Researching images at my internship on a completely unrelated topic, I came across this cartoon. It’s from 1882.
The text accompanying the image is pitifully unrevealing. Internet searches tell me that The Oliver Corporation produced farming equipment. The monster is evidence of the vibrant imagination around mechanization and industrialization and serves as a curious precursor to 20th century genres of film and fiction.
More info or more monsters?
Godzilla and King Kong came much later though, and my uneducated guess is that while there were political influences and ramification of those works, the overt motive was entertainment. Here we have something quite different going on, but it suggests the beginning of an imaginary that would allow for Godzilla and King Kong to be so broadly relevant and popular.
More monsters of course.
I’d certainly agree on the motive to an extent. King Kong was a spectacle piece. Evidence points to King Kong being the direct inspiration for Godzilla. There is certainly the motivation of financial gain in the case of a film (such is generally the case with large budget entertainment), but political cartoons aren’t so much in that “game”.
With Godzilla, while this certainly applies, the original film is very somber and the monster isn’t presented with the camp that the series is later known for. Yes it’s entertainment, but I think you can make that assessment for a political cartoon such as this one as well. They both have reactive ends in mind despite their commercial goals.
This conversation is making me want to plan a monster movie marathon… I’ve only seen the more recent Godzilla film. I have seen the original King Kong, and spectacle piece sounds about right.
More monsters would help trace the development from this political cartoon to King Kong… If both the cartoon and Gozilla are reactive, can correlations be made between the circumstances of their reactive ends? Maybe giant monsters are more useful in certain political realities than others.
I can braindump here a little… Obviously I can go on for quite a while on the subject… but there is an issue with most monsters post Godzilla loosing alot of their mojo… that’s not to say they don’t have campy fun, but they loose a lot of their potential power as narrative devices. I think Cloverfield recaptures that to an extent, which I credit to an honest attempt at creating a new monster that’s relevant today in the Godzilla tradition. Clover represents terrorism which is why the film relies a lot of 9/11 style imagery — also why one of the major visual effects studios that worked on the film did the “World Trade Center” film as they had the assets and experience working on that style of imagery.
It would be hard to trace a line between the cartoon and King Kong. King Kong, from my research got large as a part of the production process. He didn’t start big, the film is inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Lost World”, which as you may or may not recall is about a plateau in South America where a colony of dinosaurs has persisted. In Kong, Skull island is effectively that plateau. Kong was merely a large gorilla originally and the reality appears to be that Kong was made larger really to fit the scale of the dinosaurs.
None the less, I think there is something about the image of a large monster that this image seems to speak to. To bring that full circle, Godzilla is the reason we have the iconic giant robot imagery from Japan. We have giant monsters, ergo we need giant robots to fight them!
Sam and I have discussed an interesting “what if” scenario… what if Godzilla and giant robots had somehow emerged BEFORE the end of WWII as a result of nuclear arms being developed and deployed earlier — perhaps not ending the war with Japan (lots of possible variants)? An interesting tid-bit: the Japanese constructed one of the largest most heavily armed vessels in history towards the end of WW2, in full knowledge of it’s likely doom. What if they’d tried to build a giant robot instead?
Okay, “there is an issue with most monsters post Godzilla loosing alot of their mojo” had me on the ground laughing. But, wait, how do they loose their narrative power exactly? Overuse and no innovation? I remember Cloverfield coming up in Prototyping… here again my ignorance of motion picture renders me useless to comment.
Even if King Kong got big in the production process, there had to have been a climate for that kind of innovation to effectively grip popular imagination. I keep thinking of War of the Worlds… but that was after King Kong… 1933 vs 1938, I believe.
Maybe Aliens is somewhat tangential. The cyclops myth came from discoveries of woolly mammoth skulls. So there is an issue of science not being able to explain things and people imagining mysterious Manichean forces out to get them.
The Japanese armed vessel that was doomed fits well with the period. Much research into Cold War armament shows that the United States spent much more time fanticizing about its own destruction, like we build these devices and the only way we could come up with defense plans for the unknown capabilities of an already largely imaginary enemy was to imagine these weapons turned on ourselves. And so the paranoia which brings us other phenomenal wonders like P.K. Dick and backyard nuclear fall out shelters. But I don’t know anything about the Japanese side of it. Really totally exciting…
And now we have Big Dog! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww
Big Dog (Beta)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJZVZFRFJc&feature=related
A side note, Sam corrected me, the ship I named above was the second of such. Yamato was the first. Same class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato
Per a “loss of mojo”:
Ishiro Honda, Gojira’s director put it nicely:
“The image of what a monster is shouldn’t stay the same. It should be different so that people will be shocked and surprised, just as they were by GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS in 1954. Something new, and strange, must be developed.”
I might also say that Jurassic Park is operating on kaiju principles, though dinosaurs are the progenitors of kaiju usually literally but also in the hearts of their creators. Perhaps Jaws to a certain extent as well? I’ve also read an arguement for the movie Twister as a Kaiju film as well, which seems feasible enough to me — despite it being a natural disaster. Giant monsters tend to have at least one (but usually more) overwhelming quality, much like a natural disaster — it is currently the 53rd highest grossing film of all time according to IMDB.
