Abstract
Whereas Godzilla (1954) made by Toho, one of the biggest Japanese studios, is most discussed by academic researchers who see this film as a significant sci-fi monster genre film in the post-war cinema, the twenty-eight Godzilla franchise films made in the past sixty years still have been remained under-researched by academic film scholars in relation to the gender implications of monsters. In particular, Japan has been the first and only country which was attacked by the American nuclear bombs and consequently lost in the Second World War and then rapidly rose from the war since 1950s as one of the world’s largest economies, the Godzilla monster is identified as the most significant national icon in Japan. Since the following franchise films develop a rather different formulaic narrative in which Godzilla fights repeatedly with a number of monsters rather than acts alone to destroy the urban landscape as shown in Godzilla (1954), this paper therefore will use both the psychoanalytic feminist and intersectional approaches wherein gender and national identity are understood to be formed by universal notions of nationalism and patriarchy to explore the gender significance of the Godzilla monster in relation to hypermasculinity and fatherhood which both construct the post-war Japanese national identity in Son of Godzilla (1967), Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla (1994) Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995).
Author Information
Kuo Wei Lan, I-Shou University, Taiwan
Paper Information
Conference: PCAH2023
Stream: Media
This paper is part of the PCAH2023 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Lan K. (2023) Toho’s Uncanny Monster: Re-imaging Japanese Postwar National Identity Through the Godzilla Franchise Films ISSN: 2758-0970 The Paris Conference on Arts & Humanities 2023 Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0970.2023.16
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0970.2023.16
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