For this week's blog, I decided to write about the "fans" of Godzilla. After reading Rori's post, I became aware of the way that children were viewing the newest Godzilla figure. I came across this picture last week on an app called iFunny. iFunny is an app that allows users to post funny/entertaining pictures and have them viewed by all users. Rori briefly described seeing children in line for the Godzilla movie dressed in dinosaur costumes. Initially, I could not believe that America's children would dare to idolize a figure that represented death for others, until I came across this image. This image represents the way American's have transformed Godzilla. Godzilla is now represented as a hero. He is a figure, who although was initially mutated by nuclear testing by the U.S, ends up combining powers with America's military and helps save the country. Isn't that a little ironic? In addition to it's irony, doesn't this story sound a little too close to other super heroes? Or is it just me?
Although others might disagree, I personally feel that this is yet another way the United States is attempting to justify something that they have done. How might the viewers of Gojira feel about what is going on in this image? If we take the caption into consideration, "My friend's son has real dreams.." we can see that children dream of being Godzilla, similar to the way they would dream about being Superman, or Spiderman. I find this to be quite disturbing. What is even more disturbing to me is that if I had never taken this class, I too might have found this image "cute" without knowing all it represents.
It is crazy to think how light-hearted children's dress-up can easily shift into a atomic bomb nightmare. However, children dressing up as a character that embodies the atomic bomb nightmare equates to this craziness. For me, it seems that America will do anything in its power to cover up its tracks and turn a bad situation into profit, such as Gojira into Godzilla. Now, 60 years after the first release of Gojira, America attempts (yet again) to create profit from tragedy. And sadly, we have dragged the kids into this, creating a vicious cycle of capitalist motives bound by international tragedies.
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