552- Oh No! There Goes Tokyo Go Go – Godzilla! (Free)

“With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound, he pulls the spitting high tension wires down.” In 1977 the band Blue Öyster Cult released the song Godzilla. In 2019 a cover of the song was included in the non-stop Godzilla franchise, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters”. Eminem also released a sweet Godzilla tune with a run time of 3:30 in 2020, charting world-wide. For those who cannot remember, the original rock song “Godzilla”, it was a massive stadium-rock-level hit which carried a song titled “Nosferatu” on the B-side of the record. It is safe to say that by 1977 very few minds in this world were “free” of the delivery mechanism that is Godzilla. The imaginary creature first entered public consciousness in 1954 via Toho Co., Ltd. who released 33 Godzilla films. The franchise is still going strong to this day, to include many television shows and cameos, comic books, merchandise, video games and books. The lyrics from 1977 that I used in the title of this episode, and opening text, come as close as anything to explaining why this radio-active-monster is so firmly fixed in the world mind. “History shows again and again, how nature points out the folly of men.” But, in actuality, there is a core reason, among many reasons, for the ongoing production of Godzilla content. In a word, that reason is programming. In two words – social engineering… with a steroidal boost due to popularity and iconic standing on the world stage. And to be clear, this is in no way peculiar to the Godzilla franchise. This is true of entertainment as a whole. One could easily argue that the core reason for all entertainment, at this point, is to manipulate culture world-wide. One proof of this is the gender and race games currently being played with some of the most loved TV and film franchises, regardless of audience and income loss. This is about what can be “normalized” into culture in a world where culture is increasingly a product of entertainment, and in some countries, like the US, culture has been based on music, TV and film, for a very long time. Young minds currently exposed to entertainment delivered programming will look back with nostalgia as adults, at which point the conscious, and subconscious programming will be firmly embedded in culture. Questions: Has Godzilla had any effect on how your family thinks about and considers dinosaurs, nuclear radiation, space and the Big Bang “theory”? How about if you add Godzilla to every TV show and film they have ever “experienced”? Has it then played a major role in how your family thinks about the world, to include what you accept as real – or possible? “Oh no, there goes Chernobyl, Go, Go Godzilla, yeah.”