Framing the Monster: Into the Body

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Framing the Monster: Into the Body

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Abstract

In the current trends in popular cinema there are a lot of styles that overlap and influence each other; as do genres. New forms of aesthetic realism are applied to older genres. For example, the giant monster movie is currently accompanied by a very documentary- and

cinema vérité-like style: found-footage. As the analyses of monster politics have, arguably,

permitted certain social connotations about the times they were made in, this thesis is set up to demonstrate how this new style has the ability to change monster movie discourse. This thesis will try to shed light on this seemingly paradoxical relationship between the home-video consumerist style of found-footage and the gigantic scale of the giant monsters. For why film this type of spectacle less clearly and from one perspective only? The main question that will be explored is: How does this found-footage aesthetic behave in the spectacle of the giant monster movie and how does it affect giant monster movie discourse? This thesis is concerned with the historical movement of traditional interpretations of the monster genre into their contemporary execution, and with the giant monsters perceived as external to the human condition, to the monsters experienced as internal to the human condition.

Keywords:

Giant monster movie genre, monster discourse, found-footage, aesthetics of proximity, the diegetic cameraman

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Introduction

[T]he more powerful and unconstrained a society's state apparatus, the more that society's mythical beings will possess unconstrained power.

(Albert Bergesen 1992, 210) There is not much that has not been said about giant monsters in the movies. What for

example a Godzilla or a King Kong may represent, in what decade they came to life and why, are questions that many academics before me have tried to answer in various fields. For example, in the abovementioned 'proposition', Albert Bergesen states that the force of (national) monsters is dependent on the status quo of the society the monsters are allowed to exist in (1992, 208-211). Working in a more socio-anthropological field, Bergesen proposes that giant monsters can be absolutely discursive in nature and therefore say something about society and its structure. Although I will walk a similar path in this thesis, delving more deeply into similar hypotheses about monsters and their relation to society, my research will revolve more around a change in the contemporary stylistic climate and what a change in aesthetic can uncover in the monster’s representation.

We now live in a time wherein the gritty and the raw of the cinematic experience are re-explored in the form of the found-footage fiction film (a new cinema vérité-like aesthetic), which is now immensely popular.1_{Films that are frequently named in this trend are The Blair} Witch Project (1999), REC (2007), Cloverfield (2008), Paranormal Activity (2007) and, to a

maybe lesser-known extent, Troll Hunter (2010). Its fake (mock) documentary-like aesthetic is adapted to fit any genre that serves its immersive purpose and in the past fifteen years it has mainly attached itself to the horror genre. It eventually found its way into the giant monster

movie genre, which, in my opinion, is a conspicuous development. For, why do filmmakers

apply this lacking and cheap-looking aesthetic to a genre that mostly relies on spectacle and thrills?

Nowadays, the giant beasts, like a Godzilla, can be transferred unto an amateur framing of events that looks as if we ourselves could have filmed it on the streets and not in a 1 Box Office numbers prove the financial success of such films; The Blair Witch Project generated a $248 million profit on a mere $60.000 budget; Paranormal Activity generated a $193 million profit on a $15.000 budget;

Cloverfield cost $25 million and made approximately $170 million; and even the Spanish REC made

approximately $40 million world-wide on $1.5 million budget. Relatively, all films are to be considered as part of the most lucrative productions in cinema (numbers derived from: www.boxofficemojo.com).

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studio. In fact, it seems to go hand in hand with the smartphone and Youtube trends, wherein the personal lives and personal views of non-professional filmmakers (or rather users) have gained massive appeal in the form of short, low-quality, and fragmented video’s.2_The

question that drove me to write about the subject of giant monster movies came from this seemingly paradoxical relationship between a minimalistic style and the gigantic scale of the giant monsters. Indeed, one may wonder: should the giant monster movie genre not be dependent on elaborate establishing shots and multiple perspectives, simply because of the grandeur of its creatures? Then, why film it less clearly and from one perspective only?

It is found-footage that visually transformed the monster movie genre, but, more importantly, it seems to have transformed certain generic monster movie tropes and discourses as well; its influence looks to have spread unto the entire genre and the giant monster seems to do something else than before. Therefore, what I wish to know is what this element of found-footage does to the genre. The main question this thesis will be concerned with is: How does this found-footage aesthetic behave in the spectacle of the giant monster movie and how does it affect giant monster movie discourse? Why does found-footage seem to work so well together with monsters? In order to answer these questions, three elements will be discussed prominently: monster movie history, the generic monster movie tropes, and the found-footage aesthetic in the monster movie.

Positioning the field: Working with Monsters

Are these films ‘creature features’ (as Jaws (1975), or Rogue (2007)), or simply ‘monster’ films? Steve Neale, author of Genre and Hollywood, argues that defining what genre3_{is, is as}

difficult as defining a specific genre (Neale 2000, 13-17). According to him, it is all about isolating the genre specific tropes, traits, conventions, patterns, iconography, and mood (or affective quality). He deems it necessary to subdivide the genre specific tropes into that of the aesthetic (or visual style), the narrative, and inevitably, as proposed in his book, some sort of 2 The Internet is one of the foremost identity-shaping platforms. It contributes to a trend to a continuous personal proliferation exchange, where identities (constructions of oneself) are presented and masked by virtual constructions of the self-image. (Michele Ford 2002, 102 – 104) These constructions are normally exposed on sites like Youtube and are grounded in contemporary everyday reality; being of lesser quality, possessing narcissistic tendencies (Salvato 2009, 68-69).

