Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 45

Toho’s G odzilla

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tions, such as the scene in which Serizawa must choose whether or not to use his
Oxygen Destroyer to kill Godzilla. In this scene there is a moment of silence while
everyone listens to a choir of children singing, and after listening to their song,
Serizawa agrees to use the weapon. In the Japanese version, the children’s song is
about disarmament, but in the American version, the viewers are told it is a song of
mourning. This is another example where the original political message is not
simply erased but rather re-written, with shocking results: the memory of the vic
tims of Hiroshima thus becomes the justification for using the super weapon.
During the ‘60s and ‘70s, fewer changes were made to the American
versions of Godzilla’s films, and these changes were mostly technical rather than
political, such as altering aspect ratios and dubbing voices, which was often done
so poorly it became a hallmark of the genre. But the entire structure of the Ameri
can version o f Gojira (1984), which was released as Godzilla 1985, was radically
altered by its American distributors, and most of these changes served to dilute its
criticism of the nuclear arms race. For example, in the Japanese version, a Soviet
nuclear missile is launched accidentally and the Soviets attempt to stop it; the
narrative thus addresses the dangers of possessing a large nuclear arsenal. In the
American version, however, the Soviets launch the missile on purpose; this change,
an obvious insertion of anti-Soviet propaganda, thus serves to justify a nuclear
strategy of mutually assured destruction. The American producers also omitted a
line spoken by the U.S. ambassador in the original Japanese version: “This is no
time to be discussing principles!” This line, obviously intended as a satirical criti
cism of U.S. foreign policy, clearly was omitted because it was assumed that Ameri
cans would identify with the U.S. ambassador rather than the Japanese president
and that this line would therefore threaten the American viewer’s sense of national
pride. By eliminating the line, however, the American version of the film manages
to disregard the fact that the promise of the film is precisely the simplicity and the
clarity provided by the absence of any principles. As Susan Sontag argues in her
essay “The Imagination of Disaster,” these films “reflect world-wide anxieties”
while at the same time “they serve to allay them” (225); in other words, while
reflecting their audience’s fear of nuclear war, they also calm those fears by de
picting scenarios in which people survive nuclear war and nuclear policies seem
sound and reasonable. For American audiences, therefore, the modified versions
of these films create a fantasy that rationalizes the need not only for nuclear weap
ons, but also for America’s role as defender of the free world.
However, the American versions of these films also contain new contra
dictions and paradoxes of their own. The biggest contradiction in the American
versions of Godzilla films is their simultaneous incorporation of serious drama
and camp elements. As the series went on, American distributors increasingly tried
to capitalize on the popular camp aspects of the films, but their attempts to sell the