You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
-Short Attention Span Theater-
Monster meet for Godzilla experts
2004-10-18
Academics are to gather at a university in the United States to discuss the legacy of film monster Godzilla. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the lizard's first cinematic outing, since when he has been in 27 films. The University of Kansas Center for East Asian Studies will host the conference, looking at Godzilla's impact on global culture. The event, on 28 October, will include a film festival, exhibitions and a giant inflatable Godzilla.
Can't have a event without one.
The film Gojira - the Japanese movie that started Godzilla's career in November 1954 - will be shown during the conference. Organisers want to provoke discussion of globalisation, Japanese popular culture and Japanese-American relations after World War II.
A seminar titled "Godzilla, Why Does He Hate Us?"
Bill Tsutsui, a history professor at the University of Kansas and author of the book Godzilla on My Mind, said he would like people to take Godzilla "more seriously". Historians, anthropologists and other academics from prestigious universities such as Duke, Harvard and Vanderbilt are expected to attend. Yoshikuni Igarashi, director of east Asian studies at Vanderbilt, said he saw Godzilla films as important cultural artefacts. He plans to lecture on the 1964 film Godzilla vs The Thing, in which Godzilla battles the giant moth, Mothra, and its offspring.
One of the great films of our time.
Japan's Toho Co produced 27 Godzilla films over five decades, with a 28th movie, Godzilla: Final Wars, to be released in December. Takao Shibata, the Japanese consul general in Kansas City, said the meeting would help educate people about his nation but added: "The idea of this kind of serious analysis of the evolution of Godzilla - it never occurred to me."
Who's paying for this crucial academic study? Can anybody get in on the scam research? I've got some important ideas I'd love to contribute if I only had a piece of the boodle funding.
As long as you can conclusively prove or at least convincingly insinuate that Godzilla is categorically America's fault (and manage to work in a snark at Bushitler or John Ashkkkroft), you'll be "in like Flynn." You get a bonus grant and a paid vacation scholarly retreat to Antwerp if your presentation links the Kyoto Treaty to the NorK obsession with becoming a nuclear power and Dick Cheney's corporate masters at Halliburton. Now I'd like my cut of the boodle, please.
Posted by:Steve

#28  I hate to break it to ya, perry, but Pauls Drake is shacked up down at the beach with Della Street...
Posted by: mojo   2004-10-19 12:11:49 AM  

#27  20 Godzilla meets Bambi? Who wins??

See the sequel "Bambi's Revenge" to find that out.
Posted by: sc88   2004-10-18 11:12:07 PM  

#26  For those really needing a Godzilla fix, may I recommend the Playstation 2 game "War of the Monsters". It has all the great 50s and 60s B movie monster types available for a fun smash and crush through cities, secret bases, and a final fight level just before the Capital in DC to take on invading saucers.
Posted by: Don   2004-10-18 9:41:57 PM  

#25  My kids stumbled on to a cable channel showing Destroy All Monsters a few months back. Most fun we'd had in a long time.
Posted by: Mike   2004-10-18 8:51:42 PM  

#24  Yep, I think I saw the results in Deer In City, This Time It's Personal.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-10-18 6:44:00 PM  

#23  I still can't believe the same film company that made Seven Samuraii (one of the best films of all time) also made Godzilla. The humanity.

Second, Godzilla is a fascinating incite into the Japanese. For example, the first movie is anti-nuke. Nukes free Godzilla and a scientist creates a super-weapon that is used, against his wishes I think, to destroy Godzilla. Superweapons create more harm than good, yada, yada, yada. That's when Japan was a decade and a half away from having nukes dropped on them so naturally passions were high.

Fast forward a couple of more years and we get Japan pushing the nuclear power option in a big way. What happens? Godzilla starts protecting Japan from other monsters. He becomes a hero. Coincidence, I think not.

Oh, and the Hollywood remake sucked. How do you lose Godzilla in the middle of Manhattan? Rubble, rubble, rubble, hey the rubble stops and there is this giant hole, Where did Godzilla go?
Posted by: rjschwarz   2004-10-18 6:43:10 PM  

#22  "Godzilla meets Bambi?

Who wins?"
"Who's on top?"

That is so wrong. Yet I can't stop thinking about the result.
Posted by: Charles   2004-10-18 6:35:47 PM  

#21  Who's on top?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis   2004-10-18 6:18:27 PM  

#20  Godzilla meets Bambi?

Who wins?
Posted by: CrazyFool   2004-10-18 6:16:44 PM  

#19  We were watching Godzilla vs. The Thing in Berkeley in the 60s, which was a benefit for some radical group. Some guy high on something finally jumped on stage and was pacing back and forth, screaming "Enough! Enough! Stop it! This is consuming my very soul!!!!