3 "'Genre' is a French word meaning 'type' or 'kind'. As we shall see, it has occupied an important place in the study of the cinema for over thirty years, and is normally exemplified [...] by the western, the gangster film, the musical, the horror film, melodrama, comedy and the like. On occasion, the term 'sub-genre has also been used, generically to refer to specific traditions or groupings within these genres (as in the romantic comedy', 'slapstick comedy', 'the gothic horror film and so on). And sometimes the word the term 'cycle' is used as well, usually to refer to groups of films made within a specific and limited time-span, and founded, for the most part, on the characteristics of individual commercial successes..." (Neale 9).

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inter-textual relay.4_{In defining a new genre, as for example the found-footage giant monster}

movie, a few problems arise almost instantly. One is that there is no direct precedent: there are only conventions that are similar and styles that are (re-)used or borrowed from earlier films. Secondly, giant monsters appear in all sorts of genre films: they can be found in horror, thriller, comedy, disaster, detective/whodunit, action, or drama films. Thirdly, the same goes for found-footage films; this style and premise is already applied to romance, comedy, thriller, paranormal horror, the super-hero genre, and action/adventure films. If these genres transgress and overlap in such an extent, a method is needed, to pinpoint the specifics in style and narrative that conflates all of these generic qualities into one single set of traits. I will build on Neale's explorations in genre theory to try and specify the giant monster movie genre. Monsters live in the world of horror, and it is in this genre my research begins.

Both Rick Worland (author of The Horror Film: An Introduction) and David J. Skal (The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror) have already proposed templates for understanding the development of horror (and its monsters) chronologically, with the former focusing on the horror genre and its related theories, and the latter on iconic movie monsters and why they came to life (Skal 1993; Worland 2007). Skal's historical overview actually points to the discourses that hide within the monsters, typifying them into various social designations throughout the 19th and 20th century and, in so doing, he attempts to reveal what monsters can represent socially. Worland on the other hand lays more emphasis on why audiences are attracted to horror, or disorder in general. Both of these authors’ theories and historical outlines are more or less coined in the Paul Wells book The Horror Genre: From

Beelzebub to Blair Witch, wherein both monster movie history - with its related genres, and

theories on human misconduct that can lead to horror (images of abject5_{) and its implication}

in the horror film - are put in theoretical perspective (Wells 2000). Wells makes clear that, whoever has written about horror (and monsters), generally ends up making an argument for its strong radical attitude toward society, and its norms, and that it attempts to reveal certain unspoken truths about human nature, or national institutions (2000, 22-26). When writing on movie monsters, and especially giant ones, the history of its various manifestations in cinema, and all that they imply, can reveal a lot about the movement this genre is making and why it does so. In order to pinpoint this change I will focus on the generic tropes of the monsters 4 The publicity, promotion and reception of Hollywood films, as well as their connection to pre-existing texts and conventions (Neale 42-44).

5 Abject theory is a psychoanalytical idea that Julia Kristeva brought forward in order to explain and define what people may find horrific in different cultures. Abject are those things that disturb our identities, codes of conduct and systems; it can also be found more viscerally in our bodily wastes (urine, vomit, deformities). (Creed 1993, 8-15) Horror symbolism is clarified by this theory.

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throughout monster movie history. I will make use of Neale’s genre theory mainly, to try and distill monster movie traits from the abovementioned sources, in order to give ground to the found-footage aesthetic in this genre.

Due to this relatively new trend of found-footage in contemporary cinema the stuff of dreams may have manifested itself more ‘realistic’, and personal, than before and (again) markets itself as such (Harris 2001, 81-84). According to Martin Harris, who mainly

discusses the nature and inter-textual relay of the found-footage aesthetic in the 2001 article “The 'Witchcraft' of Media Manipulation: 'Pamela' and 'The Blair Witch Project”, personal identification will reach an ultimate form in this trend (2001, 76-79). This development may have to do with the viewer actually becoming a simulated witness to the event, and not a spectator, because of the character-cameraman (North 2010, 88-89; Harris 2001, 92-94; Wells 2000, 102); a type of person that is actually inside the diegetic action and someone who is very much vulnerable to the same ordeals of the characters he films. It is because of this aesthetic that the tendencies between content and form, fiction and reality (documentary), fact and truth, have again become ambiguous and more or less transient. In the 2010 article “Evidence of Things Not Quite Seen: Cloverfield's Obstructed Spectacle” Daniel North, one of the few writers who wrote about found-footage in the monster movie, already found a significant difference between the traditional disaster/monster movies and the contemporary found-footage version, observing that: "[t]raditional monster movies involve a search for a magical talisman that will strike at the symbolic invader's Achilles heel: a silver bullet for a werewolf, simple bacteria for the hyper-advanced Martians of War of the Worlds, a computer virus for the alien invaders of the Independence Day," (2010, 90) and that in the found-footage monster movies, or movies that draw from this aesthetic, the monsters are never defeated (e.g. as in Cloverfield, Troll Hunter, Super 8 (2011), Monsters (2010), and Godzilla (2014)). In the other more ‘traditional’ contemporary monster movies, however, there

commonly is an "Achilles heel" (e.g. Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro, 2013) and The Host (Joon-ho Bong, 2006). An argument that can be made, is that the found-footage premise may draw most of its characteristics from traditional horror films wherein the main characters are either to be found dead, or have to live on in a continuous dread of the possible return of that which haunted them (Wells 2000, 20). Either way, the discussions that found-footage films arouse mostly, seem to be about the addictive quality the found-footage premise generates in its audience (regard the box-office numbers in the footnote).1

