Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today we're talking about
the movie Goji Ra also known as Godzilla, the original nineteen fifty four Japanese
movie. We're gonna be talking about how this movie, seen by most in
the West is just a fun monster movie with a guy in a rubber suit,
is actually a stirring tale about Japanese reactions to the World War two and
the nuclear bombs. We're going to talk about why is it that a movie
has been seen so differently in America and how we're currently trying to get a
better understanding of that in a lot of parts of American society. And yes,
we are going to talk about a guy in a rubber suit smashing nature
buildings all that more. After a commercial break, we have no control over
that was a person in a suit. Welcome back. This is MATTHEWR.
Host as you've already heard, asking about the great work of Nakajima Haru,
the man in the suit. That was Paul Happy, who's joined me today?
Paul? How are we doing? Doing pretty good? Yeah? I
didn't get a ton of sleep, but just enough, just enough to give
a note free but hopefully you know impassioned and you know a little let's let's
let's talk about this movie. I liked it, no problem, No problem.
This time, I actually had a lot of research and let me give
a little bit of history of kind of how we decided to do this movie.
First of all, you know, with a strike going on, as
I've said, we wanted to do some movies they are not about things made
by American Hollywood companies, the companies they are currently being struck, and so
Japanese cinema was a great thing to take a look at, as you If
you'd pay attention to the Star Wars Universe podcast, you may see that Paul
and I also did an episode about Japanese cinema over there about The Hidden Fortress,
a movie that's thought to have had a big influence on George Lucas in
creating Star Wars. But this one, for me, there was a further
dimension in that. Right now, there's a movie out that is talking a
lot about the ethical decision making of dropping the nuclear bomb and the critique that's
been brought about it a lot. I haven't seen it yet, but is
that in a movie that's all about this horrific use of the nuclear bomb.
We don't really pay any attention to the victims and their perspective in at all.
And you know, I never really knew that much about Goji ra.
You should always think of it as Godzilla, except that I thought it was
a you know, fun, silly monster movie from the fifties that had this
veneer of Oh, by the way, and Godzilla was caused by nuclear bombs.
Isn't that bad? And I thought, hey, you know what that's
actually about, kind of what that other Hollywood movie is about, but from
the Japanese perspective, might be worth taking a look at. Turned out that
I was very surprised. I think a lot of Americans are a lot of
people who grow up with those kind of ideas about Godzilla. To find this
movie is actually a stirring and incredibly powerful and in doing research, incredibly culturally
significant moment of Japanese cinema coming to terms, you know, the horrible events
of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, of the nuclear bombing and all that. That means
that there's so much symbolism and meaning of a movie that I think a lot
of people miss. And it's also just a great science fiction movie, and
that it uses those questions uses that situation to ask some really hard questions about
the kind of decision making that h the scientists discussed in the other movie might
have gone through. So we're going to talk about that movie. We'll give
you a plot Summer in a second, but the details of the plot are
really not as important, I think is the questions it raises. But let
me just not with Paul. So what was he liked about this movie?
I mean, first of all, it's a it's a well made movie in
you know, nineteen fifty four standards at least, right, but like in
terms of you know, I think the writing's good. I think the acting
is good. I think production value doesn't matter that much when you have good
writing and acting, you know, and those are those are both things that
when we cover the next thing we're going to cover, I'm also going to
kind of talk about and double back to and like I love great production value,
you know, Yeah, but you know, I don't need something to
be super fancy. It's like if you go see a play, you know,
it's it's not gonna have quite the same immersive feel. A lot of
the time. It's like going to see a movie right where because it's like,
you know, you're in a room with you know, a stage,
and you see the lights and stuff like that, and and so here I
feel like, you know, sometimes it can take a little bit to kind
of get in, get invested, be like, all right, this isn't
black and white. I need like my brain, I need like something in
my brain to click to kind of accept black and white as that's the world
I'm looking at right. But then for me, usually between five and ten
minutes, like I forget it's even in black and white, and like I
can think back on a movie and be like, oh is that Yeah,
Oh I guess that wasn't black and white, you know. And I'll also
just say, like I enjoy practical effects. I would rather watch someone in
a suit actually stomp you know, cardboard houses or whatever than then see not
that good CGI. I feel like the thing with like CGI is it it
makes a lot of things possible that weren't really previously so possible, but it
got really good, and then some of it sometimes very rushed now, and
I feel like it has more of a you know, some some maybe the
Uncanny Valley kind of effect, but also just that feeling of like I don't
know, like here, when I'm watching this, I'm I'm not I wasn't
thinking about the actual filmmaking about like, you know, someone in a suit
stomping on buildings, you know, and and some of that's also things to
editing and lighting and stuff like that, right, And being in black and
white can be an asset sometimes, right when the same way using shadows can
can be a tool that helps sort of obfuscate the unreality of what we're seeing
on screen. So I just I enjoyed that. And also in terms of
exploring things like these subjects, you know, I'd rather not watch a biopic
like I just personally I don't like almost any of them. The only exceptions
that spring to mind are like about classical composers. Then I'm like, you
know, the music is just so good. Yeah, it's like, you
know, the fact that it's a biotic I'm like, yeah, whatever,
but the music, you know, is a great movie exactly. And I
even I saw a play of Vamad Dais two with David Suchet as as Saliery
and and it was it was great, you know, and it was like
but anyway, yeah, I just I enjoyed the movie. I appreciated things
it was talking about. It did manage to like address something super directly in
a way that didn't feel super contrived and preachy to me. And maybe some
of that's because I'm reading subtitles and only catching a word here and there.
That's there's always there's always a little bit of like if I don't fully understand
the language being used. It it's almost like when part of the you know,
part of the screen is in shadows, and it's like it kind of
allows the mind to kind of fill it in and not, you know,
and I usually choose to fill things in with with a way that I like
it better, you know it compared to when something's in English or even Spanish
at this point and like I understand all the words and I'm like, oh,
that was that was kind of an awkward way of saying that, wasn't
that Like I don't want to be thinking that. That's just like I can't
help it. But so here, I I can't think that, you know,
I can't criticize words always like yeah, sometimes I can be like,
oh, they use a different word for thank you, so like I could
be like, oh, did they translate it correctly or they're like five different
ways of saying you know. But but yeah, for the most part,
just like it's an enjoyable movie, you know. I think it can take
someone who isn't watching a bunch of you know, fifties movies a minute to
get into probably, But it's a good movie about interesting stuff. Like what
else do I want? Yeah, just a couple of things I want to
say where you said, First of all, it's interesting to note to us
today. I think the production values look quite low. This was one of
the most expensive movies ever made at the time it came out, particularly in
Japanese cinema, but also in generals. I believe it costs seven hundred and
fifty thousand yen to make, or maybe fifty thousand dollars I don't remember,
but either way, it was an incredible amount. Yeah, that the seven
hundred and fifty thousand yen sounds like about like seven gees, I think so.
Yeah, Well, I mean also in nineteen fifty true, of course,
of course, forget it. Forget I said it number. Get the
number a lot of money. It costs a lot of money, And you're
right, I think I really like the practical effects. They're a little cheesy
at times. In the later movies they get a lot cheesier, and I
think they weren't leaning into that. But I know at the time this came
out, people ran screaming out of the theaters like it was pretty revolutionary in
terms of some of the things that it was able to do. And I
appreciate also what a lot of stuff you brought up about language and stuff like
that. One thing I want to say from the beginning is I'm really interested
in what this movie says to us today, and I think part of understanding
that is also understanding the context of nineteen fifty four Japan and what it was
saying at that time. I'm not Japanese, Paulitian Japanese, you know,
and I want to get very aware of that. In terms of making this
discussion. There is some great analysis by Japanese authors that I will try and
link to in the show notes. Is definitely worth checking out, some of
which I read translations of some of which I looked at. I will say
that there are a couple of Japanese Americans who have been guests on this podcast
before, or we've been talking about being guests, who have reached out to
note of which we're able to make it for various reasons. But I stullly
think there's a very worthy conversation to be had by two people who aren't in
that culture talking about what it means to us today and also what it our
rest understanding what it meant at the time and the context of it, because
I think that is really important. So let me just start by giving a
quick summary of the plot. We start and there's a lot of things in
here that are pretty significant in as references to things, and some of them
i'll mention now, some of mention as we go along, But we'll start
out with a salvage vessel in the ocean south of Japan that is destroyed by
what looks like a sudden light and then is very quickly destroyed. No one
really understands what happened. It happens to another vessel more sent to try to
figure it out. They're all destroyed, and now people are starting to freak
out and wonder what's going on. And we cut to a place called Odo
Island, which is a fictional island, but certainly your Japan's as part of
an archipelago. It's there's a ton of little islands near Japan that this is
kind of made to represent and on them, people are talking about what's going
on, and one kind of you know, grumpy old man mentions that there
used to be a belief in a legendary monster from the sea called Gojira,
and so eventually people are trying to study this. The Gojira appears and does
in terrible things on the island, leaves behind some footprints. Scientists come to
study it, and they find that it is radioactive and more attacks. More
research. The research is being led by and we do my best with these
names, but will not always be perfect. A paleontologist named Kayo he Yamina,
and he has a daughter named mko Yamine, and he's trying to do
research. He decides that it is probably a dinosaur or something that kind of
as he understands, it emerged from a period shortly after the dinosaurs. Interestingly,
he talks about the dinosaurs as having lived two million years ago, which
is, you know, it just kind of at to know that, like,
and we now know it's more like sixty five million years ago, if
not longer, But you know that it's kind of a nice reminder that the
science that we now know about dinosaurs hasn't advanced quite a lot, even just
you know, in the seventy five years since nineteen fifty four. So anyway,
so there's scenes of politicians discussing what should be done, and eventually he
this scientist concludes that it was probably a result of the testing of the hydrogen
bomb that has happened quite recently by the Americans. Although the word Americans has
never spoken. There's political discussion about what to do about this. There's at
least one politician who's very concerned that if they talk about this publicly it will
hurt their quote diplomatic relations. Again America has never stated, but I think
that's the very clear undercurrent. And the military tries to mobilize, they try
to fight against Gojira. They completely fail, and Gojo eventually comes to Tokyo
and just lays waste to Tokyo in a way that is very emblematic of the
American firebombing of Tokyo. It's shot in a way that is really heartbreaking in
terms of both the destruction, but also then all the scenes of the aftermath.
