The Geopolitics of Godzilla
petertasker.asia
petertasker.asia
I recommend that you give it a watch while it's still out in extended limited release due to its success.
It's not a criticism. As long as the story is well-executed, who cares.
That said, there are clear problems with the political narrative in the film given it's supposed to be artwork. Making a film about redemption without in any way commenting on the evil atrocities you committed is extremely Japanese and morally dubious at best... downright propaganda at worst. Were the Japanese public and military rank and file the real victims of the war? Is it ok to pronounce the moral ambiguity of the top brass without commenting on the Holocaust-level crimes committed?
These things were glaring in the theater. And I know I'm going to get the standard "doesn't matter good film" responses for having an honest appraisal of the conceptual idea. But it's bad in that way. If we want to move into a brighter future we need both redemption and brutal honesty and this was only one of those things. Good popcorn film? Absolutely. Cultural artwork on a new level? Definitely not.
It's easy to cast them as bad guys because they were defeated. Victor's justice and everything. Be thankful for nukes else one day the shoe might be on the other foot and and history will be rewritten again.
It's also easy because they were the aggressors. The attack on Pearl Harbor when we were at peace does not leave a lot of room for nuance. We were not their oppressors, we were just in the way of their conquests.
Real interesting response to 'holocaust level crimes'
Historically the US absolutely treated our natives and African descendents to a similar level of horror, but we 1. Own that and 2. Weren't doing anything to that level en masse by the time WWII came around.
I love Japan and it's people but I will absolutely throw shade at their cowardice in ignoring the sins of their past (at the cultural/national level).
"That said, there are clear problems with the political narrative in the film Oppenheimer, given that it's supposed to be artwork. Making a film about a nuclear weapon without in any way extensively showcasing the result of it's use on a civilian population i.e. the consequences of the development of that weapon is extremely American and morally dubious at best...downright propaganda at worst. Were the American public and military rank and file the real victims of WW2 ()? Is it ok to pronounce the moral ambiguity of the top brass without commenting on the Holocaust-level crimes committed?
These things were glaring in the theater. And I know I'm going to get the standard 'MAGA move to a Commie country' for having an honest appraisal of the conceptual idea. But it's bad in that way. ..."
War is a complex issue and making a film about Japan's war crimes (the first installment of the Ip Man series was good with this) is something which has to be met with approval from its government who have their hands in film finance as well. Japan is not exactly a capitalist economy-- it is culturally a command economy and everyone listens to the government (this is actually one of the critiques of Shin Godzilla and even if this Godzilla movie).
There are not that many governments that are going to be thrilled about you making a movie shitting on their armed forces or speaking on their war crimes. In the United States, our first amendment protects give us tremendous leeway to do this, but there is a lot of other pressures which can be extorted to kill a film prior to release.
Scorcese recently released Killers of the Flower Moon, which is not about a Holocaust, but about a limited genocide, and people are already bitching about the length, and it is as long as a "rah rah America" Avengers movie. This kind of movie was hard to make in the United States. It would be impossible to make in Japan. People there have to use metaphors to talk about getting nuked (aside from Grave of the Fireflies showing the Tokyo Firebombing, which was worse). How are you supposed to use a metaphor for an Asian Holocaust? If they did it would it come off as insensitive to a Western viewer?
This is a political Godzilla movie. It's a movie about Japan dealing with post war recovery. Maybe next time, there will be a Godzilla who comes and frees all the slave labor in the Imphal India campaign (maybe involve the Indian film industry to reduce cost). Maybe you should pitch it to be developed here with US political assistance and pressure so that Japanese war crimes are addressed. It's certainly a good idea.
But I would hesitate from: -- being a hypocrite. -- critiquing simplistically without seeing the larger work of this director.
But notice how the country that makes the media is always patriotic. Dr Who always have UK save the world from aliens.
There are movies like Haqueeqat, made in India after their military defeat in 1962. It's a black and white, realistic war movie (no Bollywood dancing). The entire movie is a big fuck you to the Indian government (Nehru in particular) for trusting China, having a Communist defense minister, putting the Indian military in a situation in which they need to have some crazy 10-1 kill ratio in the mountains while retreating, and villagers with little to no military training have to make a militia because troops cannot be deployed in time.
More egregiously, a Little Red Book gets bayoneted, a woman in the militia gets overtly raped as a form of torture by the Chinese, and children scream among all the dead bodies in the mountains. Also the end of the movie shows people voluntarily giving up their gold so that the government can buy weapons, which is a big "fuck you". Not only did the country get fucked over, but now people are giving up their gold (like Ottoman Turkey in WW1) so that the government can buy armaments.
Ironically, this film was funded by the same government it was criticizing. However, it was not censored at all, because the government at the time was very idealistic and considered this critique patriotic.
> People there have to use metaphors to talk about getting nuked
... Not really, it's presented pretty directly in Barefoot Gen or in this corner of the world.
In the USA, you can make a movie portraying the US military in a bad light, but not only would it be harder to find an audience, it would also be much more expensive to make the movie. The reason is the US military offers assistance, staff, and equipment to filmmakers for free, as long as they're portrayed as the good guys.
And yes, it's the same in the United States. There are plenty of films that criticize the US government or elements of it. In the 1950s, there were Westerns which did it. In the 70s and 80s, there were Vietnam war movies which did it. Post 9/11, you have Snowden-related movies, or even movies like Captain America 2.
However, yes the DoD offers many incentives for portraying US weapons systems as cool, or US forces in a positive light to "content" makers (I hesitate to call them films).
As Japan rearms to face China, and seeks to boost recruitment we will see more of this patriotic attitude. And maybe Godzilla will be China one day.
(It's hilarious, because in China's recent Korean War films, the United States is scarier than Godzilla to their troops who spend 80% of the movie running away and dying).
> A key element in his strategy is the prototype of an advanced fighter plane, the Shinden, which never flew, Japan having surrendered before it was ready for action. Unlike Otoshima Island, the Shinden actually existed, though no photos or traces of it remain.
There is a photo of one of the prototypes taken after the war right on the Wikipedia page, so I’m not sure why the author has this impression. That article also says the prototypes flew twice on test flights.
Edit: and right, I actually saw it at the Udvar-Hazy Center near DC. The Smithsonian has the entire thing in pieces.
Yes, the symbol of the Nanjing Massacre.
> and reconcile postwar Japan.
That was the US's doing, Japan still functions by the constitution imposed by MacArthur.
Also, more generally, the fact that people in the West are white-washing guys like Hirohito is a very big part of why we're in the current geopolitical mess. It would help if, for once, the West would admit: "yeah, we let that killer in place because it suited our geo-political interests back in the day". But were they (the Westerners) to do that then we wouldn't have blog-posts like this one here which totally goes over Japan's war-crimes (and does not mention Hiroshima nor Nagasaki, although it doesn't forget to mention that China, Russia and North Korea now have nukes).
But of course that's an absurd premise because Nazis and apparently the Japanese are not humans and therefore can't have human-like stories or something I guess.
Shit and you're not even the same person who commented above that all Japanese movies should essentially be 2 hours of Japanese actors apologizing for war atrocities their country committed 80 years ago.
This is like bitching that Grave of the Fireflies doesn’t call out the atrocities committed by unit 731 so it’s bad.
The regular people featured in Godzilla Minus One talk about how corrupt and destructive their government is; they explicitly call attention to the fact that their government didn’t care at all about the lives of its own people. I think it is pretty telling that if Imperial Japan is letting it’s own civilians starve or forcing them into pointless suicide attacks, then they certainly wouldn’t care about American POWs or Chinese peasants.