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In the articles from both North and Harris it becomes clear that we are dealing with cognitive strategies - intentionally applied by the filmmakers6_{- that concern cinematic tactics}

of a continuous non-revelatory teasing, while making it all 'feel' personal. Such notions are embedded in the idea that not completely showing the monster, or threat, while focalizing around the-point-of-view-cinematography of the camera (as a witness (-character) to the unfolding events) can create a desire to know the full story. It can, therefore, look like an extensive teaser that never satisfies entirely and may consequently intrigue its viewer, who inevitably has to become a willing and active participant in the film's text (Harris 78; North 81-84). What I would like to contribute to these observations of this currently active popular aesthetic, is a specific comparative analysis of the most prominent found-footage monster movies today, that may tell us more about what happens if something larger-than-life, or mythical, is compressed into a more home-made consumerist perspective.

Therefore, in the first chapter of this thesis, monster semantics will be put into

perspective (where does the giant monster come from and what can it signify?). Herein, I will try to demonstrate that the social changes societies undergo, with their anxieties and morals, can reveal something about the nature of the monsters: the way they behave and what they look like. Through Neale’s methodology and the histories of Wells, Worland, Skal and others, I will try to clarify what elements could be considered as symptomatic to the giant creatures of the giant monster movies; what they represent socially, how they are

commoditized culturally, and how these beings are framed aesthetically. The ‘giant’ monster films that will be scrutinized mainly under these conditions are Them! and Gojira, because both of these films stem from the 1950’s atomic age that, as I will try to demonstrate, epitomized something essential about the giant monster movie representations in two different continents (the U.S. and Japan respectively). It is through the conclusions drawn from this history, and the two films, that we may come to a better understanding of the discursive nature of giant monsters - and the cinematic execution (stylistically) of the

contemporary monster movies - that possibly determines the way we have to read its politics. In the second chapter the addition of found-footage will be analyzed through four films mainly: Cloverfield, Troll Hunter, Monsters and, as an “Achilles heel” in this trend,

Pacific Rim. I will analyze certain distinctive ways in which the found-footage aesthetic

behaves within the giant monster movie (through which stylistic choices the images are 6 In the Harris and North articles the filmmakers’ interviews and commentaries are addressed frequently to validate the arguments they make on the realistic aesthetic found-footage may have (see Harris 2001; North 2010). Also, in the case of Cloverfield, director Matt Reeves confirms that they intentionally attempted to recreate amateurish hand-held footage as well as possible, to retain the found-footage premise (15:15).

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selected, framed, and imposed on us) and work towards an idea of what each of these films may imply about monster movie politics. I will conclude by making a point about the recently released Godzilla (2014), as a film that bears interesting resemblance to both tradition (as we may have found in Gojira and Them!) and the new found-footage trend (as grounded in films as The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield). Because everything that has been written about this new aesthetic is rather preliminary and still very speculative, I will try to expand the scopes of the authors, who helped build my argument, by defining this aesthetic more specifically. Then, it might be demonstrable, that its cognitive strategies may not only be apparent in that of the found-footage features themselves, but that they may also be also very much present in monster films that are not labeled as 'found-footage', yet seem to use some of its essential characteristics to arrive at a more immersive experience of the text nonetheless.7

In the third chapter, I will recap the preliminary conclusions drawn from the analyzed films and the history of the monster. I will try to argue that the politics of the giant movie monsters may have moved away from that of the collective, and into that of the experience of the individual.

Having put this aesthetic in perspective, and building on the conclusions drawn for the determined genre tropes in the first chapter, I will try to demonstrate why it has value to analyze monster movie constructs. In light of Albert Bergesen’s sociological argument on the giant monster and the status quo of society, this thesis is set up to make an argument for possibly considering the giant monster, and the ways in which it is cinematically presented (through found-footage), as not merely a constitution within film genres, but as a human condition in which audiences might find themselves represented, or at least in the way they participate in the societies they now live in. In this tense, Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, authors of Camera Politica on political discourse and ideology in film, proffer that, "personal identification with representations of public order creates the psychological disposition for inducement into voluntary participation in a system of exploitation and domination" (1988, 1). Throughout their book and film analyses they try to make clear why certain films gain mass appeal, and argue that they not only reflect, but also project, the way people, or

institutions, should deal with their conditions, but also how to give shape to collective ideals (codes of conduct, morals, etcetera) (1988, 13-14).

Therefore the question I would like to end with is how a found-footage giant monster movie can model a human condition at work in society; a condition that concerns a ‘personal 7 A strong example is Monsters, which could be categorized as a DSRL giant monster movie, with ‘DSLR’ saying nothing more than digital independent, semi-pro, or amateur, filmmaking.