You see a mother and child about to die, who talk about how
they're going to be where their father is. The implication we get their father
died quite likely in the war, who was only nine years ago, but
not explicitly stated. There's a scene of a very young child and the kind
of doctor testing him for radiation and finding that he's very radioactive, and again
it's it's just it's heartbreaking. I definitely cried watching these scenes the first time.
So along the way, two of the main characters who we've been seeing
are the girl who I mengined, mko Imiko, and the one of the
captains of the salvage ships, one of the people who's been involved in sort
of learning about this from the beginning, padeto Ogata, and they are in
love and they're trying to figure out what to do because she has been promised
from a very young age to Si. As I said, she's the daughter
of the paleontologist. She's been promised to the scientist who's a colleague of her
father named Dice Seazala, who has lost his eye in the war, and
but she doesn't really love him. She loves this other guy. They're trying
to figure out how to tell him. Eventually, as it goes on,
we learned that he has come up with something called the Oxygen Destroyer, which
is this mega weapons super weapon very clearly a metaphor for hydrogen bombs or like
the next thing that would come beyond hydrogen bombs, and it could kill Gojira,
but he doesn't want to use it because then other governments will try to
use it. Even if he burns his notes, he might be coerced into
using it, and the two of them, the couple who love go And
try and talk to him and convince him not to do it, convince him
to use the weapon. He at first is against it, but then as
they learn more and more about just how much kind of all of Japan is
preparing to just be destroyed, and there's this prayer that's being sung all across
the nation and symbolized by hundreds of Japanese school girls in Tokyo singing this very
sad prayer for peace. He decides that the weapon should be used, but
that he's going to burn all of his notes and pretty well foreshadowed, but
it's still done in a very touching way. He goes down with Ogata to
lay down the Oxygen Destroyer device to kill Gojira, but as part of it,
he cuts his own lines that he can't be pulled up. He cuts
his oxygen line so that not only are all of his notes destroyed, but
he is killed as well. And in theory the weapon can never be used,
so Gojira is dead. But instead of being like celebration and cheers,
the movie ends on this very somber note that is clearly like sadness for the
doc the scientist, but also I think sadness for Gojira himself, who has
seen kind of as a you know, a helpless you know, part of
nature that was caught up in all this. And it ends with and while
this might because you said the part that feels a little on the notes,
but I think actually really works the older paleontologist Yamane saying that, you know,
if more nuclear testing is done, we're going to have more Goji grass.
Yeah. I mean to me, I was actually saying that I felt
like it didn't feel on the nose, even though it like super was you
know, yeah that kind of be but I say that line it sounds super
on the nose, but feel that way. Yeah, it's And I mean
I think a big part of that is like just the movie success at getting
you to buy into it's you know, it's central conceit. It's it's reality,
you know, And and the fact that it is, I don't know,
like for as unreal as it is, it feels very real because it
is so I don't know, it's I don't know, just sometimes you could
do this and it works, and sometimes you can do it and it doesn't
for me anyway, right, and and here it works, and yeah,
you know, I think the idea is that there's possibly a bunch of you
know, beings like this deep in the trenches in the ocean. Right,
And I do believe also this movie was made. I mean, I do
believe this movie was made. But that you know, C exploration has progressed
a lot since then, too, right in terms of like the ocean floor
was less mapped than it is now or don't. I don't really know the
state of C exploration besides of like imploding you know, Dirgibiles. But anyway,
yeah, there is still a lot we don't know. And I think
it's worth noting the movie Pacific Rim, which is a Kaijing movie about monsters
coming from the ocean. Yeah, though that case through like a dimensional portal,
it very clearly has some references to this movie, including in in this
movie, one of the things that the military does is trying to build like
a huge electrified fence. Yeah, and God just smashes it right through it.
And in Pacific Rim they try to build a wall right that the Kaiju
to smash right through. And I think that was a very intentional reference.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I think that wall was before
the other wall that it could have been a reference to. But but yeah,
it's you know, the idea is that like, you know, Gojira
is not the only Kaiju in the sea kind of right, and if you
if you keep dumping nuclear bombs into the sea like that, that can cause
harm. And and that's that's why Gojira is radioactive, right, and that's
why all those kids have radio radiation poisoning, like and that you know,
that's obviously a metaphor for the difference between like conventional weaponry or whatever and you
know, atomic bombs in that the destruction isn't confined to the immediate blast,
you know. And yeah, and it's just I don't know, it's it's
interesting because it really does play as a metaphor. But then the then the
weapon that Sarah Sawa comes up with, you know, is also like a
metaphor for the same thing, kind of right, and and and so I
think all of that kind of ends up being like a you know, a
metaphor for the arms race and for escalation, and you know, you can
unleash one new terror, and then if the counter to that terror is to
unleash a new new terror. It's like, where does this go? Right
exactly like nowhere good. I think it's really true. And I think in
understanding how much this is not only just like a like today, we're like,
oh yeah, I guess I can see how it's connected. Like it
was a very powerful metaphor, but especially at the time it was made.
I want to kind of highlight a few parts of that. First of all,
as I said, it starts with these two boats getting destroyed and where
they see a flash of light, you know, and they hear the sound,
and then the boats suddenly erupts in fire. And when we watch it,
we don't see Gudzill at all. And I think it's very easy to
think like was that at first? I remember thinking like what we were watching
was the new career of blash that awakes Goji Rock and learning later I learned
that actually just a few months before they started making the movie, on March
for March first, nineteen fifty four, the Japanese fishing met the Japanese fishing
vessel Diago for Fukuyada Maru, which translates as Lucky Dragon. Number five had
been showered with radiation from the US atomic testing at Bikini Atoll, and one
of those sailors had died, and so it was like very fresh in people's
memory about you know, Americans testing more nukes and Japanese people dying, and
these scenes of the ships were very evocative of that. The other thing I
think that really comes through is that this movie is being made only two years
after the American occupation of Japan has ended, and so and also very recently
after the decision has been made to allow Japan to have a military again,
and so the planes and the tanks and things like that that we see,
the planes and the artillery and stuff is all very recently returned to Japan.
And lastly, very much as part of this, there had been a very
long history like the idea of free press, which we see a lot of
reporters and things reporters like very bravely on a tower that Gojira is attacking,
and they keep talking about Gojira right to the moment that they are killed.
But you know, they've been censorship of the press, first under the Japanese
government and very much under the Americans, but also censorship with everyone. And
there weren't things you couldn't talk about. And one of the things that I
read a lot of was William Sutu. I think I'm pronouncing that right.
One of things that I read was a book by I believe in appounces is
right, William Tutui, author of Godzilla on My Mind, Fifty Years of
the King of Monsters. He's Japanese American. He's done a lot of study
on this, and he writes Japanese creative artists, filmmakers, novelists and so
forth really couldn't talk about the atomic bombings. It was a topic that could
not be discussed. And Japanese people as well were very reticent about discussing this
tragedy because it was so horrible and because they felt a sense of guilt and
shame about those events. But when the Japanese had their independence back again in
the ending of the American occupations in nineteen fifty two to two years before the
movies made, when the Japanese had their independence, back as filmmakers were thinking
about giant monsters, people began to think about that connection between monstrosity and the
atomic bombing, and so he talks a lot in the book. He keeps
talking about this idea that like this was kind of one of the first attempts
to really wrestle with what had you know, what what did the bombing do
to Japan? And how did people feel about it? Because for so long
you couldn't talk about it, both because of cultural issues but also literally like
the Americans were censoring what movies could be made, what newspaper stories were written.
