“Godzilla: Minus One” explores the horror of a government that has lost its moral compass, where the suffering of its people is of no concern.
Shall we discuss, then, the complicated lesson that Japan learned that we did not?
Call it, perhaps, the consequences of history being written by the victors, but damn… I saw in Godzilla Minus One a moral that we, as Americans, need to learn about relying on our government to give a shit about us and about the necessity of taking care of each other.
Godzilla Minus One begins its genuinely important work by reminding us that the actions of governments seldom echo the mindset of its people.
Our hero, Shikishima, is dealing with the complicated notion of being a devout patriot dealt the unfortunate task of blindly dying for a government perfectly content to send him on a suicide mission based on little more than the ideology of nationalism-sound familiar?
Shikishima has the audacity to live because, you know, living is great? But also because his parents loved him and asked him to live. His return home is greeted with contempt.
Wisely, Godzilla Minus One doesn’t condemn the citizens who treat Shikishima with unwarranted anger; it reminds us that the Japanese government has TOLD these same citizens that kamikaze pilots who failed to execute their missions are responsible for the suffering the people are going through.
It is horrifying to think that American citizens cannot see these same bits of propaganda being played, note for note, on them.
Do not blame the government that has failed you, over and over again. Blame your neighbor and call ICE. Be ready to fully die for the American Dream; sure, you won’t see it, and sure, it will kill you, but won’t the sacrifice taste so sweet?
Where Godzilla Minus One diverges—and where we should and probably won’t take the message—is in the idea that community means redemption.
In the end, it is not Shakishima’s willingness to die but his hope for the future and his eagerness to live that saves the day.
We are allowed to want to live. We are allowed to want more than to be cannon fodder for a gaping maw of a government that doesn’t love us, that doesn’t care for us. We are allowed to want happiness and hope.
When Shikishima initially returns home after failing to execute a kamikaze mission, he is met by Sumiko, who blames the death of her children on him and other men who failed their kamikaze missions—because a lazy and indifferent government failed to take any kind of responsibility for their actions and instead transferred the onus onto perfectly normal humans who had perfectly normal fears.
However, after years of living as neighbors, Sumiko greets Shikishima’s return with tears again—this time with tears of relief that someone she cares about has returned.
The lesson here is that human beings are more than what they represent to their governments, despite the willingness of a government to turn citizens against each other instead of shouldering any kind of blame.
And what does this mean to us?
Consider the way that 45 is currently telling us that DEI initiatives are to blame for our problems. Or the fact that we are channeling funds into letting ICE raid our friends, our neighbors, our coworkers, the strangers who are just trying to live in peace instead of, say, funding libraries or fucking Sesame Street.
It is easier, of course, to blame a face that we know, a recognizable and palatable entity, than acknowledging that our own government doesn’t truly give a shit about us and that to them, we are simply pawns.
Finally, Godzilla Minus One recognizes the fact that a functioning society, one worth preserving, doesn’t decide and determine that some of its citizens are disposable in the name of saving the rest.
The objective of the delegation sent to defeat Godzilla is to suffer no casualties; no one is treated as extraneous.
We, as Americans, are currently at a truly horrifying fork in the road. Where we determine who we consider worth saving, worth protecting, worth considering fucking human. Our government is telling us that some human lives have more value than others. And we, as citizens, have the chance to say “NO,” to do as the coalition in Godzilla Minus One does and say that no human life is disposable.
It is perhaps incendiary and revolutionary to take it by the nose and say head-on that the government doesn’t truly give a shit about its people as actual, living people but only as conceptual voters and fuel for the war machine. But Godzilla Minus One takes that precise controversial take.
And maybe it’s time that we, as Americans, learn that same lesson.
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