Media History

Some Landmark Films

In Cultural Difference, Media Memories (Hammond) the initial point of the book is establishes the pre and post war (and present) similarities of Japanese presentation - that Japan is essentially perceived similarly as before World War 2, a threat to the Western "order." There seem to be some racial undertones as well, as if to underscore the fact that this perception is primarily due to the fact that the Japanese are "different" from "white" America.

In terms of cultural diffusion to the United States lots of fascinating Japanese themes in movies are directly imported to the US, outside of Godzilla, in films starting in the 1960s as interestingly "Westerns." It seems almost as if Japan 'defeats' the US at macho Western themes, and thus inspires the US to respond with directly influenced counterparts. Many famous examples are "A Fistful of Dollars," the first movie in the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western trilogy, which is actually a scene for scene remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. This film is about a lone Samurai who enters a warring town, solves its conflicts, and basically finishes off the entire town before leaving.

Another later movie called "High Plains Drifter" is very similar in plot structure, but this time uses the classic Japanese revenge motive. The themes from these movies which revitalized the dying "John Wayne"-esque Western genre in the US were due to the concept of the "anti-hero" - a hero whose intentions are not clearly known (as Other), and one who doesn't operate with all good conventions: he kills unhesitatingly, he enforces his own justice, he's out for money. This type of hero America finds strangely alluring because of the structural similarities he shares to an American hero, as we will find in Godzilla.