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• 1 media/ben-kenobi-asset.jpg 2023-03-10T20:38:09-08:00 Them! vs. Godzilla 24 image_header 1358445 2023-03-17T08:37:41-07:00  

  There is no coincidence that similar movies with similar motives were released in the same year. Specifically, Them! was released in the United States in June of 1954, while Godzilla was released in Japan in October of 1954. While both movies were created from the same motive, the Cold War, numerous cultural differences were portrayed in them. The article “Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When Them! Is U.S.” by Chon Norieg claims, “Japanese monster films of the same period likewise have origins in American and Cold War history…Unlike American monsters, Japanese monsters have personalities, legends, and names” (Norieg 67). This is just one aspect of the many cultural dissimilarities shown in both films. Details in movies such as giving a monster a name show the different views of what a main antagonist should look like. This detail reflects the influence of eastern and western culture in the media during this period. Giving a name to a monster, in this case, Godzilla, allows its watchers to potentially feel sympathy for the monster. Additionally, in Godzilla, weapons and brute force seem to not affect the monster, so the question, “What does Godzilla want?” arises; from this, the reader can see how eastern culture contributes to the development and portrayal of the main antagonists of movies. In Them! however, the giant ants were seen as a threat that needed to be killed instantly, so why would there be a need to give the monster a name? There was no second thought as to what the ants’ motives may be. In the United States and western culture, it is prevalent in many movies that the “good guys” or the humans in this case have to be the ones to win in the end. This contributes to the reason why other cultures may see Americans as selfish individuals. Although the influence of nuclear energy had similar effects on eastern and western cultures, their different views of the situation were shown through their media.