Yeah I had, I hadn't really. I was kind of wondering,
like when, like when I'm not super up on history of like wars in
general, you know, And I mean I know when the war ended,
you know, I know when specific atrocities were committed, which I will insist
and persist on calling them, and the sort of general timeline, but like
in terms of yeah, how how long after you know, the end of
the occupation was this like two years? You know? That means people were
thinking about making it before that or around then, right, I mean movies.
Movies take a while to make, although I think they were made a
lot faster back then. But yeah, being less than ten years after something
like that, you know, I mean you think about like it's been twenty
two years since, like you know, September eleventh in the United States,
and like it's still very present in people's consciousness, I think, and in
conversations. So for you know, terrorist attacks that are such larger scale and
more recent, I think, you know, I can only imagine how how
that would people. But also I think the point about the like the first
boat is really interesting where you know, we're in the beginning, Like you
don't see colgr I like for a while, right, And in terms of
like the bombs, like you see a flash of light, you see the
mushroom cloud, but you don't see the bomb. Right, It's not people
like, oh, what's that thing falling out of the sky. It's like,
however, I mean, unless you're like just in the right place,
I think, I don't you know what, I don't really know, no,
But that's my impression, right, is that it's like the vast majority
of people at least weren't like necessarily looking in that direction, and and so
this sort of like like what even happened, you know, sort of sense
of that. No, I think you're right. I think that, you
know, I know, the author had interviewed a lot of people who were
who were alive at the time, and a lot of these accounts had kept
but you know, obviously lost lost as so many years past it. But
I think one of things becomes really most interesting is how this movie was in
America. And I want to talk about that a bit because I think it
says something also how powerful this movie was, which is that the movie was
released in nineteen fifty four in Japan. Two years later, an American company
bought it and wanted to release it in America. But they not only did
they dub it, but they reshot large parts of it. They added in
American character actually played by a Canadian actor, and so that character was a
much bigger role. But also they cut out all references to the atomic bomb.
They cut out all the sort of things that would kind of implicate that
the Americans weren't fault in any way, or that any connections to the bombing.
And this was like a big, and then this was a big part
of what so Americans and my guest stansition. I'm guessing a lot of the
West knew about these movies. And to me this is really interesting because I'll
admit I'm one of those people as well. I you know, after this
movie, like I think often happens. I think Rocky is something great example,
but you know, there's a lot of other examples where like people will
make a movie where there's a spectacle but it's really about like some really hard
hitting drama or ethical points or whatever, and then like people are like,
Okay, but those effects were really cool. Let's just do a million sequels
about the effects. And they've been. As I said, when the thirty
Gojira movies, a lot of which are maybe some of which I think hast
mentioning point. Definitely Shin Gojira, which I think Rieky and I are going
to talk about some point, definitely does. But a lot of them are
just fun guys in suits, you know, crushing miniature buildings and having a
lot of fun with it, and big kaiju movies and stuff like that.
And so, as I said, I had definitely always thought of this movie
as Okay, it's a little bit of the atomic bomb, but it's mostly
just gonna be about you know, the effects and the coolness. And so
my point being, I'm of curious where where you see this or like what
you know about the movie. But to me, there's a direct connection between
the the way the movie is reshaped for American audiences and and that kind of
lack of knowledge of how much this really was about commentary on this horrible thing
America had done. Yeah, I mean that's American censorship for you, right
where it's not it's not state sanctioned, it's not forced. It's just the
you know, let's take everything interesting about this movie, take it out,
and then you know, keep the more superficial aspects and repackage it and you
know, not ask people to give any thought to the actions of you know,
their country and you know the military of the country they live in,
and you know, that's it's like, you can censor things without having this
like you know, governmental censorship, right although also like the MPAA, it's
a censorship body, just going to throw that out there, you know,
But yeah, I think I don't I don't think I like necessarily had a
I don't think I had the same experience as you in terms of like my
perception of this movie specifically, Like I feel like the first time I actually
gave it any thought, like like when the movie Godzilla came out in the
US, and I think there's a nineties one, right, ninety ninety eight.
Yeah, you know, we have a friend who was like really into
Kaiju and and into and into film, and so like, you know,
was like like that's when I found out there was like Gojira, you know,
not Godzilla and kind of the basic you know what the you know,
because it's like, oh, the original is the best because it does all
this stuff. You know. So it's sometimes these these perceptions, it's like,
well, what, you know, where do you hear about something?
Right? Where's the first place that you're kind of asked to give something some
thought? So I would say I kind of had some of that, like
spoon fed instead of you know, locked away in the in the liquor cabinet.
But like, yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this metaphor.
This is certainly an as seamless as the film, but I can jump
inche by saying it further about the nineteen ninety eight movie. I saw that
when recently it's really really bad. But among other things, one thing thought
was really interesting was in that the thing that causes Gojira to awaken is French
nuclear testing. And while granted, at the time they made it nineteen ninety
eight, the most recent built gear tests had been done by the French.
Yeah, still that felt like a very intentional, like we're going to make
this for American audiences. Yeah, No, the Americans didn't do this,
wow wow Yeah. And I mean it's interesting because ninety eight, I would
say, was almost like sort of a nadir in recent history of like American
kind of gung ho World War War kind of stuff, you know, like
but also maybe a sort of like let's not think about any of that,
because you know, there was there was the Gulf War, right, but
then after that it was like, I don't think that was necessarily looked at
super positively throughout the United States, you know, and and there were no
really high profile military conflicts until after A one, and so I think there
was this period of maybe like, let's not think about America and war,
even though of course America is always bombing somewhere or has troops on the ground
here, there, and everywhere, but like it's certainly less at that point
than it was, you know, five years later. Well, and also
important to note is that, as I said, this movie is made shortly
after Japan has remade a military right again, mocket try to go too deep
into this, but you know, Japan was utterly devastated by World War two,
both the American bombings. We know about the nuclear bombings, obviously,
if I think a lot of people don't know that even before that there had
been you know, carpet bombings where something like seventy eight Japanese cities had had
most of their downtowns and most of their area's completely destroyed. I think we
think of the nuclear bombs as horrific war crimes, and I agree that they
are, and it's hard to compare them. But like, for example,
you know, it's estimated that about eighty thousand people, including radiation deaths,
died in Nagasaki. One hundred thousand people at least, probably more died in
the fire bombing of Tokyo, And I don't think there's any way to compare
the two or to say, like which is worse. That's not the point
at all, But I think it's it's worth I think it's easy to think
like, oh, until those two bombings in America, had never done this
kind of thing. No, we had done horrific things to city is all
over Japan and one of the things. So I think there's you know,
there's at the time a very strong like, you know, do we need
a military? Do we want a military? That's a very divisive issue,
and they're like, And I thought it's very significant that in this movie the
original, the military is completely useless, like they are two good people.
They're trying at the coast guard has helped thing, but all the military attacks
on Goji Ra completely fail and it's only the scientist who can do it,
whereas in the American movie, the American military ra rab Boys is able eventually
to destroy Gudsof. And I thought that was another very interesting light. Yeah,
because do some more research Honda, who was the director, the director
of this movie, I couldn't find if he's connected to the Honda automobile family
at all. But he was, among other things, a Japanese war veteran.
