Little Labors

And movies

Among the things commonly noted about the original Godzilla movie is that it came out in 1954 and was the first movie to acknowledge the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though it acknowledges it obliquely. Godzilla is said to have been awoken by nuclear testing, his footprints are radioactive, and the only English words in the movie are Geiger counter and oxygen destroyer. Also a woman on a commuter train says, of Godzilla, “First the acid rain, and now Godzilla.”

But Godzilla doesn’t necessarily mean to do harm; malice isn’t a fundamental aspect of his character. In a sense he has no malice at all, only rage. My favorite scene in Godzilla is the brief one in which we see Godzilla underwater, in his (or maybe her) natural setting. Underwater Godzilla is played by an obviously small toy. The toy is a much less detailed special-effects creature than aboveground Godzilla. Underwater Godzilla seahorses around on the ocean floor as extra-diegetic classical music plays; his gentle pulsing movements almost make it seem as if the underwater Godzilla has himself put the delicate music on, on an unseen underwater stereo. These “bad” special effects contribute, perfectly, to the overall effect: Godzilla is a childlike creature, innocent of his destructions. Even aboveground Godzilla walks widely, like a toddler. I read once of studies looking into the question of when it was that violent criminals became violent; the studies concluded that it wasn’t that violence suddenly appeared, it was that in some people more than others, for whatever reasons, the natural violence of youth was never extinguished.