I’m pretty sure myself that it’s a bit strange. After all, I’m in my mid-sixties, I’m fairly
well educated and well read, and I also enjoy movies of great cultural and
historical value, movies in which the only monster is the human condition
itself. But those monster movies speak
to me, even those featuring lesser monsters, like “Relic,” “Lake Placid,” or “Alien.” Usually I don’t give it much thought.
Well, yesterday the subject came up and I did give it some
thought. It came up as a bemused “why?” The answer came to me quickly.
As a boy, I was on the fearful side. Things were tough in those long ago days, we
children were subject to corporal punishment on all sides, there was more
illness and worse illnesses, we children fought among ourselves frequently, even
the New York traffic itself carried us away in large numbers. One of the things that I was afraid of was
adults. Not only were they comparatively
big and strong, they were also unpredictable and full of potential
violence.
At the age of three or four I was introduced to the library,
and I took to it immediately. I was
thrilled to discover the books about dinosaurs, I loved those huge, terrible
creatures. Here was an entire class of
animal that was much, much bigger and stronger than mere adults, and even more
unknowably strange than the adults.
I began to draw dinosaurs myself, not well but with
enthusiasm. Many of the resulting tableaus
included people, stick figures really, running away from dinosaurs in
fear. The dinosaurs were standing in for
adults, of course, and the people in the drawings were adults standing in for
children. The dinosaurs were acting in
my stead and turning the tables on those real-life frightening creatures.
All of this came back to me in a rush as I considered the
question yesterday. I think that I was
six when I first saw “King Kong” on the Million Dollar Movie, that first week
alone I watched it all the way through six or seven times. I found it to be a well-made Hollywood movie
that brought my old drawings to life in many ways. There were dinosaurs, plus the mighty Kong,
chasing down adults with all of the terrible energy that I had imagined, and
the adults were even more afraid than I could ever have hoped.
There were others, “1,000,000 B.C.,” “The Lost World,” “Mighty
Joe Young,” but “King Kong” was by far the best, and the most suitable for my
psychological purposes. Until “Godzilla”
that is.
“Godzilla” raised the bar considerably on size, strength and
terribleness, and in “Godzilla” even larger crowds of adults are even more
afraid. They scrambled around screaming,
trying to save themselves. The version
that I saw was good enough for me at the time, although later I realized that
there was an original version out there somewhere.
The original is a stunning artistic success. The first “Godzilla” was a really good movie,
a serious artistic effort with real themes and great human characters. Not that Raymond Burr crap, amateurishly pasted
together to please American audiences, but the original Japanese version. Get ahold of it if you can.
Around this time I began to have recurring nightmares about
King Kong and Godzilla, in which they took the place of adults, tormenting me
and chasing me around. I was about
nine-years-old. I had these dreams well
into adulthood, with the imagery shifting appropriately.
There’s a story that I like, and that I have told herein
before, about Walter Koenig, “Star Trek’s” Chekov. He was interviewed by TV Guide and it turned
out that he is a big time toy collector.
The interviewer asked him if he was trying to recreate his
childhood. “No,” he said, “it’s more
that I am trying to recreate my escape from my childhood.” He’d had a tough time of it too, and his toys
were a comfort to him.
In that same way, Godzilla in particular, and giant monsters
in general, are still a comfort to me.
So, one mystery solved! What’s
next on the agenda!
(I don't remember this last part myself, but it's nice to know that it was captured for posterity.)
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