General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why Godzilla matters [View all]MisterP
(23,730 posts)fallout; it's not even a metaphor for the utter devastation of 1944-5, but
imperialist nations always imagine themselves victimized by some upstart who doesn't play fair--there was even a whole genre where many Britons basically mentally masturbated to their own ruin, but these invasion stories utterly evaporated once millions were actually injured or killed in industrialized warfare at the Somme and Mons--888000 for Britain alone
those countries that haven't seen their home soil torn up maintain the old fin-de-siecle sentimentalism: their invasion tales remain unrooted from reality, a way to experience one's victimhood beforehand and thus build up righteous anger against the designated enemy; the compassion remains for oneself alone--a fetishized victimhood one can wallow in, like in "Red Nightmare" where podunk county courthouses are surrounded by Soviet sandbags and machine-gun nests; PG Wodehouse got rapped for "Dixie Chicking" something they saw as Deadly Serious--the moment when the Fritzes Finally Would storm East Anglia, drag off our screaming women and line us up against the wall OMG OMG
to us, "Barefoot Gen" and the original "Godzilla" are a type of fantasy, in the same vein as "2012" or "Man of Steel": a "disaster movie" or a "superhero movie" (and indeed the Godzilla movies quickly slid into that); save for OKC and 9-11 Americans haven't really had to pick up dozens of 8-year-olds in knickerbockers and throw them onto a pile for burning or bury infants covered in third-degree burns in the ashes of what used to be a whole city; we can still make believe those we bomb all had it coming, or that it was doing them a favor--but deep inside we know we're lying, as the Lost Generation and then the post-Korea wave of Vonneguts and Hellers and Walter Millers show
and Japan's got a long legacy of mind-bending sea monsters