Eco-tainment #12: Godzilla vs Hedorah

Everyone is familiar with the character of Godzilla, if mostly through satire and parody at this point. Its story has been told multiple times in dozens of movies-- nuclear testing in the Pacific ocean awakens a gigantic reptilian beast that proceeds to destroy Tokyo and other cities and later becomes involved in fights with other monsters. It seems a rather odd vehicle for an environmental message, but therein lies a tale.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Japan quickly rebuilt its economy after it was destroyed during the Second World War, eventually becoming the second-largest economy in the world. This economic growth occurred at breakneck speed, and naturally, there were consequences. The city of Yokkaichi became exposed to toxic levels of sulfur oxide, resulting in thousands of people becoming ill. This was one of many incidents that fed into the general growing trend of environmental awareness in the 1960s, and ultimately inspired Godzilla vs Hedorah.
The titular Hedorah is an alien micro-organism transported to earth on a meteorite, which then grows into a colossal sludge-like monster upon being exposed to the polluted air and water of Earth. By the climax of the film it has become a skyscraper-sized mound of toxic ooze and is more than capable of putting up a fight against Godzilla, something few other monsters in the entire series accomplish.
The fear that polluting the earth's ecosystems will create monsters--whether literal or metaphorical--is a pervasive one in environmental fiction. Indeed, it seems to be common practice in such stories to do away with the complexities of real environmentalism and reduce the antagonists to one-dimensional "monsters" whose sole reason for being is to pollute the earth. Obviously, including such complex aspects in the movie would have made it far less enjoyable.
This, in turn, brings up an important point about what using monsters like Godzilla and Hedorah to represent real-life problems says about us psychologically: We want monsters to be real, so our problems will have an obvious source.


Movies like Godzilla vs Hedorah may be entertaining, but real-world issues are reduced to the complexity--and subtlety-- of rubber-suit monsters stomping on miniature sets.