Godzilla is one of the most notorious monsters originating from Japan. The reason why I decided to write about Godzilla was because it was one of the monsters that stuck out to me the most when I was a child. As a child I was completely oblivious to the reasoning behind the concept of Godzilla, but as I got older it made so much sense especially after really having to think about it for the paper. Godzilla goes quite well with some of Cohen's 7 theses.
One example of this can be seen right away in Cohen's first thesis "The Monster's Body Is a Cultural Body." The whole idea about Godzilla is completely based off of a certain moment in Japan's culture/history, after the the two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After that horrific moment, Japan would never be the same. The bombs inflicted so much pain and destruction, which in turn caused fear and chaos. These are some of the basic ideas behind monsters like Cohen writes, "The monster's body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety." When Godzilla first rose from the sea and pretty much every time after it caused a panic and chaos, because no one knew what to do or how to stop this creature from destroying their city. This caused the population to have this desire to get rid of this creature and caused anxiety throughout the whole country. This is exactly the same for the atomic bombings, the people of Japan had absolutely no idea what to do and were scared and anxious that another bomb might be dropped on some other city.
Continuing on, Godzilla can be connected to Cohen's second thesis "The Monster Always Escapes." Clearly after a little bit of reading Cohen does not mean that the monster always slips away with a sliver of health left. No this is interpreted and meant that the monster will always return, no what happens to it. Taking a look at the original Godzilla movie that came out in 1954, at the end of the movie Godzilla is completely annihilated leaving no trace oh its body behind. However, this did not stop Godzilla from appearing in every other movie since then. Like Cohen wrote, "No monster tastes of
death but once." This is because monsters never truly die, they will always come back.
Godzilla will always be lurking in the depths of the ocean, waiting for the right time to return and cause havoc.
I really like your idea of Cohen's first thesis of monster which it reflect culture background because that is the reason I believe the monster story origin and the reason why different parts of world have different kinds of monster.
ReplyDeleteAlso I like your opinion of illustrating the fear Godzilla brings to Japanese is actually the fear Nuclear weapon brought.
Also I believe Godzilla movie is kind of a warning to human that how Nuclear weapon will hurt us. The damage it brought was not only happened at one time when it blowed, it will also make some damage because of radiation afterward.