I have now lived long enough--it's official, I'm nearly out of here--to know that one's life moves through stages, each as diversely colored by attitude, opinion, and interest, as the light of the shifting aurora. The evolving being of the being, the "Original Project" as Sartre calls it, grows and changes, moving away from the patterns that identified it to itself at any particular moment.

This is why tattoos are always regrettable. The being who decided to decorate their flesh, then the one who selected it and suffered under the needle, the being who strutted through pulse-lit clubs and lounged ala-Francais in outdoor cafes, or who revved his honda bike in the parking lot of the mall while pretty girls clasped their ears and shouted in retreat, the being who bobbed up and down with the oceanic mass at hip-hop concerts and loitered from pm to am on skateboards behind the 7-11 smoking blunts--that being is marked for extinction.

The new being, the next one, or the next one, stares down at the only tangible mark that remains from that old being, and frowns, and regrets. This being has to explain the ink circlet of chains or flowers or grasping hands to children who may or may not think it's just a bit freakish; has to dab terracotta makeup over well-studied portions of flesh before work in the morning; has to explain the origin of the word "Henry" or the word "Alice".

A tattoo is a snapshot of a particular moment of being: its design, its location, its very existence. It pinpoints a particular place in a being's evolution, a particular confluence of events that led up to it, and a series of increasingly irritating efforts to subsequently account for it.

Such symbols and settings of the past are necessary for the being; that's why it has memories, photographs, letters, journals, mementos, souvenirs. Personally I hide most of mine. I have a safe hidden in the floor of a cave that was once a lead mine, out in the hills by a river bank patrolled by automated security systems. They don't require any makeup.

The pattern of Godzilla movies can be used to trace the cultural and political evolution of Japanese culture over the past fifty years, as it moved from world military power to world economic power, and slowly enacted the profound generational shift that strongly marks other cultures in parallel. I recently was treated to a viewing of the US adaptation of the first Godzilla movie, and--not having seen this one in recent years--was surprised by how much a classical overture it is.

The original Godzilla (Gojira, 1954) was modified in 1956 for provincial US audiences, and included a re-filmed plotline starring Raymond Burr (whom I've always appreciated as a poor-man's Orson Wells). The quality of the new footage is strikingly different from the original--not that the production value was improved (actually the opposite was the case), but the older film was paler and grainier--so it felt like watching exactly what it was: a spliced together hodgepodge. Very entertaining!

The most remarkable thing about the plot structure--and the most relevant to the hastily scribbled thesis of this essay--is the polyvalent political symbolism it contains.

First:

Godzilla is freed from a block of ice on the bottom of the sea by atomic weapons testing. He's the demonic monstrosity that the US unleashed into the world in 1945; the very symbol of Japan's defeat and subsequent cultural upheaval, which tore Tokyo apart every bit as inexorably as the monster does to the model city in the movie. The efforts of the Japanese navy to bomb Godzilla-- hiding under the water in Tokyo Bay--are sadly futile. He rises from the deep to destroy a cruise ship of young innocent fun-loving couples, the very future personified. He then rampages through the city, eating trains, ripping down bridges, stomping buildings into rubble. We are treated to a cautionary parable about the terrible destructive potential of man messing around with nature in order to achieve his political agenda.

Then, the reversal:

Godzilla has destroyed a major city and now threatens the rest of the world (says Raymond Burr, intrepid newspaperman). Two of the protagonists go to enlist the aid of a one-eyed mad scientist (named--amusingly--Kurosawa, but whom I'll call Oppenheimer). He's been despondent for the whole movie, dwelling on the potential ramifications of his doomsday weapon: the "Oxygen Destroyer". The girl protagonist tells him, "You can be afraid of what might happen someday, or you can be afraid of Godzilla, which is happening now." After a fit of torment, he tells them, "Okay, but the Oxygen Destroyer must never be used again." Godzilla is soon killed, demonstrating that it is sometimes necessary to employ the use of terrible weapons in order to defeat a terrible foe.

"A great menace was gone," says Raymond Burr, historical commentator, "but so was a great man. The world could live again."

Some interesting Godzilla stuff:

In the 1963 King Kong vs Godzilla, the Japanese strangely appropriate our Giant American Gorilla and have him fight the evil lizard. This is a fascinating (and quite postmodern) reversal: US pop culture turning around and fighting US imperialism. A prediction of the sixties counter-culture?

Godzilla vs Mothra (1964). The Japanese enlist the aid of a giant moth to defeat their old nemesis, but Godzilla wins. Then Mothra's children kill Godzilla, showing that where one generation may fail, the next may succeed....

After this, we find a new era of detente and cooperation, as Godzilla becomes the defender of Japan (and of earth in general). In 1965 he teams up, variously, with Rodan (a giant pterodactyl) and Mothra, in order to fight off a three headed dragon from outer space. Later, Godzilla becomes an environmentalist, battling the pollution of the Smog Monster (1971), and a luddite, clashing with a cyborg clone of himself (1974, 1975).

Somewhere in that later period we are introduced to Monster Island--the United Nations--and the many (like a dozen) member monsters, who argue and fight but are generally able to put their differences aside when the fate of the world is at stake. (This should not be confused with defender organizations like "The Justice League of America" and "The Superfriends", US cold-war creations that mirror NATO/CIA, and fight villainous enemy organizations that mirror the Warsaw Pact/KGB.)