The “Science” of Godzilla in Science
Recently, I was struck to see in the journal Science a weird piece about, of all things, Godzilla. Let’s clarify: I’m not a snob thinking that there is no place for Godzilla in a top academic journal. Quite the contrary: the more Godzillas, the better. The weirdness of this article is of another sort: instead of honestly presenting itself for what it is — an impressionistic critical essay — this piece tries to trick readers into believing that it is “science”. It contains references, it uses academic jargon, it calculates a “coefficient of determination” (more on this later), and, after all, it is published in a journal with the word “science” in its title. Hopefully, nothing of this has mislead the readers, but, just in case, here is a brief unmasking.
This essay is a reflection on the Godzilla franchise, inspired by the new movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters. The essay aims to explain an interesting pattern: from the earliest film, made in 1954, till today Godzilla was becoming bigger and bigger. The authors illustrate this with a pretty image (Figure 1) and proclaim that “the creature’s recent morphological change has been dramatic.”
So far, so good. For the record, this isn’t a new finding, since the Web is flooded with images like these, and there is even a YouTube video from 2018, with more than 21 million views, showing exactly this growth. None of these sources are cited. (By the way, I think citations are not necessary in this essay at all, but since the authors already started using references, why not cite the only thing that actually needs to be cited or at least clearly mentioned?)
But now, the most interesting question: why? Why was Godzilla growing? With laudable scrupulousness, the authors note:
Godzilla has doubled in size since 1954. This rate of increase far exceeds that of ceratosaurids during the Jurassic, which was exceptional. The rate of change rules out genetic drift as the primary cause. It is more consistent with strong natural selection.
This is surprising already. Why would anyone speak about “genetic drift” (note: not cultural — genetic!) of a fictional character? It makes as much sense as the “neutral molecular evolution of Pokémons”. Anyway, here is authors’ explanation of this “dramatic morphological change”:
we suggest that Godzilla is evolving in response to a spike in humanity’s collective anxiety. Whether reacting to geopolitical instability, a perceived threat from terrorists, or simply fear of “the other,” many democracies are electing nationalist leaders, strengthening borders, and bolstering their military presence around the world.
In other words, Godzilla grows because our troubles grow. The world goes bonkers, and Godzilla is a reflection of that. Such “reflectionist” interpretations have a long history, and to support this particular interpretation the authors throw a grain of “science” into the stew:
If U.S. military spending is used as a proxy for humanity’s collective anxieties, it is perhaps unsurprising to see that there is a positive and robust correlation between the growth of Godzilla and that of the American military [coefficient of determination (r^2) = 0.74].
Really? Are we really going to do this, Science? A correlation. A positive and robust one. No words, just this link.
But, frankly, this isn’t just about a spurious correlation. This explanation is unlikely overall — as it is grounded on a… metaphor. To strengthen the “collective anxiety” argument, the authors mention that the “franchise began in direct response to “Castle Bravo,” a U.S. thermonuclear weapon test”. Godzilla as a child of a disaster, almost. And so, its growth reflects the growth of further disasters. A conclusion? “The monster is thus more than a metaphor; it is a fable with a lesson for our times.”
Metaphors (or fables), however, can easily be replaced with other metaphors. Take King Kong. No, he wasn’t a child of a nuclear weapon testing (though, you never know…). If anything, he is a metaphor of the virgin nature, harassed by the human invaders. The territory of the untouched nature was shrinking over the years; so, should King Kong be decreasing in size?
In fact, the opposite was happening (Figure 2). Like Godzilla, King Kong kept growing. (One film that disrupts the linear pattern of growth is the 1962 movie King Kong vs. Godzilla, but there is a good explanation for this outlier: the ape’s size was adjusted to Godzilla’s size — to make their competition less of a joke.)
If the “collective anxiety” doesn’t work as an explanation, are there any other explanations? Personally, I think that another — simpler and less dramatic — hypothesis is more likely. More likely because it concerns not a particular film but a general pattern of the cultural evolution of art.
This hypothesis has to do with a common, though not very well studied, phenomenon of the intensification of artistic stimuli over time. Mnay artistic “devices” — techniques of manipulating pleasant emotions in the audience — tend to be used in more intense ways during their evolution. Godzilla is a device, similarly to King Kong or any other monster in the kaiju genre featuring giant monsters: somehow, the size on its own may be enough to evoke some pleasant fear in us. (Which, by the way, makes sense in the perspective of evolutionary psychology: we better be afraid of large powerful creatures if we want to to survive.)
In art history, there are many more examples of stimuli intensification. Cinema history: film shots were becoming shorter — to better control attention. Music history: instruments (say, violins) evolved to become louder. Toys and cartoon characters seem to be obtaining more neotenic — more baby-like (and thus more “cute”)— appearances.
After all, Godzilla may actually be “a fable with a lesson for our times”, but the lesson probably is completely different. Instead of an interesting, but anecdotal story about our “collective anxiety”, it may vividly exemplify a general principle of how our shared psychological preferences silently drive cultural evolution.
