Nature, History, and the Problem of Godzilla
Pop culture criticism in the tradition of Peter Lawler
I suppose this will serve as my own inaugural post. Like a few of PoMoCon: The Next Generation contributors, I only wrote in the comments section on the old blog. One of the things I appreciated about Peter Lawler’s blogging was his ability to take seriously things that most “serious” people did not take seriously (and also, to be playful about things most serious people took to be serious). Case in point is his wonderful pop culture commentaries, mostly having to do with movies and TV shows. Who can forget his series of posts on Batman Studies, or his posts on Friday Night Lights or Girls? Peter had the Socratic insight that sometimes the most popular forms of entertainment give the best clues about what’s both right with us and wrong with us.
On that note, Godzilla vs. Kong came out last week. One could hardly imagine a sillier movie, right? I haven’t had a chance to see the movie, but I both saw and (somewhat unexpectedly) enjoyed its immediate Monsterverse predecessor. Here’s a link to the review I wrote of Godzilla: King of the Monsters when it came out. It’d be fun to know what PoMoCon readers thought of the new movie, too. A teaser for my full review:
“The movie unfortunately and troublingly leaves its overarching question unresolved: are human beings fundamentally monsters? Are we, like the otherworldly Ghidorah, alien to terrestrial nature because of our unnatural science and technology and our thirst for control? Do we throw nature off balance merely by being who we are and doing what it is characteristically human to do? Are the murderous eco-terrorists with whom Emma Russell makes common cause right, that human beings are an infection needing to be contained or, more likely, eliminated?”
Let me add for my complementary thoughts on Godzilla:
The case for worshiping Godzilla goes beyond money, although that, of course, is quite persuasive by itself. It is a moral argument about what it is that we fear when we fear death & what it is that we hope to achieve in our ever more artificial lives that make us dependent on technology & institutionalized expertise. Rationality seems alien & desiccating when every part of life is gradually bureaucratized to the point of ceremony. Why not become a monster instead? There’s no more responsibility, but no more hassle.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/worshipping-godzilla-in-an-alienated-world/
As for the new Godzilla v. Kong, it's some kind of attempt to pit the innocence of a child of suitably exotic race against the wicked technology of a pale tech billionaire who seems more of a Bond villain than an American villain. Godzilla & Kong, of course, make friends.