June 11^th, is themed “Sex”!) – it kicks off a week-long “Kaiju Shakedown” hosted at the same venue (1746 Polk), starting tomorrow night with a screening of “Godzilla vs. Gigan.” (Visit the VIZ Cinema web site for detailed info.) There was a panel of three hosts, including August Ragone, the author of a book on Eiji Tsuburaya, “Master of Monsters,” which I will have to read. It was a great talk. Not a huge crowd, but good-sized enough – 40 people or so spread through the theater – and good-natured, full of questions both jokey and earnest afterwards. (One guy asked, “Was Godzilla a chick?” ‘He’ did have a son, after all.)

Various clips were shown which were quite good, including soundless super-8-mm footage from one of the early kaiju films of the actor capering around in the Godzilla suit, apparently trying it out for flexibility, as well as the skillful Tokyo “factory women” painstakingly constructing the miniature sets destroyed in the films, gluing each tile and shingle and intricate piece one by one by hand. Also the clip from 70s TV series “Zone Fighter” in which Godzilla makes his first television appearance. One old guy sitting close to me watched every clip with a smile on his face and chuckled at 5-minute intervals throughout the entire program. Very amusing posters from international releases of the films – including very odd and misleading ones from Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, and America – were shown as well, and newly remastered discs of the original Gamera (the giant flying turtle who was Godzilla’s chief rival in the 60s) were given away by raffle.

The presentation ranged from the birth of the G-film franchise in the 50s to the present day – a new Godzilla film is due to be released this spring! On the more philosophical topic of what Godzilla means or stands for and the difference between Japanese and American giant monster films, there was interesting talk of the Japanese spiritual tradition called Shinto, and the idea of Godzilla as a destructive deity or divine incarnation of nature such as the Hindu goddess Kali – dark and “evil,” in some ways, perhaps, but still a part of the “plan” of nature. This seems an interesting counterbalance to the oft-proposed idea that The Big G is a symbol of the atomic bomb, an unnatural and evil byproduct of humankind. A great talk, and I’m glad I went.

Also discussed was the way that Godzilla and his or her movies function as a "gateway drug" to Japanese (pop) culture, as they certainly have for me.

Overheard on the bus on the way out: a group of drunk German guys on the bus: one of them said, “In Chermany you can pee anywhere, you can’t do that in America, if the police see you, you pay a lot of money, and maybe you go to chail!”