Somebody yelled, "Save his soul and get his ass offstage!" Then 3 or 4 people came on stage and escorted him away......and we continued the movie.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2004-10-18 5:59:12 PM  

#18  Gotta get back to the office for a little private dictation with Della 'eh?
Posted by: Cheaderhead   2004-10-18 5:55:51 PM  

#17  I have a court order to stop the showing of the "So Called Original Godzila". It has been illegally altered, Paul Drake will soon arrive, whisper in my ear and give me a way out of this paragraph.
Posted by: Perry Mason   2004-10-18 5:50:05 PM  

#16   #13 There are valid historical angst/horrors (Hiroshima & Nagasaki)that belie any belittling of a hermeneutic exegesis of Godzilla. The monster was very much the product of a Japanese collective id/soulthat survived two Atomic Bombings. The vengeance wrecked by the monster and the monster's subsequent rise to Japanese hero can be viewed as an exemplar of the Japanese social consciousness striking out - if only metaphorically - against the occupying and hegemonic power...
Posted by: borgboy 2004-10-18 4:53:50 PM

i gues if you can't dazzle 'em with your brilliance baffle 'em with your bullshit. But in all seriousness would the Japanese movie industry even made this waste of celuloid if Hollywood hadn't been making bad radiation mutated moster movies, ie Them.
Posted by: Cheaderhead   2004-10-18 5:49:49 PM  

#15  Personally, I prefer the short 'Godzilla meets Bambi'.
Posted by: Don   2004-10-18 5:40:32 PM  

#14  Re: #13. They didn't like the bomb. Enough said.
Posted by: Weird Al   2004-10-18 5:15:19 PM  

#13  There are valid historical angst/horrors (Hiroshima & Nagasaki)that belie any belittling of a hermeneutic exegesis of Godzilla. The monster was very much the product of a Japanese collective id/soulthat survived two Atomic Bombings. The vengeance wrecked by the monster and the monster's subsequent rise to Japanese hero can be viewed as an exemplar of the Japanese social consciousness striking out - if only metaphorically - against the occupying and hegemonic power...
Posted by: borgboy   2004-10-18 4:53:50 PM  

#12  Mike: of course it's possible to do both. Actually, it's required. The original dubbed Godzilla with Raymmond Burr is one of the worst movies ever made, except for the stomping episodes. I consider myself an expert on the worst sci-fi movies ever made. While Godzilla wouldn't make the top ten, it's close.
Posted by: Weird Al   2004-10-18 3:14:16 PM  

#11  Al:

It's possible to simultaneously love the Godzilla movies and have a little fun with the more dorky and absurd elements thereof. Mothra may have been intensely silly, but I still thought the singing girls were pretty hot.
Posted by: Mike   2004-10-18 3:01:35 PM  

#10  Ok duh, then how come we haven't found any fossils of Godzilla then? huh huh??
Posted by: Bill Nelson   2004-10-18 2:19:00 PM  

#9  You people are churlishly denigrating one of the great film series of my youth. Many hours spent watching Godzilla stomping his way thru Tokyo blowing firey death. Simpler times, simpler pleasures. Or maybe it's just me who has become simple. Yes, it was Mothra. And yes, Rodan was very cool. Have all the first movies on DVD.
Posted by: Weird Al   2004-10-18 2:09:32 PM  

#8  BZZZZT - Big BOC fan here - Astronomy, Harvester of Eyes, ME262, Cities on Flame, all of Agents of Fortune were better....Godzilla just got the airplay ;-)
Posted by: Frank G   2004-10-18 2:09:04 PM  

#7  Keynote address by Hideki Matsui
Posted by: Grunter   2004-10-18 2:08:04 PM  

#6  With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
He pulls the spitting high tension wires down
Helpless people on a subway train
Scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them
He picks up a bus and he throws it back down
As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town

Oh no, they say he’s got to go
Go go Godzilla, yeah
Oh no, there goes Tokyo
Go go Godzilla, yeah . . .

Blue Oyster Cult's finest moment as musicians.
Posted by: Mike   2004-10-18 2:03:55 PM  

#5  Finally a topic where I have expertise!!

Mojo- The twins are associated with Mothra.

Here is a parody with their picture, here.
Posted by: Penguin   2004-10-18 1:49:26 PM  

#4  Mojo, I believe you're thinking of Gamera.
Posted by: Scooter McGruder   2004-10-18 1:11:55 PM  

#3  Which one had the two little women that sang to calm the monster? Mothra?
Posted by: mojo   2004-10-18 1:08:52 PM  

#2  Personally, as an 9 year old child, it was RODAN that peeked my interest... :))
Posted by: borgboy   2004-10-18 12:44:34 PM  

#1  Bill Tsutsui, ..., said he would like people to take Godzilla "more seriously".

Quite frankly, I'm having a little trouble taking you seriously right now, Bill.
Posted by: BH   2004-10-18 12:21:54 PM  

00:00