Also I need to make a correct, in light of our conversation I’ve been reviewing my research this evening. The development isn’t Kong to Godzilla. It’s Kong to the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms to Godzilla.
The Beast from 20,000 fathoms was an American film by a russian-born French director Eugène Lourié about a fictional dinosaur called a Rhedosaurus who was prehistorically frozen only to be awakened by nuclear testing and the events that follow that thaw.
I have some quotes from his autobiography “My Work in Film”, but they’re spoiler-rific so I’ll hold off on posting those.
Rhedeosaurus was designed and animated by Ray Harryhausen, who is one of the early pioneers of 3d stop motion animation (he was taught by the inventor of 3d stop motion Willis O’Brien — who animated Kong). Harryhausen was obsessed with King Kong and dinosaurs. The idea for the Rhedeosaurus and the film came from a short story authored by his friend science fiction write Ray Bradburry’s short story “The Fog Horn” in which a dinosaur attacks a lighthouse.
The story goes that Tomoyuki Tanaka, Godzilla’s producer, had a big budget war movie fall through, and the conclusion is that Beast had done well the year before. The documentation here is sparse, but one can assume he decided to run with that idea. I would make the assumption he was aware as a film producer, of the success of films in America during the period. Ergo Dinosaurs lead to Kong leads to Rhedeosaurus which leads to Godzilla, which was a massive success which cause the Kaiju genre to emerge into what it was and is today.
As a tenative Kaiju movie playlist:
King Kong (1933)
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
Gojira (1954)
Ultraman — TV Series (1966)
Neon Genesis Evangellion (1995)
Twister (1996) — it would be interesting to watch in this context
Cloverfield (2008)
Having discussed five of them at least a little, Ultraman was (and is still) a popular television series involving a person who can grow giant with the assistance of an alien being to protect the Earth from giant monsters — think the grand father of The Power Rangers. Power Rangers borrows their formula entirely from the Ultra Series. Neon Genesis Evangellion is an anime series that deals with a group children who are chosen to pilot giant robots to defend the Earth from giant monsters (called “Angels” in the series). It’s really fantastic and deals with a lot of complex themes.
That list could be quite a bit longer. I’d probably add some of the iterations… Like the other two Kong films, or at least Peter Jackson’s. Maybe additional Godzilla films from the major paradigm shifts in the series. I’d definitely include the American Godzilla film, which generally misses the mark as sort of failed attempt to translate the franchise. I’d say it’s a definite for the short list, except that it isn’t very good. There are also a number of ‘versus’ films. I’d probably include “Godzilla vs. King Kong” (the 3rd Godzilla film) for somewhat obvious reasons — again a possible inclusion in the list above, but it’s not an essential view. The Gamera films are very popular in Japan, though I haven’t seen any of them and refuse to watch them dubbed — probably the first from his two iterations. There is also tons of Ultraman. The original series above had 40 episodes. There have been numerous series using variations on the character, some of the more recent ones sound interesting including a pacifist Ultraman. Ghostbusters is one I’d probably add for chronology reasons, because everyone remembers the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man. I’d include it above, except it’s not a focus of the film.
Gojira 1984 (1984)
Gojira Ni-sen Mireniamu (1999)
King Kong (1976)
King Kong (2005)
Kingu Kongu tai Gojira (1962)
Godzilla (1998)
Daikaiju Gamera (1965)
Gamera Daikaiju Kuchu Kessen (1995)
Ghostbusters (1986)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Silly Short But Fun! — Ultraman inspired:
Garmin GPS Promotion, Video Advertisement — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taRPwYe1EYA&mode=related&search=
Bloc Party — Flux, Music Video — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttcboE1GrNg
Oh and…
“So there is an issue of science not being able to explain things and people imagining mysterious Manichean forces out to get them.”
That point, I’m not sure I entirely agree with. Perhaps it’s just the phrasing.
For one, I do see a distinction still between classical myth and modern post-Kong kaiju. I’m not sure I’ve personally hit the nail on the head, but as I see it this moment:
Mythic monsters comes from a need to explain fears in the natural world. Kaiju are a way of having the “natural world” explain seemingly insurmountable cultural fears?
Yeah, I think I just worked that out. That seems to hold up — at least for the significant examples, including the cartoon above.
Perhaps the reason it works, and works well, is that by creating a physical manifestation of your fear, there is an understanding that all physical things as we know (interact and understand) them, can be destroyed, where as a concept is very hard to destroy, so by creating an overwhelming physical manifestation that accurately reflects the immense overwhelming nature of that fear, you build in a vulnerability to that fear in it’s physical nature. Whether the fear is overcome or not lies in the hands of the storyteller.
I don’t think it’s persecutory in nature. I think it’s more of a way of making sense of
Alien is a very good film. Probably one of the better science fiction films ever made, but I’m not sure it quite fits into the giant monster genre. The aliens are dangerous but defeatable in a way Kaiju are not.
War of the Worlds can be included in a lot of ways, at least in capturing the sentiment. The original novel comes from 1898, and while I’ve not read it, I imagine it has very similar origins in terms of how and why it works as a narrative. I think the film “Signs” although it really sucks after the plot-twist really captures this same feeling as well by really working on the WotW model.
