Godzilla vs the Giant Scissors

Godzilla vs. the Giant Scissors: Cutting the Antiwar Heart out of a Classic Brent Staples wrote a very interesting article that caught my attention. It is about Godzilla and how the American cinemas took Godzilla and hid its true meaning. Even pop culture can relay moralistic messages by using tone, purpose, and subliminal. Pop culture such as movies, books, music, and television shows, normally are about fictitious things that we watch to get away from our everyday lives. Some on the other hand are still fictitious but have subliminal messages in them to get how the author, artist, or director really feels about a subject without screaming it in your face. The Japanese director Ishiro Honda did just that in his film “Gojira” aka “Godzilla” in 1954. This film was made just nine short years after the tragic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So naturally he would he would be upset about the situation and he told us about it in his movie. Godzilla was not only a destructive monster but a symbol as well. The Godzilla in the movie coincidently had the same destructive powers as a nuclear bomb would; “Honda later said that he envisioned the fiery breath of Godzilla as a way of “making radiation visible,” and of showing the world that nuclear power could never be tamed.” (Staples 724). So Honda’s main point was that he was very non nuclear and against war and wanted to display this in a movie. Staples used this same concept in his

writing but instead of making his point subliminal he was straight forward about his point in, how Hollywood “saturated the original.” (Staples 723). Staples tone in the article he wrote was that he felt that Hollywood replaced the original message that Honda wanted the world to see. Honda wanted everyone to see how destructive nuclear bombs can be. Staples felt this way because “The American Company that bought the rights to distribute the film in this country cut a large chunk form Honda’s original film and rearranged the plot.”