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identification’ and engagement with a fictional representation of larger-than-life entities. Through ‘the monsters’, as Paul Wells argues, we come to implicit, or an affective

understanding of ourselves and the world (2000, 25). As giant monster films of the 1950's may indeed be about ideas and ideology, as will become clear in the first chapter, they are still more concerned with the collective good and less with the visceral, more 'mundane', experience of what character ordeals would be like (as an empathetic witness to the fact). Ryan and Kellner, as mentioned above, argued that with the power of cinema there is this ‘personal identification with representations’ at stake, that makes for a stronger ‘voluntary participation in a system […] of domination’ (1988, 1). I would like to contribute to this argument, by proposing that, perhaps, this is even more so the case with the contemporary found-footage fiction film, and especially with the giant monster movie which is can be so overladen with cultural meaning, potentially generating divine, or at least mythical,

connotations. On a general note, and as a contribution to future research, this thesis will try to demonstrate how aesthetics can change perspectives on existing tropes and why, maybe, they so closely resemble a certain demand and condition the contemporary audiences have. Are we what we eat? Have we, ourselves, become found-footage? What could be hidden, or overly present, in this aesthetic that may indicate something about who we are, right now?

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1 A Taxonomy of Traits: Prefiguring giant monster movie tropes

We conceive of the relationship between film and social history as a process of discursive transcoding. We do so in order to emphasize the connections between representations operative in film and the representations which give structure and shape to social life. Social life consists of discourses that determine the substance and form of the everyday world. […] [B]ut it also consists of representations that shape and transform the social world.

(Ryan and Kellner 1988, 12) In Camera Politica Ryan and Kellner both set out to reveal underlying, codified, tendencies of social conditioning that resides in American films. A term one is used to apply in this case is ‘ideology’. According to Ryan and Kellner, as stated in the quote above, ideology in film can work in two directions: it can either reflect certain social values through its cinematic representations, or these representations can project a world of values for its audience – being powerful codes that shape how one must think about certain phenomena or social hierarchies (1988,184-185). In this chapter we will see some of those representations at work in the monster movies. More will be clear about how the monster in cinema can become a cultural symbol, projecting an idea for audiences how to feel about certain actualities and progress, but also about reflecting underlying sentiments of the people that lived in those times.

Generically, what determines the most notable traits of a contemporary genre, are the most significant archetypes, aesthetic framing, and social implications as prefigured by its precursors.8_{For the giant monster movie these precursors can be found most notably in the}

horror genres that actually contain monsters. Therefore my starting point will be there. In his book The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror David J. Skal reiterates monster movie history in a social context, arguing that: "Caligari, Nosferatu, the Frankenstein

monster, the Wolf Man, and the giant radioactive bugs of the 1950s, can all trace their lineage in one way or another the cultural trauma of war" (1993, 397). Like Ryan and Kellner, Skal makes a point of the fact that cinematic works reflect the times they are made in, focusing on the horror genre primarily (1993, 10); in this case it concerns a reaction and criticism to the trauma of war, endowing monster movies with a - sometimes radical - character of social significance. Falling in line with this stance of social critique Paul Wells observes that 8 Steve Neale argues that “[e]very film is unique. Production and promotion are therefore governed by the need to recognize and celebrate difference as well as the need to reuse capital assets and to recycle and signal the presence of tried and tested ingredients" (2000, 4).

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generally: "[t]he horror film confronts us with our worst fears, our most perverse feelings and desires," and that it is always radical "in the face of increasingly reactionary stances" (2000, 24).To add to this notion, in her book The Monstrous Feminine, Barbara Creed, tries to clarify what makes horror films so horrific, by hand of Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytical notions of abjection (1993, 8). Abjection means - not in the least sense of the word – those things that are rejected by, or a threat to, the ‘partially formed subject’ (1993, 8-9). It refers to those things that do not look to be like you (‘corporeally alternated’), or those things that your body physically ejects, as for example bodily fluids and wastes, and proposes that they are the stuff of horror, because they can represent decay and insecurity (Creed 1993, 8-10). Therefore, images of death, or simply a completely different-sized-and-shaped monster, are the most extreme forms that differ from the living human subject and can be strong indicators of the ‘abject’- inducing strong primal fears. From such a perspective it already becomes clear that it is precisely this 'radical attitude' the horror/monster genre conveys, that

constitutes its character generically and what distinguishes it from other genres. However, in regards to the giant monster movie, the question remains: what is the giant monster movie exactly, in terms of its preceding 'genre(s)'? And is it even fitting to put it in the category of horror; and what is the giant monster movie to the monster movie? It is important to stress, that genres are not clear-cut or easy to define and that they are inevitably dialectic in nature.9

In the following paragraphs, I will propose an outline a chronological evolution of monster movie origins to clarify in what fields these films operate and determine what the most conspicuous tropes could be.

1.1 Early cinema monsters (1910’s - 1940’s)

In The Monster Show Skal essentially asks himself why there are monsters in films (Skal 1993). The story is that monsters, as they were initiated in early cinema, originated from Victorian times, and mainly Gothic literature - Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) and Bram Stoker (Dracula) being the most iconic inspirations (Skal 1993, 33-38). Films as Nosferatu (1922) and Frankenstein (1931) are widely considered as the precursors of popular monster cinema. 9 “Genres are not just post facto categories, (…) but part of the constant category-splitting/category-creating dialectic that constitutes the history of types and terminology. Instead of imaging this process in terms of static classification, we might want to see it, in terms of a regular alternation between an expansive principle – the creation of a new cycle – and a principle of contraction – the consolidation of a genre.” (Altman 65) Not only does genre theory contribute to film genre in determining certain conditions of existence of a 'type' of films, which will clarify the reason why these films still thrive in our collective memory and are constantly reinvented for a contemporary audience, but it is also core to an understanding of the way aesthetics of a once specified genre adapt themselves to contemporary preferences, or desired experience.

