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John Stewart
Prof. Shoemaker
Monsters and Heroes
9/28/2015
Fandom Paper
In a dim room somewhere in American suburbia, sometime in the 1990s, a fan was born. One child, one bucket of popcorn, and one old electronic television glowed and flickered one thing twenty-four-seven: It’s big, it’s huge, and it’s coming to terrorize you and your whole family—made from the radioactive wastes of the Bikini Atoll experiments, it’s GODZILLA! ‘Again!’ that child cried, ‘But we just finished it.’ his father replies. ‘I know, but did you see that part where he stomped that building and breathed fire on that tank and…and…and…’ sighing to himself, the father just rewinds the VCR, ‘Perhaps we should watch something else…’
When I was a young child, my father and I would watch old black and white Godzilla films and Three Musketeer films on an old electronic television. Like all three to five year old boys, I found dinosaurs fascinating—Godzilla, by extension, was a giant dinosaur that breathed fire and in the American versions, was friendly with the military, if not at least beneficial to the military (1st few Godzillas excluding; as a child, I loved the Godzilla versus series, where Godzilla and the military often co-existed to take down another monster). In my child mind, it was dinosaurs + tanks = awesome! Much the same with the Three Musketeers: Less dinosaurs, more horses. Less tanks, more swords and muskets. The spectacle of it was more than enough for younger me to force my father to rewind the tapes for another marathon or ten. As I got older, my love for Godzilla and the Three Musketeers transferred to Star Wars, and with the same zeal I did as a child, as an adult I am very passionate about Star Wars. But I do not believe it was spectacle that drove my childhood obsession with Godzilla and the Three Musketeers, nor was it spectacle for my adult passion of Star Wars: it was the dynamic present in all three mediums that showed the worst that could happen to humanity and the best humanity could be.
Recalling back, I look at Godzilla with a warm and fuzzy nostalgia—it truly was my first pop culture experience. Outside of the Dinos + Tanks linkage that child me loved, I think it is easy to see why younger my loved Godzilla. At ages three to six I did not understand the nuclear war allegory that Godzilla represented. However, I did in some way understand the power of Godzilla. He did not have to listen to anyone, he could do what he wanted, and everyone liked him (At least, in the Versus series). Best of all, he did not have to pick up after himself! And if anyone tried to force him to do so—BOOM!—fire breath. While my younger self did not understand what Godzilla really was, he did understand the power of Godzilla and what that power could do. Fortunately, my father had the wisdom to break up our Godzilla marathons with a few movies on the Three Musketeers, before my three to six year old self could become a power seeking monster.
‘Perhaps we should watch something else…’ is what my dad would say whenever he felt it was time to switch movies. Perhaps he sensed the impending monster building inside of me, or perhaps after 9-10 hours straight of Godzilla, he wanted a different movie—Whatever the reason, I can not say. What I can say is that even at a young age, at some level, I understood what the three musketeers were: Paragons. When I was a child I remember watching the Three Musketeers and unlike Godzilla were I was enthralled by power and spectacle, the Three Musketeers held me in awe. Not only were all of their stunts humanly feasible (try as I might, child me could not produce atomic fire breath), but against all odds, even when it did not make sense for them to do so, the Three Musketeers always choose the honorable path. All for one and one for all wasn’t just there victory cry, but an ideology that permeated throughout the show: they never betrayed each other, they always stuck together, and they always conducted themselves to their utmost. Compared to the rest of the world (theirs and ours), the Three Musketeers stood like angels with golden halos—at least, in my childhood mind. This ideology was one that I could not get enough of; and, admittedly, one that I held other Heroes to even today.
As I have gotten older, I have asked all Heroes this question: Are you as selfless and noble as the Three Musketeers? To all monsters, I have asked this question: Are you as powerful as Godzilla. To any that answer yes, my interest is immediately peeked. To that extent, the duality posed by Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader (especially in Return of the Jedi) is something that brings out childhood joy in me to this day.
On the surface, the parallels between the Three Musketeers and Luke Skywalker are obvious: Both wield sabers (of sorts), both are respected and well known in their world and ours, and both strive for virtue. However, the comparisons end there. Once virtue is involved, the differences are obvious: The Three Musketeers are paragons, and henceforth, always the