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Alex Martin

Jon Beadle

English 115

30 April 2019

Destroy and Desire

Have you ever dreamt of a destructive monster so powerful that it could crumble your

school to shambles? Godzilla is a Japanese mythological monster, that destroyed multiple cities

without any effort. Causing immense fear to the citizens of Japan, Godzilla’s desire to cause

damage is non-negotiable. Scratching the surface, the obvious point we may get across is fear

from having multiple cities in peril, but the habitants of these cities had a drive of desire.

With radioactivity in every footprint, Godzilla left many traces of ancient creatures, such

as trilobites leaving many scientists in awe at this discovery. One lingering question all scientists

had was regarding to World War 2 and Godzilla’s immunity to radioactivity. No one understood

how this monster was able to survive throughout the bombings that so happened to destroy

Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Having mentioned this, with no clue on Godzilla’s survival, and

seemingly indestructible people started to panic and plan for the worst. The military tried many

different methods to try and stop Godzilla and its tracks for destruction by using machine guns,

helicopters, and electric fencing. With none of these having success, everyone began to panic

and think for the worst. In addition, the anxiety produced by these tragic events caused people to

worry even more by making the mass media tell everyone what was going on in the cities that

were under attack. According to McCormick, “Still I am about the presence of what seem to me

to be some very dangerous trends leading to the production of more and more movies where evil
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is being projected onto an enemy so foreign and alien that it can be destroyed without any trace

of regret.” (McCormick 271). This quote grabbed my attention simply because the movie had a

plot line where one of the scientists wanted to simply do anything possible to destroy Godzilla,

and another scientist had an idea to try and study it. The popular opinion from the community

was to kill it without any second thought, which is what I got from the quote. With failure from

the militaries’ excessive attempts to stop Godzilla, people began to worry and spread

hopelessness and despair to everyone.

Godzilla had a lot of qualities that gave a desire to humankind. The freedom Godzilla had

to roam and do anything it wanted was one desire many had. The fact that Godzilla had no

restrictions and resistance to radiation were probable desires to people at that time, due to the

misfortune of World War 2. Being almost immortal, humankind would probably desire this too.

According to Cohen, “The co-optation of the monster into a symbol of the desirable is often

accomplished through the neutralization of potentially threatening aspects with a liberal dose of

comedy.” Cohen (192). The gist of this quote and how I interpreted it is: when humans sense

danger in any situation or circumstance, they tend to joke around to not be as terrified or anxious.

The citizens knew studying Godzilla would take more time in regard to the dismissal of it, so

everyone jokingly brushed that idea away, and agreed it was best to simply try any method to

destroy Godzilla. Surely every person knew what what Godzilla was capable of, but brushing

these ideas and treating them like they are ludicrous might have been one major cause for such

destruction. Only a handful of people in the population had a desire to study Godzilla. The

majority of the people wanted the “quickest” solution possible, and they anxiety and stress might

have been probable causes for these occurrences. Godzilla was desire, and DiSalvo, an author

who wrote about the analogy of desire and what it represents, quotes, “In another interpretation,
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Godzilla is our nature. He's the dark side of us, power-hungry and selfish, as were the forces that

threatened world domination resulting in war.” We have a tendency to only think for ourselves

and not throughly realize our actions before we speak. The idea of killing Godzilla was made by

the military and supported by the general public, but was that the right choice? The war that

broke out was between humanity and a monster that wanted to cause destruction.

Studying Godzilla would surely have its benefits, such as scientific breakthroughs, but

the impatientance from the population wanted quick destruction. Some of the characteristics

Godzilla could have been studied for would be: his resistance to bullets and ammunition, its

radioactive flamethrowing, his breed (reptilious amphibian), even to the extent of how this

monster communicates. All of these factors would be very helpful in possibly finding a weakness

from getting scientists to study. Being an enormous creature, Godzilla would surely have to

consume more food, possibly killing off many ecosystems. All these analytical assumptions

cause great fear to everyone, but desire to study and gain knowledge from this beast. From

watching the film, fear appears to the greater emotion. Although both are very prominent, fear

overcomes everyone, making some people choose irrational decisions. These decisions made by

the military and people in higher power, could have been the harder more tedious route. There

could have been a simpler less stressful way of getting rid of Godzilla, if everyone just took a

deep breath and decided to study and find a less extraneous solution. It was the desire of one

scientist to study Godzilla, but people disagreed and thought his idea was idiotic. Having

mentioned that, Godzilla’s popularity came from its characteristics. If Godzilla’s popularity was

incomparable to any creature, studying it sounds like the most logical reasoning to take action in.

