The Godzilla series turned seventy years old this month, and I marked the occasion by writing a piece for The Everyman (which is now on Substack):

There are few cinematic creations that achieve the status of genuine myth; of a tale embodying deep, complex truths about the world and of the civilization that gave them birth. King Kong is one. Godzilla, King of the Monsters, is another. 

Indeed, Godzilla is, in some ways, even more of a truly mythic figure than Kong. Kong only really has the one mythic story: attempts to take him beyond that generally fall flat and serve only to reduce him. The power of Godzilla, on the other hand, does not lie so much in any one of the many, many stories that have been told of him over his now seventy-year reign, but in the character himself. 

The meaning or truth embodied in this character – this towering, majestic, dinosaur-like sea monster armed with the power of the atomic bomb – is complicated. It is, of course, best expressed in Godzilla himself, but putting it into words requires some effort. 

The modern world is not conducive to monsters. The old myths featured dragons, sea monsters, great serpents, terrible lions, and the like threatening the social order, all requiring great heroes to conquer. But society today would need no such figure as a Hercules or a Beowulf: firearms and other high-tech weapons wielded by trained and organized armies would make short work of such creatures. Modern man, it seems, has no need to fear these expressions of the wrath of the gods; his technology and organization gives him all the protection he needs. Modernity, so it seems, has conquered nature. 

Or, at least, so it seems. What has actually happened is that modernity, by manipulating and applying natural laws, imposes artificial or unnatural conditions on the world for the benefit of modern society. But the same natural processes and natural laws carry on unabated and unchanged, with the result that they produce consequences that are often unpredictable and frequently devastating. A dam allows us to control the flow of water, but if it breaks it creates a flood beyond any natural flood. We can slay the large predators, but then we must contend with the over-abundance of their prey. We can create comfortable, organized cities abounding with all that is needed for life, but we can’t prevent the ennui and despair such conditions create in the human mind. 

And it is this that Godzilla expresses: he is nature reacting to the unnatural conditions of modernity made manifest.

Read the rest here.