After reading the blog assignment, I immediately thought of 1964's Mothra Vs. Godzilla and how it relates to the human monster spawned from capitalism alongside the Japanese cultural monster that is Godzilla.
To begin, this Godzilla movie is the very first one that has a human villain in it, and not just any one human villain, but three that are driven by capitalism and the pursuit of profit with a disregard for human life. I will analyze each of the three characters separately, and how they all fall under the film-wide idea of capitalism.
The first antagonist of the film is Kumayama, an entrepreneur that claims the egg of Mothra in the name of his company, Happy Enterprises. He plans to build a theme park around the egg and make an enormous profit off of it. At first, he seems like a normal greedy character, but the capitalist devil within him comes out when he is visited by Mothra's twin fairies. The twins tell Kumayama that if he does not return the egg, Mothra will destroy Japan. As expected, Mr. Kumayama shows no care and even attempts to kidnap the fairies to add them to his amusement park. However, there is a far worse capitalist demon than Kumayama.
The second, and biggest example of a capitalist born monster, is Kumayama's boss: Mr. Torahata. Mr. Torahata is the CEO of Happy Enterprises and is behind the whole theme park operation. Not only was he there when Kumayama had his encounter with the twin fairies, but he convinces Kumayama to try to kidnap them. Not only that, but Mr. Torahata is so driven to gain a profit that he manipulates Kumayama to invest money into the company (which he loses when Godzilla appears and destroys most of Japan) and uses Kumayamas money to finish payment on the egg. Mr. Torahata gives no care to the fact that Godzilla and Mothra are now attacking Japan.
Towards the end of the movie, there is a great dual fight scene where the movie switches between a fight between Kumayama and Torahata and the main fight between Godzilla and Mothra. The symbolism in this scene is undeniable, and is a clear way of the film stating that the men are monsters spawned from capitalism, and by putting them alongside the Godzilla fight, displays that they are just as horrible as nuclear destruction: their only purpose is to destroy everything and everyone who stands in their way, just like Godzilla and Mothra. At the end of their fight sequence while Torahata is trying to escape, Godzilla destroys the building that they are in, crushing both men to death, a clear symbol that giving these human monsters the price of their carelessness.
The third capitalist human monster is a very minimal character (he is not even given a name), and only serves the purpose of connecting the theme of greed to the birth of Godzilla. In context, he is trying to finish an industrial project (earning him quite a lot of money) by pumping all of the water out of a bay. When all the water is pumped out, Godzilla comes out of the ground, a symbol of the price of a careless man who only seeks profit. Now, because of one monster's greed, another monster will take his place in destroying the world. The only difference is that this human character wants all of the worlds money no matter the expense, where as Godzilla just wants to kill everyone.
In conclusion, these three characters are all capitalist monsters in human form that are placed alongside giant monsters that symbolize the toll of their carelessness and disregard for human life in the pursuit of money.
~Ryan Lantz
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