The Right Is Getting Better At Drama

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Other writing:

• Oscillate Wildly at Wordloaf

It’s a good movie, but…

About once a month, some right-wing dork loses their mind when Tom Morello puts out a video supporting protestors. Just like Paul Ryan, modern conservatives are terrible at detecting artist’s intentions. The flipside is generally a nonstarter—most conservative media is not entertaining because it’s seen as propaganda first. American left-leaning moviegoers do have one blindspot, however: foreign cinema.

Like RRR before it, Godzilla Minus One is an extremely well-made and entertaining movie with incredible action and a reliance on right-wing conservative nationalist politics. RRR gets left-leaning audiences rooting for it’s anti-imperialist message before the ending slips directly into Hindutva propaganda. Godzilla Minus One pulls a similar trick—the bulk of the movie shows how citizens have to band together to save Japan from post-war destruction and also from Godzilla directly. What starts to feel like a feel-good movie for Western audiences hides a pretty distinct right-wing complaint about civilian service in modern, nationalist Japanese politics. But those need some context.

Post WWII, Article 9 was added to Japan’s new constitution, imposed by the United States military under General Douglas MacArthur. Article 9 bans Japan from being able to have an active military. Flat out. So when Godzilla first appears and our mine trawling crew is excited a single Japanese warship is approved to fight the monster, everyone cheers. Then Godzilla fucks it up. That might seem like a demonstration that military powers are useless against this kaiju, but that scene is meant to reveal something else: that a single warship can’t handle Godzilla, and MacArthur’s military holding the rest of the Japanese fleet hostage is the main reason why Godzilla is such a threat.

You might also remember that our civilian mine trawling crew starts their journey by complaining about how dangerous the work is. Their complaint, mostly, boils down to the fact that this sort of work would normally be done by a military, and Japan is now senselessly putting civilians in harm’s way. This sentiment is a constant refrain of LDP (the political party Shinzo Abe belonged to), and is one of their main drivers for trying to negate Article 9 and reinstate a military in Japan.

Then there’s our main character, failed kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima. When Shikishima returns to Tokyo, he’s full of guilt and regret for not carrying out his kamikaze mission and not firing on Godzilla during the first island attack. His neighbor Sumiko mirrors that sentiment, directly blaming the firebombing of Tokyo on Shikishima for not carrying out his mission. As the movie progresses, eventually more characters start to criticize Imperial Japan’s treatment of its troops—suicide missions, lack of proper armaments, and no ejector seats in airplanes. What’s never mentioned, however, is any criticism of the war or its roots. As far as the characters in Godzilla Minus One are concerned, the war wasn’t the problem. The problem was how cheaply the lives of soldiers were treated. In that logic, support for better-armed troops with ejector seats is an affirmation that Japan could have fared better in the war instead of questioning if the country should have gone to war in the first place.

When the plan to defeat Godzilla starts coming together, it seems like it’s a civilian-led effort by engineers looking for a solution that avoids directly fighting Godzilla with military weapons. But that plan is concocted by, you guessed it, a former top military naval engineer (and there are other threads to pull with this sort of nationalist Japanese superiority in the private engineering sector). Even then, the decompression plan doesn’t work. The lovely idea that you can kill Godzilla without weapons? Phooey. The only way to defeat him is to fly a plane full of explosives into his mouth: the military solution. And the catch? The airline engineer Shikishima has tracked down has installed an ejector seat. Shikishima, in defeating Godzilla, has finally been able to assuage his guilt. No, not that guilt over letting men die on the kamikaze base island. The guilt for not completing his kamikaze mission. He now has a loophole, and the movie is telling us one direct answer:

Kamikaze missions are extremely effective and win wars, the only issue is that pilots should have been able to eject.

While Godzilla Minus One is by far the best-made Godzilla movie of all time, I gotta say, it was hard for me to watch. The moment these threads started to unravel, I couldn’t really stomach watching it. Maybe that’s a good thing, that propaganda creates a visceral reaction in me. But maybe, and I wonder this truly, I might be too overtly dialed into subtle international politics for my own good. When is a good movie just a good movie?

Maybe it’s watching a slew of Internet personalities celebrate Shinzo Abe’s death while praising a movie that reinforces his exact political stances that’s giving me pause. After all, I can still enjoy James Woods in Videodrome and Jon Voight in Heat. But those movies lean hard into leftist political structures at their core.

Unfortunately, for me, the problem is always going to be with the message and not necessarily the messenger. Maybe I’ll just stick to Kong: Skull Island and its surface-level anti-war message.

Read

• Flaming Hydra

The cold I had really knocked me on my ass. I only have about 20% vision in my right eye, so reading can be difficult—especially if I’m not at 100% health. This morning I finished catching up on the last few weeks of Flaming Hydra, and it’s really the best version of a modern magazine we could hope for. If you, for some reason, are reading this shitty newsletter, I implore you to subscribe to their work.

Watch

• Mr. and Mrs. Smith at Amazon

When I was sick last week, I watched this entire season in one day. The show is… interesting. Donald Glover made truly incredible television with Atlanta when he allowed himself to lean into comedy and absurdity. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is, more or less, a breakdown of modern love and dating. From a celebrity with well-documented weirdo behavior. Remember how Aziz Ansari had this whole thing he was trying to do about modern dating and we were like “yeah, it’s weird and hard!” and then he gave us examples and we were like “ah, no.” Mr. and Mrs. Smith leans into that same sort of energy, but at the same time, it absolutely sticks the landing. I think the whole series is worth watching, if only for the last 10 minutes or so. Or maybe, I dunno, pick up a book.

Listen

• The Mars Volta (just all of it)

I saw The Mars Volta play on Saturday night, and it was, well, incredible. When At the Drive In broke up, my friends and I were distraught. We’d just found out about this band and their frenetic energy, where would we get our fix? Deloused in the Comatorium dropped, however, and we all lost our minds. And then as the band got bigger and more popular, I struggled to keep up with their output. I liked their rockin’ out moments, and I didn’t really have a taste for the noodling and ambient interludes. Well, that all changed. In prepping for the show, I started working through their past albums, and I gotta say, it all holds up. Like super holds up. In fact, it’s so much better revisiting their entire catalog outside of the hype surrounding them as a new band. So go give The Bedlam In Goliath a spin and see how it treats you. Probably better than you thought.

Consume

• Caesar Salad

When I reformatted this newsletter, I thought it was going to be more about food. I also was a full-time food writer at that time. Being sick on and off for a good 8 weeks has dinged my ability to cook food, so I haven’t really thought too much about this in a while. But I like food, and I like eating food. And I love Caesar salad. It’s a near-perfect flavor profile, even in subpar versions. It’s great with a fried chicken cutlet. It’s great with a grilled chicken thigh. It rules as a side with pizza. Add some kale to up the health. Make your own croutons to give it some heft. I dunno man, Caesar salad. It’s good.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.