He'd been a pacifist, he didn't want to go, he got drafted,
he hated the war. And one thing I learned was that when the
Americans would, like, you know, because all the Japanese troops overseas surrendered
and so the Americans would bring them back to Japan, they had them land
and go through Hiroshima because they wanted the Japanese to see like just how much
Japan had been defeated. I guess in this attempt to sort of like you
know, teach you like your military should never exist again, that kind of
kind of thing. And it was again quoting from the book by Sotui,
it had a lifelong impact on him. The whore is of what he saw,
and they decided his opportunity with movie set an important political message. Yeah,
it's you know, this is I mean, this kind of it sort
of complicates what what I would say about things in terms of like, you
know, you look at the war and like, you know, we covered
it man, you know, which is a movie that takes place in the
context of the atrocities committed by the Japanese military against China, and and it's
you know, I think it's like there's like three things here in terms of
like sort of dealing with sort of you know, the the results of the
war, right, there's like one being in a country and maybe fighting for
a military that has committed its own atrocities, like you know that that's that's
something that you can't paper over, you can't deny that, like horrible,
horrible things were done by it by the Japanese military. And then there's you
know, the specific atrocities committed by the American and Allied military. I don't
know how it was it just the US military at that point. I mean,
I know the Red Army was like actually probably ready to invade Japan soon,
but they actually declared war. This was coincidental because Donald had promised to
declare war three months after the surrender of Germany. Yeah, but they declared
war in between the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. And the English was certainly a
part of some of the fightings. Certainly English soldiers or and also Australian and
Indian soldiers were very much part of a lot of the fighting. And English
Air Force was very committed to the same strategy of carpet bombing. And I
believe it was English bombers that had done a similar thing to the city of
Dresden in Germany and killed you know, but I think of like fifty plus
people or something like that one night. I don't believe any English bombers were
actually part of these attacks on Japan, just because they were so focused on
fighting Germany. And it was both the Americans there, but yeah, the
other the other countries weren't involved in the fighting to sure, right, So
yeah, and I mean, I think there's some question on how much it
was coincidence in terms of the timing, right, in terms of like I
think there's an argument to be made that like Truman didn't use atomic weapons on
Japan to get a reaction out of Japan. It was, Yeah, I
think that, Yeah, I'm more meant that, like it's not that that
Russia saw, Yeah, that's all of a sudden was like, hey,
let's attack right right right right. No, it was like it was scheduled,
it was on the calendar. Yeah. Yeah. But so yeah,
there's you know, there's the atrocities committed by the Japanese military, there's the
atrocities committed by the US military, and we can get more specifically into that,
and and then there's like losing a war, right and sort of what
that does to a you know, a national psyche or a also just the
conditions of of being occupied, you know, which you know, China and
Korea had had just experienced as on the other end, you know, And
so that's you know, that's a lot of you know, kind of emotional
baggage that I think different people are going to carry differently, right like,
And it could have to do with like what was your role in the war,
you know, what was what were your views on war in the first
place, you know, in general, and I mean the context for me
of of learning about all this, like in school. I feel like in
history class, I don't feel like a lot of attention was paid to any
of this. There's this kind of like handwavy, Okay, this happened on
this date, This happened on this date. You know. This many people
you know were killed in Hiroshima and like August six, then this many were
killed in Nagasaki and in you know, on August nine, and they don't
even really tell you about Tokyo and like the other Japanese cities that were firebombed
or carpet bombed or you know, it's like mentioned, but like it's not
just not a big discussion about it. But I will say that I'm appreciative
that. In you know, when I went to Bank Street School for children,
this is like very alternative kind of school, and I had one teacher
who was she actually ran like a club called like the Asia Society or something
or like that's where I learned to make kapamaki and what kappa means, and
you know, and like I think sort of, I think as a result
of something she said, I read, you know, a short story that
I don't remember the name of it. I just remember it was about this
girl who had survived one of the bombings and had radiation poisoning, radiation sickness
and made like a thousand paper cranes because like you're supposed to like get a
wish, you know, and I think she wished for peace, and then
she died of radiation poisoning. And this was like I think this was like
the fourth or fifth time in my life that I was like just like what's
wrong with people? Like, you know, like like you know, the
first being like when I found out, like, you know, how humans
treat animals, I was like, what, like, no, that's not
okay, you know, and then you know, growing up in the US,
you learn about slavery, and you learn about the Holocaust, and I
feel like those are things though, and and you know, genocide of NATed
peoples, and like, those are things that I think if you're in the
US, it's easy to be like, well, that was history, that's
how this country started, and now like we can you know, move forward
because we've gotten over those things. And then later you learn like yeah,
and no, maybe maybe we haven't like really gone all the way forward from
there. But but the reactions and just the the the attempts to justify just
the murders of like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of civilians, both in the
you know, in the nuclear attacks and in the ones that preceded those.
It just I don't know. When I hear that, I'm just like I
feel like that was kind of the moment that I was just like, yeah,
I'm I'm not American, like I was born here, but like this
is my sort of like you know, habitual asterisk to your wei. But
like it, like I think there are just times when you can just hear
something and being like I I don't want to be part of that, you
know, and like not obviously like all these things happened like, you know,
it was a book. You know, my mom was born, but
my dad wasn't born yet, you know, so it's like you know,
in the we or not we or whatever, it's like, yeah, sure
of course we weren't there, right, but it's like just the the attempt
to justify some of these things and like not act like their atrocities and terrorism
like that, I mean, because that that was the plan, right,
The plan was terrorism. I know there were factories and small factors and this
and that, and like, sure there's details, you know, but for
me, the details don't make it actually complicated. They're just details. I
was I recently read a book read on audio tape, actually the way it's
made, it's better to be. It's called The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell.
It was really about sort of these two different schools of bombing in America
and in England, one of which was precision bombing and the other which was
you know, this kind of carpet bombing. And part of it was there's
been all of these great theories about how good precision bombing could be. It
didn't work out, and that was part of why the move was to just
discriminate carpet bombing like this. There's a lot of horrible reasons for it,
but it is well documented that they called it were now bombing, and that
part of the idea was that like you had to destroy the people and destroy
their will to fight, and a lot of that is also wrapped up when
that. I think a lot of orientalists and kind of racist ideas about how
old Japanese just people think differently and like they're never going to surrender and this
kind of thing. And I think and I think there are some there are
Japanese scholars who've written more on the Japanese perspective on it that are they are
worth checking out. That Again I can't I can't comment on, but I
definitely think you're right that there is we're giving way into a tangent here.
I guess it's not a tangent. It's very related to the question of this.
And and I'm okay saying the word Oppenheimer. You know that the right,
right, right, That was a real person who lived and we're allowed
to talk about. Yes, and mentioned the movie because I don't think that
was promoting it. Sure, I haven't seen it. It might be great.
I don't know, but I think to me it was really telling that
that movie, it's all about this decision to use this weapon or not,
doesn't involve the people who were used on And that's why those movies so striking
is because the exact opposite, well, it doesn't show a lot of cochira,
you know, suffering at the hands of the oxygen destroyer. But anyway,
right, well let's that's a little bit okay, Yeah, yeah,
I think there's something to be said there. Sure. What I think the
because when I was always taught was yes, the use of the nuclear bomb
was terrible and horrific, but every other option was worse, that it would
have caused far more civilian deaths and American soldier deaths if we hadn't invaded,
and you know, all these kind of just ications that are used. But
I think as we've looked at it more and more and understood the rationality,
kind of don't make any sense anymore. But to me, it's really interesting
seeing how the movie is really wrestling with that, because, as you said,
like it shows all these different perspectives. You don't think the movie is
clearly trying to say, like it has clear things to say about nuclear weapons.
But I think it is very ambivalent about what should the Japanese reaction to
this all be, and that you know, like there's one at a lot
of points where a lot of people are super scared or do iying they can
to react, there's one character who just says, you know, evacuate again,
I've had enough. And I think that's a clear reference to the multiple
times people and this you know, London in many cities that were attacked by
the Germans and the Japanese, but then also many cities that are attacked by
the English and the Americans and others. You know, they had just night
after night, go to these bomb shelters, go on the subway station,
try and hide from the bombing. Yeah, And I think you just hit
on why it works for me is that, you know, they don't give
you an answer, they don't tell you how to feel about it. They
just present it, you know, And for me that's always what's going to
work best. And it's it's there are characters who have viewpoints and express those
viewpoints, and so you can see almost like a like a buffet of reactions
that you can either choose from or you can empathize with and hopefully if you
have one reaction, you can empathize with someone else's reaction and understand, like,
look, I don't have to feel the way you feel about this.
You don't have to feel the way I feel about this, and that's okay,
you know in terms of like and by this, I mean like if
you are Japanese in Japan at the time and this has happened, right,
and it's like you get to feel how you feel. And I mean,
you know, the movie is not like trying to say that in like really
exploicit terms, but it's letting you do that. It's not you know,
I don't feel like at the end there's a oh what sari Zawa did was
like definitely the right thing to do. It was like he made that choice,
and you know it. I mean, maybe there's a feeling that it's
like, yeah, if you don't do something about Cochira, like it's just
going to keep stomping all your cities, and like maybe that's true, you
know, but like I don't feel like it's like this is the only way
everybody has to agree, Like it's like this is what we're doing, this
is what we did, you know, Dice k decided I can't survive,
or they might convince me to. You know. It's basically like the ego
of a scientist is such that upon making such a discovery and then other people
knowing about that discovery, like, how can one resist the urge to tell
everyone all about how brilliant they are? Basically right, and here he's like,
no, I'm going to take that secret to my watery grave. And
I did think that was like super telegraphed. I was like, as soon
as you like, and scientists can be convinced that I'm not all No,
he's gonna he's gonna pull up what was that character you're playing? I don't
know, Uh, yeah, he definitely was. I think that was made
very clear. There's a couple of things what you talked about want to say.
