By Lee Sailor
Lee Sailor (Horizons Committee) writes about Bijou's upcoming screening of GODZILLA (1954), playing February 4 at 6pm!
The hydrogen bomb test had gone wrong. It was significantly bigger than expected and resulted in widespread nuclear fallout throughout the Pacific. Fears of radioactive sea life were prevalent, and for the third time in under a decade, American nuclear weapons wreaked havoc on Japanese citizens. This is not the plot of Godzilla, but the backdrop under which it was written and produced.
In spring 1954, Japanese film studio Toho was in a bind. A planned film about the aftermath of the Japanese occupation of Indonesia had fallen through, and Toho needed to find a replacement in a hurry. Producers at Toho would not have to look far, with contemporaneous events bringing nuclear weapons to the forefront of Japanese public consciousness. On March 1st, 1954, the United States conducted a test for a new hydrogen bomb design at Bikini Atoll, given the code name Castle Bravo. The test went drastically wrong. An explosion three hundred percent bigger than expected sent a hundred-mile plume of nuclear fallout across the Pacific. While the American personnel who carried out the test were able to take shelter from the fallout, others were not so fortunate. Both the crew of the Japanese fishing boat The Lucky Dragon No, 5, and the indigenous peoples of Rongelap Atoll were exposed to fallout and sickened as a result. While the case of the islanders would be overlooked for decades, the illness of the crew of The Lucky Dragon prompted worldwide media attention. One crew member, Aikichi Kuboyama, died as a result of his exposure to the fallout. The rest spent months in the hospital recovering from their illness. Fears that the test had resulted in radioactive contamination of seafood resulted in the restriction and Geiger counter inspection of Pacific caught tuna in both the United States and Japan.
With Castle Bravo as a backdrop, Toho began production on Godzilla with director Ishirō Honda. Godzilla was loosely modeled off of Eugène Lourié’s 1953 film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. However, whereas in The Beast nuclear weapons served as a McGuffin to kick off the plot, in Godzilla they would be central to the story. Godzilla is awakened by atomic testing. One of the first suggestions that something is wrong in the film comes when a fishing boat is destroyed. Godzilla’s attacks are directly compared to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki complete with the portrayal of victims of radiation sickness. The central conflict of the film revolves around a scientist who has developed a superweapon but is unwilling to use it against Godzilla for fear that it will become a weapon of war.
Critical reception in Japan upon the release of Godzilla was mixed. Nuclear weapons were a taboo subject, and the few films in Japan to deal with its effects had been somber documentaries and dramas. Godzilla, by contrast, was argued to be exploitative of both the war and the aftermath of Castle Bravo in service of a lurid monster movie. Despite these criticisms, Godzilla was among the most successful Japanese film of 1954, and a sequel was rushed into production for the following year.
Between the United States use of nuclear weapons in World War II, and continued American nuclear testing, atomic weapons were not the taboo subject in post war American cinema that they were in Japanese cinema. Melvin Frank and Norman Panama’s 1952 film Above and Beyond about Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets and the bombing of Hiroshima had been nominated for an Academy Award. Nuclear weapons were a popular plot device in monster movies. Just a month before Godzilla would be released in Japan, the Leslie Martinson directed Mickey Rooney vehicle The Atomic Kid was released in the United States. Rooney, best known at the time for his work as a wildly successful child star opposite Judy Garland, was attempting to reinvent himself as comedy actor. The result was the whacky comedy The Atomic Kid, in which Rooney’s character gets caught in an atomic test and gains various amusing powers before being recruited into the FBI to help break up a Soviet spy ring. The American experiences with nuclear weapons allows the film to portray them in a silly context where they are as much as a symbol of power as a symbol of destruction.
While not as big a story in the United States as it was in Japan, the Castle Bravo test did help bring about a shift in how nuclear weapons were portrayed in the United States. Concerns over food contamination spread from initial fears of fallout exposed fish to anxieties about what atomic testing in the United States meant for American food supplies. Less than a year after Castle Bravo, advisories began to go out about risk radioactive contamination of dairy products in the United States. As a result, perception of nuclear weapons started to shift in the American popular imagination. No longer were nuclear weapons just seen as really big bombs that won the war. Instead, they were also biological weapons capable of threatening the health of those nowhere near the bomb site.
With this change came a similar shift towards a more negative portrayal of nuclear weapons in American cinema. One of the first films to mark this shift was the American edit of Godzilla, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! Although there was some softening of the film’s handling of nuclear weapons in the American edit- explicit references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki were edited out for example- the original plot and emphasis upon nuclear weapons largely remained intact. American weapons testing was still what awakened Godzilla, and comparisons to Godzilla and nuclear weapons more generally remained in place.
Subsequent American films such as On the Beach and Dr. Strangelove would deal with the threat of nuclear weapons and radioactive fallout more directly, and less than ten years after the Castle Bravo test, the Atmospheric Test Ban treaty was passed and ratified worldwide. Following Godzilla films meanwhile would downplay and, at times, ignore nuclear weapons, only returning to subject with the escalation of cold war tensions in the mid-80s.
In contemporary Godzilla films, meanwhile, the threat of nuclear weapons has been supplanted by the threat of climate change. Gareth Edwards 2014 film Godzilla portrays nuclear testing in the 1950s as a failed attempt to control Godzilla who is explicitly characterized as an uncontrollable force of nature. Michael Dougherty’s 2019 sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters goes further with the destruction of giant monsters being compared to the destruction of climate change.
In practice, the integration of climate change into these films comes off as plot device, comparable to the portrayal of nuclear weapons in early American monster movies. Just as the early monster movies voiced concerns about consequences of nuclear weapons, while not addressing their realistic dangers, the current Godzilla series has little to say about the actual threats of climate change. Indeed, the current Godzilla series is not unique in this regard. Much of contemporary cinema’s depiction of the climate crisis—Interstellar, Wall-E, and The Day After Tomorrow to name a few examples—feels analogous to Hollywood’s handling of atomic weapons pre-Castle Bravo. Climate change as a gimmick to get to the real plot. It remains to be seen whether or not another high profile disaster will be required for this to change.
Pick up a copy of the Bijou Calendar, including this piece, now in print! Available at both FilmScene locations (404 E College St + 118 E College St)!