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"Godzilla's Revenge" is a good children's movie politically
Godzilla's Revenge
Directed by Ishirô Honda
Toho Company and United Productions of America
Rated G
70 minutes
1971 (1969)
2008 December
A latchkey child named Ichiro dreams of being on Monster Island. The
dreams influence how he deals with a bully and a couple of bumbling
bank robbers who have stolen 50 million yen (less than $200,000 in
early-1970s dollars) and are in the neighborhood. In his dreams,
Ichiro befriends the son of Godzilla. The younger monster in this
movie has been compared to a costumed character in a preschool
children's television show. In one dream, though, Ichiro cheers on
Godzilla as he wrecks a fleet of hostile jets -- not exactly Barney
material.
"Godzilla's Revenge" has been maligned up, down and all over the
place, but it deserves some credit. Many Amerikans actually watched
this dubbed, U.$. version of "All Monsters Attack" and enjoyed it.
"Godzilla's Revenge" is an indication of what was possible in 1971.
"Godzilla's Revenge" raises the idea of supporting one's "local
police," but not the military. This is wrong theoretically speaking,
but this is not your typical cops-and-robbers movie, and the police
actually play a small role in this movie. Also, "Godzilla's Revenge"
is a children's movie, and anything that threatening to an individual
child belonging to an adult in the First World would probably involve
the police eventually anyway. Capitalist relations of production and
the reproduction of those relations intersect with children's
oppression in various ways in "Godzilla's Revenge" as they do in
countless movies that depict reality on a small, daily scale, but
don't deal with theory.
Most oppressed nationalities and lumpen people in prison for property
crime convictions are not there for stealing amounts like $150,000,
though ideas about big-time robbers legitimize police and prison
repression as a whole. Famously, Stalin robbed banks for the cause,
but this reviewer doesn't see this movie as being particularly
relevant to whether or not there is going to be a crackdown on
bank-robbing revolutionaries. If the cops-and-robbers theme was in a
way a requirement for having a Godzilla movie for children, the movie
should have been made anyway. Today, many movies about big-time
thieves are postmodern movies for decadent imperialist country
parasites. It's not an easy shot when it comes to thinking about such
movies and repression.
The jet fight footage is from a previous Godzilla movie, and there is
a certain story behind the fight in the movie of origin. However, the
markings on the jets are difficult to see, and what stands out most
is the visual of Godzilla's wiping out a relentless stream of
advanced fighter jets which many Amerikan children could have taken
for U.$. forces or vaguely European, if not United Nations, forces.
It is easily one of the most visually interesting parts of the dream
scenes, but this reviewer can imagine its being removed for a U.$.
release. It was not. No other armed forces appear in "Godzilla's
Revenge." Faces aren't attached to the fighter jets. Japanese people
are shown neither attacking nor fleeing Godzilla.
Even leaving aside the anti-Amerikan or anti-Western potential of
"Godzilla's Revenge," the idea of supporting one's police but not the
military of one's own country is good for First World nations at this
time, though less so for the Third World. The First World is not
about to have some revolutionary uprising suppressed by either police
or soldiers, and most of the pressure against war does not come from
First World street protests. (This reviewer would be more suspicious
of a message to support a First World spy agency but not First World
militaries.) At the same as saying this, while the First World has a
bourgeois majority, First World people can be expected to neither get
rid their own countries' militaries and overthrow their governments,
nor build their militaries to attack the United $tates. International
united fronts against the United $tates that include some First World
nations are at a low level right now. Anti-militarism will have a
role to play in the land of the First World for some time.
This reviewer discusses the movie's relevance to the present because,
besides recent video releases of "Godzilla's Revenge," the people who
watched "Godzilla's Revenge" as children in 1971 are still around and
will be for decades. Obviously, the G-rating audience of 1971 cannot
be expected to have opposed militarism effectively, even though
children are oppressed by patriarchy and the oppressed in general
resist.
Though he offers a suggestion for improving the computer made by his
toy-maker neighbor, Ichiro has a 'yuck' reaction to a romantic scene
on television and turns it off. Instead of watching television, he
uses his imagination and ends up dreaming about a conflict between
Godzilla and jets that ruin the ground with their weapons. Godzilla
wipes the warplanes out. Ecologically destructive U.$. nuclear
testing led to the first "Godzilla," but ecological destruction in
various places via U.$. warplanes is another reality, not just
something in a movie. This reviewer sees some environmentalist
potential in "Godzilla's Revenge," in which destroying First World
arms appears as a response to ecological destruction.