First, I love what you said about how like it doesn't really give
answers to these questions, I think, and again, especially from when I
read about the cultural significants in the movie in Japan, what it really did
was only they did not give answers, but it was kind of one of
the first times that it gave permission to ask the questions and talk about it,
you know, And then started this conversation and and again this is Beach
going on research of others. But I think both about like what had happened
to them and also their role in like, you know, what had Japan
done. And one thing I'll say that this is this is kind of made
another top for another time. But I do take a very different perspective to
being American than you do, and that I think I am equally as horrified
by a lot of things that the Americans have done. I think for me,
I'm not able to say so that's something they did, They're not because
I'm not an American. To me, I get all the benefits of being
American in terms of you know all that that means my tax dollars do you
go to support America. It is tax dollars given under portion of violence,
as you pointed out to me. But because for me, the way it
matters is the reason. It's the same reason why I talk about, like
I am Christian even I'm fortified by what so many Christians do in the name
of Christianity, because if I just say, oh, those aren't real Christians,
then I don't have responsibility for it. But to me, by by
claiming myself as an American and naming that. It's a way of saying like
we're still here. But also it's a way of saying like it's my responsibility
to help make my country stop doing these things because I am part of it,
and I can't just say I'm not so. And then just to give
a counterpoint, like I said, it's sure, that's to give you your
perspective and your own feelings, which yeah, and and all, I'm saying
it, but I think that's to me. I think that's a part of
what's happening in this movie as well. Is it's also like the commilitary really
shocked by is that the literal sense of shame and debate about is that about
we're shamed for starting the war or even if that would believe that, you
know, who was responsible for running the war, Shame that we lost the
war, that Japan lost the war, surrendered, whatever it was, you
know. And I think that there's so much scholarship on that that I can't
think, I can't summarize by any means. But just the way that this
movie was able to open all those questions and give people in Japan and later
in America and all of the world the chance to would wrestle with them.
I think it is so important. Yeah, absolutely, let's go to it.
I'm like, well, I think are two of the more interesting,
like specific ethical questions in the movie. And first, I think because he
mentioned Gjura's own suffering at the end of the movie, what was your take
on Gojura as a character. I felt like, you know, you didn't
get any sense of like Kojia's like motivation or like you know, and that's
fine because like you know, doesn't speak Japanese, so it was hard for
the characters to have a conversation, right, But I did appreciate that,
you know, doctor Yamane was like, no, we should. We should
study Gojira's like ability to resist radiation. I'm not quite sure how we'd like
intended to do that, but like the idea of like, no, you
see something you don't understand, it doesn't mean you just go and kill it,
right, And it also it feels to me like they didn't really I
feel like, uh, there are maybe some more creative ways of being like,
Okay, can we draws this thing's attention away from where you know where
he's going, Like, can we create some sort of power source that will
make them like go over here back into the ocean, like why is gojirahi?
And like, you know, as opposed to just like kill kill kill,
I will say, like when it comes to killing animals, if they
are currently trying to kill you, I kind of like I'll respect that as
a carve out of like if you can't come up with an idea of like
how to non violently or non lethally stop them from killing you, like sure,
okay, self defense, you know, so you know that that's it's
a little different than like, you know, oh, there's you know this
creature in the sea, We're going to go and kill it because we're afraid
of what it might do. It's like, no, it right, It
just leveled Tokyo, you know, which was just rebuilt. You know,
Like it's like, come on, I think it's really telling that Guja is
not presented as belevolent or like sadistic. This is a version that all of
you may not get. But like imagine the gathering terms. These different colors
represent like different ideas, and green is the color of nature where nature doesn't
have like it's not evil, it's not, but it just is it's just
it's animals, and I think Gojira is very much presented as that that he
is. He's an animal, and he does present a threat, and so
there's a certain self defense aspect. But there's a like, to me,
the fact that the movie feels so tragic at the end and then we get
this last beautiful shot of like the ocean with the light of the sun on
it. It's very evocative of like when Gojira firstal Verge. I at least
got the sense that the movie was saying, like, it is tragic that
the scientist had to die, but it's also really tragic that like we got
to a place because through our human malfeasance of nuclear weapon testing, we awakened
Gojira. Yeah, and then he you know, was raised and fought back
and we had to then kill him or kill it. It's interesting that Gojira
is gendered as mail even in later movies where Gojarra lay's right. Yeah,
I was kind of wondering about that. I was like, and I don't
like saying it or thing or whatever, but I'm also like, like,
I don't feel like gendering Gojira because like I'm like, I feel like if
there was a clear biological set up that that would be very large and on
screen, so you know, yes, exactly exact sensorships. That was a
thing though it was probably a good thing, right, I don't know.
I'm sure that's a class of you know, there's a lot of fan fiction
that will definitely tell you that that's all you need to know, or even
animation. But yeah, anyway, but yeah, I definitely got that sense
of like, yeah, there was a real tragedy here that Gojura had to
die. Yeah, and you know, and it's it's like blended with sort
of undercut sort of like with with Sarah Tawas you know, death right,
And but it does feel like the whole thing is a solemn event, which
feels, you know, more appropriate to something like this than like people cheering.
And maybe there are people cheering also at some point. I'm not sure,
but I can't. I watched the movie one time and it was like
a week or two ago, but I watched again this morning. I think
it's a cup. There's some cheering when they think they've defeated him with the
military, right, but again it's all the people on the boat and then
everyone else because it just ends with them on the boat. Yeah. Yeah,
they don't have a bunch of other and then you know, and then
Yamina says like, you know, if if we keep if you us keeps
you know, dropping bombs on you know, Bikini Atoll like things, are
you know, we're gonna We're gonna get more of these right, like because
it wasn't like the bomb created Gojira, like the bomb awakened Gojira and kind
of kind of gave Gojia like superpowers or you know, radioactivity. Yeah.
I think it's really accurate. And I think one of the things that is
most interesting about Gojira is how in later movies he becomes the savior of Japan.
That a lot of the movies later, especially the Gojira verse, you
know whatever other monster, Gojarra is the one saving Japan from these big monsters,
right and Alten stepping on some buildings along the way. And at some
point, I think very recently, Gojira has been declared an official cultural Ambassador
for the for Japan by the Japanese government. And I think there's a I
can get a chance to dive into these in which I wanted to. But
there's a lot of really interesting scholarship on sort of how is it the Gojira
went from this monster that attacked Japan to becoming like a symbol of Japan.
It's the Japanese really relates to, and I think the both dangerousness and the
victimhood is really kind of a part of that. Let's go to the other
Oh, I was just gonna ask, like, do you know whether future
movies are sequels and there's like new you know, gojras or like are or
are they sort of like reboots where it's like, Okay, how about in
this one, you know, god doesn't get killed and and like not sure,
there's a whole bunch and it's probably complicated. Is certainly an acceptable answer
to me. That's something question that Kaiju experts getting to a lot of debate
about. Okay. My understanding is that the movie is put out by the
Toho studios, which is the studios of movie are kind of in some way
as the first you know, was one of the first connected cinematic universes,
right, and that Godzilla does appear again later, and that I think that
they said that like, yes, this is supposed to be in the same
continuity as much as that were I mean at a time when you went to
see a movie once and then really didn't have a way to see it again
and again on TV or VHS or DVD or anything like that. You know,
the idea of continuities much because people a thinking about, oh, yeah,
that movie I saw ten years ago or whatever. Yeah, but they're
death A lot of those movies build on each other, and I think there
was some statements that it was a new Gojira that are merged for later movies,
and certainly that like, you know, there'd be a movie that introduced
Mathra, and then Gojira and Mathra would together fight the three headed monster from
outer space, and you know that there's all these sort of things, and
eventually Gojira gets a son who I haven't seen yet, but the animation looks
utterly like just ridiculously ugly cute in a way that I absolutely love. So
I think that's gonna be a fun thing to check out. But yeah,
they are kind of all connected in that way, or a lot a lot
of them are. But but I think not in like, you don't have
people going on the internet being like, oh but remember a minute fifty seven
and the first Gojira movie just happened. That doesn't fit with this other thing.
I think it's it's more kind of like the continuity of comic books,
like they're all kind of the same, but they're not trying to have the
exact name stuff, right. It's it's sort of like pre toxic canonicity to
borrow something from a previous episode we've done where yeah, I'm like, I
like you said something. I'm sorry, tangent Land, but you said something
when we appeared on Hype is My Superpower, which I say appeared because it
was recorded like a month or two ago, but it's probably not been released
yet. I don't know, but there's gonna be an episode that we're on
talking about something. I don't even remember what we talked about, but I'm
sure it was fun. But you mentioned how like, you know, in
the Bible, there's like two stories that like they say one thing and then
the next thing says something different, and it's just like deal with it,
you know, and like the idea that like these are part of the same
universe, but like they're not. They don't have to be not everything.
They don't have to be completely consistent, right, because that's like not the
point of the stories, and to me, like I kind of I wouldn't
mind a Star Wars where like it's not like, yeah, this is the
one true thing that happened, you know, it's like, yeah, no,
this is here's a story, here's another story. You know. They
compliment each other, but they don't necessarily have to correspond perfectly, and so
I appreciate that. If that's in these movies as well, yeah, for
sure. So we'll talk about what was probably the biggest ethical question in the
movie, which is Seri Zawa the scientist, his decision event his kids at
first refusal to use the oxygen destroyer machine, and then his decision to use
it but to kill himself and strows notes in the process. What did you
think of that as as how we played out at the end. Uh?