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It was not until later in film history that the more medieval and mythical creatures emerged on screen and gained popularity (e.g. dragons, reptiles, dinosaurs and minotaurs, from the 1950's up until now). Yet Skal already observes that the popularity was not to be explained by the narrative and visual arts alone: "Fairgrounds and carnivals were the original

laboratories for entertainment that thrilled and frightened, from the freak show to the rollercoaster to the ghost train[...]" (Skal 1993, 38). The 'freak show' was already a podium for exhibiting those people who stood out from the conceptually 'normal' crowd, being 'disfigured' or 'out of proportion', and it was for this simple reason alone that they were worthy of being looked at, or paying money for. In the presence of their sheer otherness, it made one realize how well one fitted in society and its norms within this comparison; which was obviously a pleasurable experience for certain crowds and apparently reason enough to pull out one's wallet (Skal 1993, 48; Wells 2000, 47; Worland 2007, 2). Apparently people were attracted to excessive, or radical forms. As Wells argues, that monster horror is about shape-changing and transforming the moral order, in this case the moral order of appearance (2000, 34) we might call this aspect (or trend) in monster movie history a 'formal' one. As Creed would argue, it is the simple visual shape of the abnormal, that is reason enough for an audience find contempt and interest, due to the fact that in the abject’s presence we endow ourselves with clearer identities and therefore security (1993, 8). This is the first and most primal explanation of the reason why a monster can attract.

A second aspect that became apparent in the post WOI era of monster movies was to be found firstly on a 'psychological' level and secondly on a 'social' level. These two aspects we might coin the 'psychosocial' aspect of the monster trend. One must think here of such films as The Cabinet of dr. Caligari (1920), Frankenstein, Dracula (1931),The Wolf Man (1941), and maybe most exemplary to humankind's duality between the human and animal

-Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920 or 1931), wherein the monster still shows clear similarities

with our human condition and human beings physically. According to Skal, Wells and Worland, these monsters were representations of how we reflected on ourselves in times of dealing with post-war trauma's or crises (for example the 1929 crash of the Wall Street stock-market) and served as a way of shedding light on our fears of social collapse, the

technological and scientific experiments in industrial society (Frankenstein), extreme rationalism, sexuality (Dracula), identity (Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Caligari and The Wolf Man) and modernism in general and in dealing with it (Wells 2000, 37 - 38; Skal 1993, 47-50; Worland 2007, 27-33). Already then horror was a cry against the structures that were, exploring their boundaries and constraints through fictional excess; which was something that may have

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spoken to anyone who lived in malevolent circumstances and felt the desperations that were omnipresent in those times first hand. Horror and monster films then warned people for the atrocities that modernity, namely rationalism, science and technology, could bring about and stuck these fears onto the screen, into a 4:3 square, framing for us these monster metaphors to engage us emotionally; it either being emotions of repulsion, aversion, recognition,

confrontation, or simply an entertaining of either of these.

The point that has to be made here is that monster and horror cinema may have contained the most prominent critical expressions in the cinema of those times. It arguably criticized institutions, progress, and modernity in general. Through abnormal shapes, and the psychological and sexual undercurrents the monsters may signify, audiences found

recognition through representations and symbols of things they could not express themselves on a widely distributable level without being punished for it.10_{Horror and monsters stood on}

the forefront of revealing and reflecting what people were of afraid of, while projecting these fears via the shape of monsters; the vehicles for human contempt. The monsters served as surrogates for the psychological discrepancies of the times, and visualized these internal ailments through monstrous deformities and immoral actions. The warnings or anxieties these films advocated, even if they were fictional and entertaining, were in fact not so farfetched from the excess of the times that followed: the post-WWII era; an 'Age of Anxiety' (Worland 2007, 193).

1.2 The atomic age: monsters and collective anxiety (1950’s – 1980’s)

Dracula's threat of a quaint, venous invasion was tired indeed when compared to the overwhelming border violations the world had so recently witnessed. An enveloping cloak was no longer an image of dread. But a mushroom cloud was. The threat of mass destruction was bigger than ever in America's mind, and so were its monsters.

(David J. Skal 247)

WWII brought forth more cinematic monsters than ever before. As Skal demonstrates above, the post-WWII decade was a time where the monsters on screen could not be big enough to represent the sheer size of grief and destruction of war and nuclear disaster; the monsters of the 1950's and 60's would become angry and manipulative instead of sensual, bipolar, trans-10 In his introduction Rick Worland explains why the horror film regained attention and recognition by its audience (Worland 2007 6-8).

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mutant and gothic. They came from Beyond, Outer Space or Beneath the Sea.11_{The monsters}

were not created in our own liking, purposefully, as for example a Frankenstein monster, but were rather incidentally awakened by technology and chemistry, as side effects of

experimentation or industrial destruction. These side effects were transformed into the main subject of the giant monster movie:

Godzilla (1954) is the key film to the mutation-metaphor variety. Produced

appropriately enough in Japan (the only society to have actually endured nuclear attack), Godzilla grafted atomic trauma onto the King Kong formula and launched on of the biggest ritual displays of naive metaphor the world has ever seen. Oversized radioactive monsters were lightning rods for atomic war anxiety, and one of the most successful and imitated Hollywood formulas since the Western. (Skal 1993, 248) The grandeur of war, the atomic holocaust in Japan and the Red Scare of ideological invasion in the U.S. by the communists, as Skal suggests, made for giant monsters that were not restrained by the villagers of small towns anymore, but were a danger to entire cities and social structures. This indicates that the psychosocial trend had shifted to a 'sociocultural and ideological' one. This shows that it was not necessarily the evil from within that struck fear into the individual, but the evil from without that threatened a collective, or rather: a nation.