In addition, this situation was more of an act before you think. The chaos in Japan did not let

anyone think logically, and this resulted in many cities left in pieces and uninhabitable due to
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radioactivity. If there was a more plausible way of destroying this beast by studying, why not

take that initiative in finding out how to effectively kill Godzilla causing the least amount of

damage doing so.

Taking time in finding ways to kill Godzilla is not reasonable, when such beast can take

cities down like dominoes. Studying Godzilla would take time, something the people did not

have. Doing damage was the only reasonable thing to do, go straight to war with this creature.

Studying Godzilla is reasonable, but the chance of finding information relevant on how to kill it

is very slim. The only guaranteed way of killing Godzilla is by going straight to nonstop guns,

missiles, electric fences. Godzilla was an alpha, it took control of the land it was in. Taking lives

in every battle, studying would not be tactical. There is only a set amount of time before Godzilla

destroyed all of Japan, studying would take too much time in trying find a weakness. If you

consider Godzilla as a predator, every time people wanted to fight, Godzilla was there to assert

its dominance. There is no right or wrong answer in fighting Godzilla, but studying is too risky,

especially in the time crunch Japan had. Even though this movie was science-fictional,

Burchfield, an author for an analytical viewpoint of radiation says, “The already terrifying true-

life images of A-bombs exploding were capitalized on by the film industry and spliced alongside

what were considered, at the time, even more unimaginably terrifying images of mutant

monsters, atomic-powered aliens, and nuclear arms-induced Armageddon.” If this monster was

almost invincible, why would we waste time trying to find answers when at any given moment

Godzilla could just sweep cities?

Fear and desire are very obvious in the film, everyone had either or. Some even had both,

and their ideas are clearly shown in this movie. People had a fear of destruction and war was the
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solution, while others had desire in studying and finding a way to destroy. In the film there was

an oxygen destroyer which was obtained by researching. This was the trump card in destroying

Godzilla. If there was not any ignorance in going straight to kill Godzilla, the possibility of this

weapon might have never occurred. These series of events caused the people to go through

stress, confusion, anxiety, but at the end of the day these series of events caused the win over

Godzilla. Having fears and desires is completely normal, but always think before you decide on

an action. This could be life or death for humanity and the Earth if not chosen wisely. The

already terrifying true-life images of A-bombs exploding were capitalized on by the film

industry and spliced alongside what were considered, at the time, even more unimaginably

terrifying images of mutant monsters, atomic-powered aliens, and nuclear arms-induced

Armageddon.

Annotated Bibliography

Burchfield, Larry A.. Radiation Safety : Protection and Management for Homeland Security and

Emergency Response, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central,

http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csun/detail.action?docID=448874.

This book describes the peril of radiation and the amount of fear it brings upon people. It

gave me a great point in the perspective of the people in the film industry.
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DiSalvo, David. “Godzilla Is More Than A Monster, And We're Less Than In Control.” Forbes,

Forbes Magazine, 16 May 2014

The article is mainly about the fact that humans only believe in making sudden decisions,

without rationalizing and making a decision we would regret in the long run.

Cohen, Jeffery Jerome. “Fear of the Monster Is Really a kind of Desire.” Monsters, edited

Andrew J. Hoffman, Bedford St. Martins, 2016, pp. 190-195.

This article gives an analytical viewpoint of Godzilla and its different ideas and ideology.

The use of finding a solution is by having curiosity and a will to succeed. There are different

identities that all monsters have.

McCormick, Patrick “Why Modern Monsters Have Become Alien to Us.” Monsters edited by

Andrew J. Hoffman, Bedford St. Martin, 2016, pp. 266-273.

This essay is all about the identities and provides analogies as examples from today’s

society. In addition, it explains how this movie is very clear to interpret, by having depth,

character, and plot.