I thought it was you know, it's interesting because it's like I think a
lot of people like to you know, kind of blame the scientists and be
like, oh, if you didn't do these things, we wouldn't have these
weapons, right, And like that's true in the same way like if you
say the soldiers, well, if you didn't fight, we wouldn't have Wars.
It's true, but it's like it would have to be collective action,
you know. Yeah, And I feel like science is eventually going to present
all the ways of killing, because you know, as you increase your understanding
of reality, you know, you find more and more ways that aspects of
that reality can be you know, turned into death basically. And so I
think the idea of like, well, Okay, I'm going to use this
thing this one time and then I'm going to destroy my notes and myself and
nobody's going to be able to figure out how it worked, I think is
naive. You know. I think it's a it's a heroic thought to say
I'm going to sacrifice myself so that nobody uses this for for ill. But
but someone's gonna someone's else is going to figure it out. They're gonna be
like, oh, you called it the ox Like if if that were my
plan, I'd be like, I'm not telling you what this thing's called.
I'm not telling you it's the Oxygen Destroyer. Then you're gonna go thinking,
oh, how can I destroy oxygen? Like I'm not even gonna mention that
part, you know, be like it's the Gojira Destroyer. It's proprietary and
I'm giving you none of the details. I might kill a few fish too,
And and you know that go Gira was like the military target, but
they killed a lot of fish too. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna put
this out there, but like you know, and that's like a metaphor that
I think maybe only a small number of people are really gonna feel, but
like you know, or maybe not, maybe it was very deliberate. I'm
not sure. I think it was. I think though a little bit from
an animal rights perspective more so though, I think because at that time,
you know, fish, yeah, fish wasn't is a huge part of the
Japanese diet, sure, and we were coming you know, it was only
fairly recently that there had been like you know, huge food short food shortages
because of the war, right, But also I think this is less so
the case today, but still the case. They but struggling time. The
movie is made a huge part of the economy. Yeah, and they specifically
say that like Ewen Gojara is just killing all the fish, yeah, and
stopping all the fishing boats. That's hurting the economy is Yeah, I think
if there's like one part of oh No, the animals and one part of
like, oh no, all of us who depend on the ELP. Yeah,
yeah, that makes sense. So yeah, I mean to me,
it seems like, uh, the phrase stop gap is coming to mind,
but that's not quite what I mean. But like basically, you know,
a kicking the can down the road, being like, okay, humans,
somebody's going to figure this out. But it's not going to be directly because
of me, right, it's not. They're not going to find my work.
They're going to have to start over from scratch. Someone else is going
to have to have you know, the kind of light bulb moment moment.
And again that's why I think probably don't mention the name, you know,
but like, but yeah, I mean it's it's both I think, admirable
and naive, you know. And and that's not to say like if we
draw a parallel like that, you know, the scientists who worked on the
you know, the Manhattan Project and then and other nuclear projects throughout the world.
That's not to say like, oh, well, if they didn't do
it, someone else did so, or someone else would, so like they
don't have any culpability. You know, I'm not saying that. I'm not
I'm not saying it as a well you're off the hook because someone else would
have done it anyway. Just you know, I think it is worth understanding,
like, yeah, you did this. I do hold at a higher
level of responsibility, you know, the people who chose to, you know,
metaphorically pull the trigger on it, right, either I'm signing off on
the program or saying yeah, let's yeah, let's blow up a couple of
cities, you know. I mean, you know, Harry S. Truman
I think gets a little gets off easy, you know. And and people
who flew the bombers, although like I don't know how much they knew about
what was going to happen, and they're like, yeah, we're just we're
just talking a bomb. I don't know, which I think actually was dangerous
for them too, write because of the radiation, not like oh poor them,
but just like you know, the specifics of it. But yeah,
it's like, you know, it's like, yeah, you're responsible. It's
probably would have happened anyway eventually, right, but you're still responsible. So
in a lot of ways, this is gonna be a weird connection, but
it follow me. I think it makes sense. It's part of why I
think what Galen Urso does in Jogue one, because I think he's placed in
that similar situation where you know, the empire thinks he's the only scientist who
can do this. He has to come back, right, And I think
you can argue, well, he should have just been willing to die.
He should have been willing why his family die, because otherwise he constructs this
thing that literally destroyed an entire planet, could destroy so many more. But
his argument is kind of the exact reversal of the ego argument. His is
like, no, I'm I am really good, but if they kill me,
they'll find someone else to do this. It's going to be made.
I can at least make it with this trapdoor safety thing. There's a lot
more to that discussion. I think we can talk about it at another time.
Yeah, but I agree, I think there's a little hubrist there.
I think it's you know, like is it in your note. Soon after
America first dropped the first nuclear bomb, a number of other countries within ten
years, Soviet Union first in England and France and actually China figured out how
to do it. And I think part of it is they had to do
their own research beforehand. Certainly, but also an extent to which, once
one person has shown that it can be done, maybe you steal their notes.
And that's you know, the whole thing with all sorts of debates about
that Soviet Union. But also just like it's a lot easier to decide to
put huge amounts of money into a research project if someone's already shown that it
works, right, you know, And I think that's yeah, Like,
like you said, a lot of other places might be like, oh,
okay, well maybe we shouldn't use this web Maybe why would I even I
had a research an oxygen destroyer. That's important way it works, Yeah,
exactly, funny into it. Yeah, it's it's proof of concept. Yeah,
And I think I'm with you there, And I think I think the
movie is intentionally very it is intentionally very obtuse about how do you feel about
this? Because and I think that very plaintative prayer by the Japanese girls is
very intentional that they're trying to set up the literal existential threat that you know
this is. You know, it's easy, as you said, to talk
about the like, well should we build this weapon for a threat that might
happen in a five years? People are dying every day right now because of
about the country is at risk, the world is at risk, And tell
me what's interesting. And I don't know if this is just my American then
seeing this, or if this was intentional by the filmmaker. I feel like
they set up the same situation that the Americans claim as their justification, because
that's the American claim as well, is it was a horrible thing to do,
but there was literally this was literally the best way to end the war
because any other way would have caused so much more death and so much more
chaos. I mean question that today, but I think that's it's interesting that
that's a similar question that the movie sets up of is it can we use
this terrible weapon knowing that because I think in the end, I think I'm
a team you use the weapon like you know, I hate it, and
I agree with you. I think it's going to lead to more terrible things.
And that's kind of the point of the end, is that the statement
of that, like we have to all decide to stop. I mean that
used the weapon on Gorgia, rock, not use the weapon on Japan.
Excellent clarification. Yes, thank you, I saw your face. I was
like, yeah, very clear. Here. I was like, I think
that's what you mean, but like we probably want to make sure yeah,
good, good, good, right, because like I said, I think
in the self defense aspect of doing it, it has what has to be
done. But I think that's the statement at the end, you're saying,
like, yes, we had to use this weapon because of this thing that
we're created by weapon, but even just destroying the notes and destroying the scientist
isn't enough. We have to all agree to stop trying to figure the think
that we have to all agree to stop this their test. Yeah, I
think I think it is a super deliberate parallel there, you know. I
mean it was one of the things that felt like this really could have felt
too on the nose, but somehow it works, you know. And yeah,
I do think it's interesting that this movie and Hidden Fortress had like a
song, because what you're describing as a prayer is delivered in the form of
a song, right, it's these children singing, and that this song sways
this character who had not agreed to help the protagonists but then decided to help
the protagonists, And like I'm just like, oh, this this is interesting.
This is like very very similar, like just like the same point in
the movie, and which also I think was The Hidden Fortunes I think also
was done by Toho Studios. But and then is why Kurosawa went and made
his own production company after that, because they're like, you film too slow.
And I know the Kursawa and Honda were friends. They both work at
the studio together. Yeah, and then because Honda was drafted but Krosawa was
not. Honda was kind of mad that he came back from the war and
the kurs Sawa had kind of established himself already, right right, right right,
yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean so, so
it's like I do think they are deliberately you know, setting up that parallel
and then allowing the viewer the space to have their own feelings about it.
And I appreciate that. I just always appreciate that in a you know,
it's fine for something to like mostly have a perspective, you know, but
I feel like I think it's way more powerful instead of being like super preachy
constantly to basically present something and then just like give give the viewer space.