Outwardly, "Godzilla's Revenge" is an individualist story about
bullying. Most thinking about bullying among children in the First
World is not progressive and is related to discussions of juvenile
delinquency, psychology, and childrearing and humyn development from
a Liberal perspective. However, there is a twist in the ending of the
movie that deflates some of the seriousness of the anti-bullying
message, and Godzilla's son Minilla learns to stand up to bullies
partly by watching his father kick the butt of the fighter jets. As
Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently suggested, Amerikans are
"warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies."
Some have said that "Godzilla's Revenge" raises class issues. Ichiro
is a latchkey child because his parents have to work in the evening.
Ichiro accepts this and ends up being taken care of by the police
(after taking care of himself) and his self-employed neighbor. This
reviewer actually sees a theme of class conciliation found in other
Japanese movies of the time. MIWS opposes the idea of class
conciliation for reasons different than those of the majority of
"Marxists." It's not that MIWS assumes that most Japanese workers are
exploited as many pseudo-Marxists would, and that revolutionary
struggle by Japanese workers is held back by false ideas. Rather,
class conciliation in imperialist countries is nationalism of
different exploiting classes and leads to further aggression against
oppressed nations. The dynamics of both class conciliation and class
conflict within imperialist nations today lead to repression and a
push for more super-profit. In the United $tates, class conciliation
manifests as workers of internal oppressed nations and Euro-Amerikan
workers, for example, uniting for war on proletarian Muslims. In
opposing class conciliation, genuine communists do not necessarily
favor the bourgeois labor aristocracy, the "working class," of a
First World nation over its imperialist class in a struggle.
One difference between "Godzilla's Revenge" and the Japanese version
that this reviewer did notice is that the toy-maker in "Godzilla's
Revenge" explaining Ichiro's imaginary monster friend to journalists
says that Minilla is to Ichiro what adults' heroes are to adults,
whereas in the original movie the toy-maker compares Minilla to God
for adults, which could be offensive to people who believe in a god.
Those supporting atheism but who are not scientific communists may
object. The proletariat is not a class in any First World nation
today. Despite the fantasy of counterrevolutionary "Marxists" in the
First World that Amerikans in New York led by Bill Maher could be
more advanced and dangerous to imperialism than people in the Third
World with strong religious heritages already dying in the struggle
against U.$. imperialism, no party of an exploiter class in a First
World nation is going to lead revolution, let alone on a world scale.
In the release year of the Japanese original, the statement "You
don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" appeared.
Despite major limitations, it was one of the most advanced products
to come from a white organization. The days of revolutionary
Euro-Amerikan organizations are gone. Any opposition to U.$.
interests by Amerikans is even more likely to take forms other than
carrying out armed struggle against the United $tates themselves or
directly supporting those who do. "Godzilla's Revenge" is a benchmark
by which other children's movies may be compared. Because of their
young audience, the impact of children's movies may show up in the
future. If a movie like "Godzilla's Revenge" cannot be made for
mainstream distribution today and movies like "FernGully: The Last
Rainforest" (1992), "Bambi" (1942) and "Finding Nemo" (2003) are the
extent of what there is for environmental messages for children, that
suggests what is possible politically in the West now and to some
extent the political development of Amerikans who are now children.
Militarism is not without an aspect of childishness in the United
$tates. The U.$. military makes recruiting video games for children,
and countless other games, and movies, serve the same function in
slightly less obvious ways and support wars in other ways. So,
"Godzilla's Revenge" should not be dismissed out of hand for being
PG- or even G-rating material. At the same time, one cannot expect
too much from either First World filmmakers or their oppressor
audiences. In the United $tates, it is possible to have more
militarism and less militarism, but not a "revolutionary" movement
leading a majority anywhere in the United $tates, unless that
movement is revisionist or social-fascist. There are no openly
revolutionary anti-Amerikan movies that will have a good impact on
many Amerikans, that is, if they watch them. Given a choice between
having more "Barney" or "Teletubbies," and having more militarist
video games in the First World, this reviewer would prefer "Barney"
and "Teletubbies."