What seems evident in such films as Them! (1954), Gojira, Tarantula (1955), Rodan (1956), or whatever kaiju (giant monster) film, is that it shows a nation's capability - meaning the army (or weaponry) and strong-rooted ideology - to overcome whatever threat they have to face. It should be noted though, that it is philosophy, rather than national ideology or weaponry that defeats the monster in the original Honda Godzilla film. The main scientist in that film (played by Ahihiko Hirata) sacrifices his scientific discovery (a new type of

weapon) and himself in order to save a nation from destruction. Arguing that unless he does not do so, he himself might be coerced into creating new destructive technologies similar to that of the Bomb and therefore deems it best to die together with Godzilla, his new invention (the destructive weapon) and sacrificing his own life (his knowledge). In this sense the film's metaphor is not "naive" as Skal stated (1993, 248), but arguably honest and upright about the value of taking responsibility for ones creations and actions - advocating a return to

spirituality. In the same tense Wells argues that "[t]he true horror lies in humankind's refusal to take responsibility for the past [...]" (2000, 52). With science - as it is portrayed in horror and what, Friedrich Nietzsche argues (qtd. in Wells 2000, 5), is intrinsic to modernity - there 11 These are all references to the 50’s and 60’s B-movie horror films, all phrasing their titles in ways that dabbled with the concept of otherness (e.g. It Came From Outer Space (Jack Arnold 1953)).

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is this collapse of the spiritual. To pinpoint what is generic about the monster in all its tropes and fields, I would follow Well’s point that "[t]he monster is essentially a physical

manifestation of the consequences of misconduct" (2000, 48). In these films, when humanity lacks a balanced relationship with the natural order of things, the immorality of disorder shall beget more images of horror and, eventually, oversized monsters to do nature's bidding.

As a foremost generic trait, one can argue, that the global events of atomic wars, holocausts and ideological fears are of great influence to the genre, serving as a part of the explanation of the rise in popularity of the giant monster movie - of why it worked with an audience. On this notion (concerning genre), Neale states that "[t]hese systems of expectation and hypothesis involve a knowledge of [...] various regimes of verisimilitude - various systems and forms of plausibility, motivation and belief" and explains that "'[v]erisimilitude' means 'probable', 'plausible' or 'likely'. In addition, it entails notions of propriety, of what is appropriate and therefore probable" (2000, 32). Therefore, the image of global disaster and destruction is one that had to be included in these features, being effective on its own right as a strong visual image, but also resonating as a direct reference, a truth claim, to the pictures of horror of the recent world war. It is for this reason the fantastical portrayal of the giant monster become more 'probable' or tangible for an audience to appropriate and derive meaning from. Hence it seems the foremost explanation of the huge size of the monsters that arose the in post-war cinema era of the socio-cultural and ideological monsters; they had to convey catastrophe and post-war anxiety.

1.2.1 East and West: National Monsters

The giant creatures in the post WOII monster movies are a result of humanity's misconduct, causing a collapse of spirituality and order (Bergesen 1992; Napier 1993; Skal 1993; Wells 2000). In the monster movie genre there is always this dealing with the past, while criticizing the inventions of modernity. And, according to Neale, a certain form of factuality, or

verisimilitude, is necessary, in order for such improbable events, or creatures, to maintain a

certain validity within the fiction.12_{Hence, he discusses the question of verisimilitude in sci-fi}

12 "Viewers of horror may expect the unlikely. But precisely for this reason they will often be unable to anticipate the norms, rules and laws that govern the fictional world in any one particular instance. And this means that the films themselves will have to explain them. Of course, all fiction films involve exposition, the provision of information about the nature of the fictional world [does found-footage have to do this?] - But many films are able to rely on the norms, rules and laws - the system of 'everyday' knowledge - embodied in regimes of socio-cultural verisimilitude in accounting at a fundamental level for the actions, events and behavior they represent: most films do not have to explain the laws of gravity, or that humans are mortal, or that they are incapable of mutating in the life forms they ingest. However, in horror films and science fiction

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and their role in the world of genre films: "[M]idway these extremes lie such instances of science fiction as Tarantula (1955) and Them! (1954), films which draw on the authentic, factual and verisimilitudinous status of science (and contemporary technology) in order to motivate otherwise non-verisimilitudinous actions and events" (2000, 34). Such a notion attests that the narrative elements, of most of these films, build on the premise that the fantastic destructive creatures on screen could actually happen and that they therefore promote the use of pre-existing stock footage (of H-bomb experiments, or news footage) in its imagery to account for these fictional facts as they might - verisimilitudinously - unfold in actual life. Its narrative depends on it, and it is symptomatic to the genre.