I think when people are really going to have moments where they have this realization
of like oh this, this isn't okay, or like this is you know
I should be doing this, or like oh that's how things are. I
don't think it's usually from someone giving a monologue. I don't think it's usually
from a speech, right. I think those are things to kind of like
rally people who are already on your side, right, like the preaching to
the choir metaphorically. But I think I think setting up questions. I think
film is a great medium for that, where you know, you you give
people some ideas, you present people with some ideas, and then then you
let them feel what they need to feel and let them think what they need
to think. And I think just in general, you're a lot more likely
to actually convert people to your point of view than if you're just you know,
malleting them over the head with something. Yeah, and I think this
film does a great job of that. So there's one piece of listener feedback
I want to get to, and then in the Patreon section, we're going
to talk about one last part of this movie and how it plays. Another
movie is a love Triangle, which I know me and Paul have some thoughts
on. But first Paul I need to give you a chance. And the
last thing you want to say with this movie not so much about the movie,
but just I don't know. I still like I look up things about,
you know, American opinion on things like Hiroshima and like Nagasaki, like
the you know, those bombings, and I mean, it would be interesting
to see a polling of how many people even have any idea of you know,
the conventional bombings that took place before that bute and just seeing the amount
of support that still exists, you know, is it's it's just like deeply
disturbing to me. And like even just like thinking about or talking about these
things like it like I don't know. I mean, I you know,
didn't break down, but it was like I found it difficult to speak earlier,
you know, talking about like the first time that I heard about these
atrocities, which I just really want to underscore, Like I feel like if
you refuse to recognize them for the atrocities that they were, and if you
think they're like really morally ambiguous or even justified, like I just I just
don't think that's being realistic. Like that's how it sold a lot of the
time, right, Like I just think that's drinking the kool aid, Like
I think that's giant buying a giant pile of feces that postwar America has sold
to you. And I just I don't know. I think people should question
how they acquired such a ridiculous viewpoint and like why they remained so attached to
it. And you know, it doesn't mean like you have to like think
that things were necessarily simple, because you know they weren't necessarily simple. But
it's like, I don't know, you just don't do this, like it's
just not okay. And that's yeah, that's all I've said to me.
To me, there's two things there. One is I'm really glad you brought
the point about the censorship, because you know, I think that what happened
to this movie and his story when it got to America is really emblematic of
the ways we you know, don't want to think about that. And so
we took this piece of media from a country we've done these horrible things too,
and then just took out all the parts about the horrible things and made
it just a fun movie about you know, a guy in a rubber suit
smashing a lot of buildings and but why did you point out the way I
mentioned the name of that the actor before Nakajimaharu, he's wearing a two hundred
pounds suit. Oh wow, So let's let's tip our hat to that prot
Like if you ever think like, oh wow, he looks so stupid,
he's moving so bulky, he's wearing two hundred pounds of rubber. And this
is before like cooling systems in special effects stuff like that. And as someone
who once wore a boat, I imagine perspective on you know, I did
wear a forty pound boat for a summer job once. That will has faded
into memories and thank you for bringing back that como. But yeah, but
I think that's really significant of you know, because the movie, like I
said, we said, it's pretty like at one point where the mentions that
she had just escaped Nagasaki and now she's dreds later nine years later in danger
of this bomb, things like that, and I think it's really important to
look at that, to look at like, why is the talk of things
that we are like? And this is kind of get leads to the second
point. I think it's really important the way you phrased that we acknowledge these
multiple truths that Japan committed atrocities in the war, were committed atrocities the war,
and you don't have to say, well, one of them is worse
than the other. You don't have to say that one of them justifies the
other. They're both true and communic connection there is that I had certainly learned
to quite a lot about the atrocities that Japan had committed during the war,
but I learned about the atrocities Japan committed to white people. The Baton Death
March, which has often talked about, where American prision of war and the
Philippines were horribly treated. Similar things happened to British troops in Singapore, Hong
Kong and other places like that. But the you know, the the just
utter destruction that was done to the Chinese city of Nan King, Nan King,
who never was talked about now, the horrific atrocities that are committed to
the Chinese people. To the Korean people, you pointed out that actually a
huge number of Koreans died the bombing of Nagasakis, Korean immigrants to Japan live
that just just a point of order, not immigrants conscripted laborers like slaves,
like oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this wasn't like people
who are like I'm going to move from Korea to Japan because that seems like
a nice thing to do, you know, this was it, which I
think makes it a lot worse even not that it would be okay, but
like during times of empire, people in like the outer colony is often moved
to the main area because they're to shift of resources and jobs and that's sort
of horrific. You're right, and that's what I thought it was. You're
right, that is a whole of the magnitude of terrible. And yeah,
I think that that's what this movie is is great for it's like not it's
not trying to say, oh, one side is justified, one is not.
It's trying to say, look that all of this is terrible, and
how do we break out of You know, that's not like the nuclear bombs
are horrible and bad, but it's not like all of warfare before the nuclear
bombs was great. You know that it's all bad and in all these tens.
Absolutely so, all right, well, thank you for a great discussion.
Listeners. Of course, we note you think have you have you seen
the original? Are you know? Are interesting sing the original? Now?
You know? What did you think about Gojira and the Godzilla movies and all
that? Love to hear from you? Whatever? Respective is definitely right in.
You can find all the ways contact us on the Ethical Panda website and
I'll get to that more in a second, but first I just want to
give us a quick picks of feedback. A lot of the feedback we've been
getting that I want to go through is about stuff that Paul hasn't seen yet,
so I don't want to spoil Paul. But this one piece of feedback
is something that Paul and I talked about that Paul hasn't seen, but he's
wanting to come on a podcast and talk about it. It comes from New
Jersey Jedi and call you n jj I. Hope that's okay. Just listen
to you talking about animal rights and Guardians three. Great episode and it left
me wondering, Paul, Parenthesis and Matthew, especially Paul, if you could
create a superhero movie that was about animal rights the way others have been about
racism or sexism, et cetera. What would be like? First of all,
it's a great question and thank you for the question. Second of all
is chance would have it. I actually watched Guardians of the Galaxy three last
night and have a couple of things I want to say about that, but
I'll circle back to that. Yeah, it's funny, like I come up
with a lot of story ideas, but I really haven't come up with any
story ideas in terms of like really in terms of animal rights. You know.
Okay, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna give you my supervillain plan.
So there's this I you know, I could know the details of it,
but it's actually not really relevant to my interests. There's some disease that makes
people allergic to eating meat. To any people listening to this podcast from governmental
agencies, this is purely a hypothetical discussion that, as TikTok would tell me
to say, it's for education. No, it's for entertainment purpose, for
entertainment purposes only. Yeah, So there's this thing that literally makes people allergic
to eating me, and I believe it's delivered by like ticks or something,
which actually complicates the plan because I don't really want to use ticks in my
distribution method. But if I were to write a supervillain. I would have
their plan that basically they would be an animal rights activist who was decided they
were going to spread this to all of the people, and they would probably
be successful, and I would probably have a hero who was trying to stop
them and then change their mind. That's there's there's my story. So not
even the sort of black panther. The villain has some good ideas but goes
too far, at least for us, you know, audiences therefore have to
be stopped flat out. Like the villain wins the here we get to the
end with it. The villain's about to push the button. Then the hero
could stop them, but the hero's like, go ahead, go for it.
Yeah, have your moment. Yeah, And I mean you know the
details obviously, you know you need to work out. The challenge for me
is is a lot of like what we were just talking about about, you
know, having a message that you want to share or something you want to
encourage people to think about, and finding a way to do it that doesn't
feel two on the nose right, Like that doesn't doesn't feel like you're not
telling a story, like you're just telling someone what to do. You know,
I'm I'm I'm not I'm not big on telling people what to do.
I mean, I'm happy to tell people, Oh I think that's an awful
thing to do, you know, but not like you should do this,
you should not do this, you should you don't, and like, so
yeah, I think finding a way to actually present at in an organic storytelling,
you know, telling a great story while having stuff like that going on,
I think is just so much more effective than just being like, Okay,
this is my message, how am I going to distribute it? You
know, like and so like when you ask the question, my first thought
was like, oh, I don't even know. And I was like,
oh wait, I came up with supervillain plan for a totally not me super
villain to do this thing. And then like, oh, what if there's
a hero who's trying to stop them, and maybe they actually change their mind?
You know, you know, maybe they don't, but you know,
you got to make the characters first and then let the characters tell you what
they want to do. It's kind of my my philosophy, but you know,
you make enough characters with enough interesting perspectives, and I think yeah,
because the other thing is like, I mean, am I going to have
a superhero who basically just goes around and liberates animals. And then I mean,
because that's a thing, like people do that and they get sent to
prison for like terrorism for like like there's people doing like ten years or something
for like kidnapping in quotes like or quote unquote stealing two pigs who like weren't
gonna even be like who are of no financial value to the company because they've
they've got such powerful lobbies, you know. I mean, like, you
know, what would I want to write. I'd want to write some like
dexter thing where like someone just goes around and kills all these people. But
it's like that's not actually going to change anything, you know, So like
that's that's not what i'd write. Probably, I don't know, it's a
good question, too. Beats continued, Yeah, I mean, and I
do like the way that you frame it of because if that, you know,
allergy got to all of humanity. Like I'm someone who eats meat.