I think there is a distinction though, War of the Worlds is a sort of “distributed fear”. There are lots of aliens, and although they share “representational fear” and have that “overwhelming/futility” quality, they aren’t centralized. Kong, Gojira, etc all feature a centralized symbol to focus that fear on to: “Gojira bin Laden”
I’m not suggesting that creating Manichean devils is always the rout for dealing with the unknown. It’s just one rout, and one that humanity seemed awfully fond of as it reached for and achieved the means of its own massive destruction.
Maybe, going with the distinction you’re drawn between myth and post-Kong Kaiju, Kaiju is a transposition of anxieties usually imposed on the natural world to cultural or man made threats…. Maybe. Cultural… is that the counterpoint to natural? The cartoon does indeed support that.
Your breakdown of the motivation for and ramifications of creating physical manifestations of fear is really compelling. “Look, it’s real! It can’t be refuted as figments of our imagination because we made it real!” Hm… clever trick. But also, it externalizes it into something that can be examined and objectified, and thus knowable. While objectification is usually seen as a repressive act against certain people, it is a means of mastery. If we take all Kaiju narrative produced within certain parameters over time, do we see a tendency toward mastery or self-annihilation? And can correlations be drawn to societal conditions? Speculative questions for consideration.
When I say Manichean, I’m thinking as opposed to Augustinian. Manichean in the sense of thinking, calculating, and intentfull, unknowable but with form. Augustinian as in naturally tending toward chaos but without intent or malevolence, unknowable but without form.
I think intentfull is not a word. Another word I made up recently was obsequity, not realizing that obsequiousness is the proper word, though considerably less satisfying.
So, if Kaiju are centrally featured inducers of fear and War of the Worlds’ aliens are vaguely intimating fear through being peripheral then… Yea, I don’t know, but you’re right, it’s an important distinction. Like, the aliens read Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Kaiju didn’t. If that makes any sense.
Are you suggesting that bin Laden is a knowable political enemy lending force to narrative devices, of that these narrative devices are created to ground this vague and illusive political enemy? Physical manifestation of fear. Right.
I think this political cartoon could become my thesis mascot/voodoo doll. I could use some physical manifestation of my fear to help me make stories about overcoming it.
The utility of imaginaries, god damn it!
Ok… I’m reposting my list from my second submission because it’s a little more gradiated.
Essential:
King Kong (1933)
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
Gojira (1954)
Ultraman (TV Series — 1966)
Neon Genesis Evangellion (TV Series — 1995)
Godzilla (1998) — The failed US interpretation
Cloverfield (2008)
Supplemental:
Kingu Kongu Tai Gojira (1962) — King Kong vs. Godzilla
An interesting film combining the progenitors of the genre. It’s the third Godzilla film.
Godzilla, King of The Monsters (1956)
Gojira 1984 (1984)
Gojira ni-sen mireniamu (1999) — Godzilla 2000 Millenium
The first is the American version of the original Japanese film. It’s interesting that the movie isn’t just dubbed, they shot additional footage and recut the movie. A difficult task to make work to be sure. These next two are the first films in the next two Godzilla “periods”. There are 28 films in all — 15 in the original “Showa” series, 7 in “Heisei” series, and 6 in the “Millenium” series.
King Kong (1976)
King Kong (2005)
The other two Kong Films for comparison as well.
Daikaiju Gamera (1966) — Gamera the Invincible
Gamera Daikaiju Kuchu Kessen (1995) — Gamera: The Guardian of the Universe
Gamera is another popular monster in Japan. He’s had two series. These are the first of each series.
American Movies:
Twister (1994)
I read an interesting argument for this being included. It makes sense. It’d would be interesting to watch in this context.
Jurassic Park (1993)
I don’t really need to explain this one, do I?
Ghostbusters (1986)
Ghostbusters 2 (1989)
Staypuff Marshmallow Man? Walking Statue of Liberty? If only in contest. Though the interesting thing about the latter is that’s a feel good kaiju? Weird. Only example I know of. There are defender kaiju who perform a positive role, but as far as I can tell only in defense of another. Though if you look at the 2005 Kong, I think Peter Jackson nailed the persecution of an innocent Kaiju.
Them! (1954)
The Blob (1958)
Them! is about giant ants. Part of the whole 1950’s sci-fi “let’s make animals big” genre. Probably one of the reasons why Gojira wasn’t/isn’t understood here. The Blob is pretty well known. Comes from the same ideas I guess.
wow, okay. i pick the beer. you pick the movies. we will have to have a movie night some time soon.
i’m kinda enchanted by the idea of staging a Gojia marathon, screening all however-many-of-them back to back… hm. all we need is the right venue.
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Curious indeed, a pseudo-arachnid-steam-monster! Certainly reflects the same sort of sentiments that inspired Godzilla. Godzilla is more a reactionary interpretation of King Kong in light of nuclear holocaust in Japan, where as this beast seems to be proposing a sort of precursory fear of technology patents in “mechanization and industrialization”. Hmm… I wish there were more!