Basically, in these films about giant monsters, it is within the average running time of one hour and thirty minutes that the audience is led through a story arch - that in its first act can look very much like a detective (Neale 2000, 35) - where they are warned and taught a lesson about the dangers of destroying the environment, and thus ourselves. Often, in films such as Them! and Gojira, the characters in the films are initially skeptical towards the idea of a giant monster killing people or causing major destruction, attributing the events to some serial killer, or to a natural calamity. Slowly, however, they will find out, that it is actually an animal of some sort - out of 'normal' proportion - that was the cause. The protagonists, mostly scientists, in the 1950's monster movies learn, that it is actually they who are the real cause for this out-of-proportion-animal to have emerged in the first place (those "naive" metaphors arise here), and that it is up to them again, to take responsibility for it. It is in this taking of

responsibility and what the monster signifies that semantic differences between East and

West can be found.

In the American Them! an interpretation is that the giant ants represent a communist threat (Skal 1993; Wells 2000; Noriega 1987) and shows that it is the army's responsibility to get rid of them; note that in American monster films - and in most of the Godzilla films as well - it seems pertinent to show, that the military apparatus and governmental institutions will at all times be capable of destroying the threats from without. These narrative elements, can reveal a strong discursive purpose of the aesthetic of the films: it has to have a clear such laws may well not apply. - Other laws, other norms, may have taken their place. Not only that, but these laws and norms may well be specific to one particular film, to one particular fictional universe. Thus they have to be explained; and thus the expositional burden carried by films of this kind is increased. [a luxury found footage has in not having to do so necessarily, except for troll hunter] - Aside from their role in scenarios of skepticism, power authority, belief and credulity, thus is another reason why such films are so full of scientists, sages, doctors, seers and other experts in arcane norms and laws" (Neale 2000, 38).

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establishment of the enforcers, the institutions or individuals, who eventually defeat the nation-threatening monsters. Therefore they need establishing shots. Its narrative seems to necessitate clear visual establishments, in order for its social and political undercurrents to gain force. What needs to be established: the strength of a nation's ideological and intellectual institutions? What needs to be suggested: that communism is dangerous? Its aesthetic builds on these questions visually.

This establishment of institutions is conspicuous throughout most of the giant monster movies of the post-WWII period, up until the contemporary executions of the genre. The 1950’s giant monster movie has to show the hierarchy of players that are be able to move around and eventually defeat the enemy threat. In these films the viewer is frequently made aware of the whereabouts and the positions of the players/institutions. We know who is pulling the strings (the people that are in charge) and why, and we know the origin of the monsters as it is explained (in Them! as a direct result of nuclear testing, with the mindless collectivity of the ants representing the communists) or as it is suggested (in Gojira an indirect result of nuclear explosions, representing a spiritual force of nature; a vengeful soul of the environment that has been awoken, not created). Inevitably the foremost aesthetic strategy in these films is establishing shots (figures). In light of Ryan and Kellner’s

discussions on the ideology of cinema, this is where the ideals of a nation’s social structure are put into cinematic perspective.

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Figure 3. Establishing shot of desert and little girl Figure 4. Medium CU of the traumatized girl. Both Them! and Gojira firstly deal with the establishing of destruction or trauma, before establishing its main characters or the cause of the destruction. In first moments of

Them! there is a long shot of a desolate Nevada desert environment, with an airplane flying

over it and police car on a road, cutting to a long-shot of a little girl who is lost (fig. 3) - an apathetic soul - and then to a closer shot, revealing that she is traumatized (fig. 4). One might understand from this, that it is children who are the first victim of foreign threat, and that a close-up is needed to see the face of the people (young children) who are brainwashed first. Ryan and Kellner (1988, 52-53), and Paul Wells (2000, 47-48), argue that, in this genre of paranoia and disaster, it has to be shown that the institutions, and white male protagonists, can defeat all kinds threats and adversity, in order to reinstate the patriarchal values of American ideology, when successful. The airplane in the opening shots of Them! shows that they are capable of scouting the skies, the police car gives them even a ground perspective, and both of them find the little girl together. The message is that she will be saved, no matter what. This establishing shows that there is multitude of omnivoyant elements that attest to the American people always being able to search and find foreign contaminants, or its victims.

In Gojira there are mostly victims who are not saved. The film opens with a fishing boat with fishermen singing songs, who are suddenly exposed to a bright light (representing Nuclear fall-out), and the boat is destroyed. Later in the first act of the film a small town is destroyed, leaving one of its villagers screaming in grief (fig.9) and at the end of the second act there is a montage sequence of the wounded women, men and children, that is

accompanied by a remorseful diegetic ballad sung by a children’s choir. All of these images connote somewhat different meanings than those in Them!. It shows that ‘remorse’ is a very significant part of the monster, even more so than fear, and that its rampaging qualities are not merely forms of entertainment, or discriminatory of nature (as the ants in Them! are

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perceived to be),13_{but it pays tribute to underlying emotions and traumatic recovery of}

nation, that would have normally been censored by U.S. authorities that were present in Japan in that time (Noriega 1987, 65). In his article “Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When ‘Them’ is ‘U.S.’”, Chon Noriega seems to imply (1987, 65-66) that, for the Japanese the giant monster was a way of breaking not only the borders of modernity, but also of censorship, and freedom of expression, and therefore that of national politics. The film establishes in its opening the sea, working-class fishermen, and their demise, and, in contrast to Them!, not the institutions. Intended by the filmmakers or not, its relevance, though, will reverberate in the found-footage versions of this genre where the aesthetic attention will shift to the experience of the victims of destruction. Its politics on a national scale seem evidently put forward, and the monsters themselves are again a vehicle of the underlying anxieties (more in Them!) and sentiments (more in Gojira) of those times. Then, how is the monster - the vehicle for anxiety - presented and established?