I eat significantly less meat than I used to when I eat meat from I've
tried to divorce myself entirely from the factory farming system and focus on things that
are more ethical and more or caring to the quality of life of the animals
and the life and that's entirely because of my friendship with you and and I
mean and that causing me to learn more about those things and kind of educated
about factory farming, industry and things like that, and so on the one
hand, I can say you're good at convincing people. You know, we've
also been friends for twenty five years, and I just mostly made these changes
about four or five years ago. So you know, a policy if everyone
take twenty one years to change one person's opinion, is not the most efficient
thing. When I was appreciate that like you have never you know, we
have maintained a friendship while I am engaging in something that you find, you
know, very against your morals. And to me, I do agree that
that kind of attitude of the try to persuade when you can. But even
then I'm like, because honestly, I think there's some things where like I'm
not as forgiving as you are, and I do cut people out of my
life with that that kind of thing. But I also understand where you're coming
from it. But my point being that I think, like something like that
allergy thing, no one is actually harmed, Like I enjoy meat, and
I couldn't enjoy that anymore. Would that reduce my quality of life in some
regards? Yeah? Would it probably improve my quality of life in terms of
my health? Yeah? Would I probably within a year just get so used
to finding ways to enjoy plant based food that I would stop caring about it
almost as surely? Yes? And yeah. So I think it's a very
interesting sort of take on it, as well as the idea of like,
I like that you didn't actually answer the question of but the hero. You
sort of went for the villain, you know, because I think the Harley
Quinn animated show, I think it's doing something really fascinating from a similar perspective,
because it's really about saying, like, they're not giving believable, relatable
villains, but still have a hero who eventually has to stop them. It's
straight up to the show about villains and they do horrible things that killed people
left and right. But and sometimes it's because they have a very righteous cause.
And sometimes it's because you know, they cut in line when they're trying
to get a sandwich. That's a righteous cause. And well, it depends
on what's in the sandwich. I mean, but Ivy especially is very much
kind of where you're coming from. She's not animal rights, she's more environmental
rights. Yeah, she's very much like, yeah, I'm just gonna kill
all these terrible people. And she presented as a villain but also as a
hero, you know, in that I think we're supposed to be rooting for
her occasionally, like maybe I wouldn't go quite as far as you're going,
but but yeah, so I think it's really interesting space to explore there about
like what does it mean to be a villain? And that's a whole of
the copic that we're gonna get in a lot of discussions about. But yeah,
I really like that I answer that question. And Yeah, first of
all, I really love what you said about, you know, gradually convincing
and not. It's just I'm not trying to convince you by saying you should
do this. It's just I do think like if you just live your life
and do what you think think is right, you know, like other people
see that and think about it the same way. You can make a movie
that presents these questions and then people can think about it and some people will
change and some people won't. Most people won't, but some people won't.
We can never go on a changent without leading to three other tangents. That's
just the way we are interested listening. You know that about us enjoying more
tangents. There's been a lot of discussion, and especially because of what Hill
apparently said to his now ex girlfriend, but putting that aside, but it
led to larger discussions about the difference between setting a boundary for yourself versus setting
a rule for someone else. And I think you are a great example of
that because you've never asked me, not even me, You've never asked me
to, you know, change the way I what I do. But you
have said that you will not go to a restaurant that serves date. And
so part of what that meant was that when I wanted to have and you
were often like, yeah, look, you often even to say like,
I'm not even gonna hang out. We can find ways to hang out that
you're over food, but just if I invite a utube restaurant that had meat,
you wouldn't go. And so I there were sometimes where I was like,
yeah, let's hang out after dinner, because I do you really want
to go to this place, and sometimes I was like, yeah, okay,
let's go choose some places that are not going to have the food that
I love the most, but are start going to be good food. And
I went to a couple of places that I hated what was happening in the
company. And then later especially you know, I was looking at more cuisines,
but also it was just being in food sciences really increased that we're now
at the place where we can consistently find things that we're both happy to eat
at. And so I just wanted to highlight that as a great, great
example of this idea of having a boundary versus Then you have a boundary that
means that because I like interacting with you, I have to I do change.
I choose to change my havior, but you never made it a rule
for me and never like tried to veto like what I eat. It's just
your boundary. Yeah cool, Yeah, and the Guardians of the Galaxy,
I feel like I should have a better response to that. You could cut
this, you could get the whole thing. No, No, I think
it was great. I just felt my response was underwhelming. I felt a
tad blown off. But that's okay. No, yeah, let me let
me this is a bit of a ridiculous sentence, but you know, I
mean I appreciate you appreciating that, you know, and and I appreciate the
number of times that you've been like, yeah, I'll go to this place
that I don't know if I'm gonna like it or not, you know,
and like sometimes you didn't and sometimes you did, you know. I think
I think once we found like some vegetarian Indian places, Indian places like that,
that was like a pretty good sweet spot. I think in terms of
Guardians of the Galaxy three, it like I won't get too deep into it,
but like my main things are like one, if you thought that was
super graphic, like it, it wasn't super graphic. It was like a
little bit. I mean it was it confronted you with a lot of the
horrors that humans do to non human animals, but then gave you this like
over the top villain that maybe you didn't have to feel so bad, you
know, and then completely undercut itself in the very last scene where Rocket and
company are just like, oh, here's a bunch of animals. Oh do
you feel bad? No, not really, Let's just shoot them all and
I was just like, and it was fun. I was watching with Zen
Madwoman, and as she has said, she prefers to be called on these
things, and she was just like, what was that? Like why was
that scene there? And it was It reminded me of you know, when
we were talking about Loki and like Loki being like, oh I'm bisexual,
now let me kiss a woman. So none of you have to have uncomfortable
feelings about this, and yeah, so it's just like just you know,
I feel like that is a movie that will make a lot of people think
about things that they hadn't thought about before. And I really appreciate ate that.
But like, oh, do we have to like undercut the message?
You know? Yeah, and I that I would not put in. I'll
just I'll just put that out there. So yeah, no, I think
it's very fair. I think that was I think I think we were critical
of that at the time. Yeah, I certainly think I was like,
yeah, why did this happen? Because it was like that it's funny.
I'd even forgotten how corld I was seeing. I just thought, you meant
when like we see them like eating animals on sticks. Yeah, yeah that
too, that too. Yeah, for sure, yeah, so yeah,
definitely good points. Here's the funny part. We've gone so long that I
thought we were in the patrons section already. That's why I kept saying,
why don't we do it next time? Because they'll be in the patronext I
know. It's like New Jersey Jedi. Thank you so much for asking the
questions. I don'tone else keep sitting in questions. You find all the ways
to do so. On the ethical handa dot com, I am still on
Twitter. Eventually, I'm going to the side to get off Twitter. I
don't I have the energy and time, unfortunately, to create like five different
accounts on the five different things that are currently trying to replace Twitter, and
you know, if one or two of them emerge is kind of the real
dominant ones, or if you know, eventually I get kicked off Twitter because
I will keep calling it Twitter, and I will keep calling people'sis gender,
both which I've heard and I'm becoming bannable offenses. They're not really, but
you know, who knows it will happen. We'll see, But for now,
you can find me on Facebook, email, Twitter, TikTok uh.
You can technically find me on Instagram. I don't do much there, but
if you send me a message on Instagram you can find it pretty much.
Search for the Ethical Panda in any of those places, but best things just
go to the Ethical pnda dot com. Paul, I know you can find
as Zen Madman is more a work in progress at the moment in terms,
but Paul has written a lot of great books in the past and is in
the process of fermenting different ideas that will eventually come true. Hopefully they will
be more in the writing stories, not me trying to visit him in prison,
but we will see. Yeah, of course, of course, because
we certainly don't have recorded record that will be available to the public. That's
not what I mean by catch. I mean physically, okay, apprehend Yeah,
that's true. That's true. So yeah, so, But the point
is send us all the feedback. The best way to support us as being
a Patreon. You get our Patreon you can support us. I think it's
just like five bucks a month, and you get access to add free uh
content. You get access to additional content and our Patreon sections. And right
now, especially the twenty five percent of all the money I get from Patreon
is going to be donated to the Educational Fund, sorry, the Entertainer's Fund,
which is being used to help people affected by the strike, both the
unions and also out of the unions. In terms of that, you know,
Paul's parents were not actors, are directors, but like your parents would
probably be out of work right now, they worked in other kinds of part
They were in other unions. Yeah, well yeah, it could probably do
commercials, but anyway, yeah, it's it affects. It affects a lot
of people. When you shut down a production, it affects a lot of
people, the makeup people, the caterers, the you know, and some
of it, some of it is like the official movie cater or some of
it's probably I'm sure there's a pizza place next to some of these lots that
just gets a ton of business, or delivering pizzas to the studios. You
know, all those are suffering now. So yeah, twenty five percent goes
to that. So uh, Patreon content about love triangles coming into a second.
But for everybody else, thank you all so much for listening. We
have spoken what