As in the detective genre, we will not see the perpetrator (the monster) until later in the film. The order in which, in both Them! and Gojira, and most giant monster films14_{, the}

monster is presented, is as follows: first there is a showing of destruction to also establish the genre (a detective disaster movie) (fig. 1; fig 2), then there is the victimized people, mostly townsfolk or ordinary civilians (fig. 3), followed by an interpretation of the events by the establishment, followed by a real-time attack of the monster that finally convinces the at-first-skeptical officials of the existence of something out of the ordinary. Piece by piece the monster is slowly built up, into its full revelation. This is generically how all monster films start of. But, then, in Gojira, more in the likings of its American predecessor The Beast From

20.000 Fathoms (where its monster is the iconic showcase), there is an entire sequence (about

10 to 15 minutes) that shows the monster in his full form. It is wreaking havoc on Tokyo city in low angles (fig. 5), high angles and wide shots (fig.6), that completely 'reveal' the creature, and is even endowed with one shot from the monster's vantage point (fig.7). This suggests that Honda wanted his audience to clearly see the force of nature Gojira is, in order showcase the undercurrents of Japanese imagination; which was one of disaster and trauma in that time (Napier 1993, 333-335).

13 Chon Noriega explicates the “Us” and “Them” dichotomy that hides in Gojira’s text through an analysis of Orientalism and Otherness. According to him Them! was a clear and somewhat absolute representation of communist fears in the U.S., while Gojira could not be defeated, and that it makes us think about what is about ‘ourselves’ that should be changed, in order for disaster not to happen anymore (1987, 66-69).

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Figure 5. Low-angle shot. Figure 6. Eyelevel wideshot.

Figure 7. High angle p.o.v. of Godzilla. Figure 8. Revealing wideshot of the ants.

In Them!, however, the focus eventually lies with the army searching for two children, making the ants more of an ever-present non-visual threat than an actual character-antagonist-threat endowed with animalistic personality; the ants are never fully revealed up until in one wide shot near the end (fig. 8). Godzilla (mother-nature-as-ruined-by-man) had established itself as a character, as something that a had a soul of some sort in the 1954 original (which arguably had something to do with its man-in-suit physical presence, that was a different experience to the stop-motion monsters of for example Ray Harryhausen15_{). This inevitably}

paved the way for its sequels to give him more screen-time than normally would happen with other American or British monster movies (e.g. Gorgo (1961) or Roger Corman’s Attack of

the Crab Monsters (1957)). This 'physical presentation' is also an important factor in the

discourse of the communist threat analogy of the ants in Them! (they were mechanically built props) as they purposefully come over as plastic and soulless, in contrast to the more lively man-in-suit monster in Gojira which needed to have a more spiritual message.

15 Ray Harryhausen was a special-effects, stop-motion artist, for monster films such as The Beast From 20.000

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The way in which both films continue their representation of the monsters, is significant to the cause of the rise of one of them into a commoditized and hegemonic franchise (Bergesen 1992, 212-213). Gojira and its many sequels, or 'versions', sprouted a cycle of films with sympathy for the beast (and the monstrous) that is still going strong. However, the theme-park giant monsters were thus kept alive by Toho Studios in Japan, but also by Roger Corman's exploitation monster and horror films in the U.S., and was eventually picked up by New Hollywood pioneer Steven Spielberg (with initially Jaws (1975) and eventually Jurassic Park (1993)), keeping it intact and accessible for a more broader audience than merely the B-movie fanatics. Consequently, its cultural fixation kept echoing on.

After decades of similar films to the giant monster (kaiju) films of Japan (who spawned about 30 sequels to the original Godzilla) and all of the invasion features in the U.S., the lowbrow B-film monster movie, which it initially was, became nearly highbrow with the Spielberg ‘creature-feature’ high-concept blockbuster Jaws (Lee 2001, 45-47). From making money in drive-in cinemas, and from niche audiences, monsters were now taken seriously and were to some extent acclaimed in award ceremonies.16_{Japan kept producing its}

Godzilla films, and the U.S. films like Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), James Cameron's Aliens (1986) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1992) and David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986).

The most significant traits thus far all relate to the fact that the monster had gained a larger audience than ever before and. As demonstrated, this fact may have had to do with post-WWII atomic and the ideological anxieties during the Cold War, in that the recognizable images of destruction generated a need for ‘big’ representations, all due to a need for a national collective identity that could be defined by the grace of the distinct otherness of giant monsters.17_{The giant monster movie generically deals with threats of an external nature, of}

something that comes from without, that threatens a collective.

1.3 New monster cinema: Self-reflexive and innovative (1990’s – and onwards) Monsters became pandemic in the course of the last three decades. Korea surprised the world with their art house version of the giant monster movie with Bong Joon-Ho's The Host (2006), which used a traditional monster movie plot and an American narrative in order to portray Korean familial values to its public (Lee 2001, 50-53). Europe started to participate in 16 Jaws was nominated for 4 Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’ in 1976.

17 What does the portrayal of the national monster say about how that culture perceives the Other? Chon Noriega discusses this fact by a comparative analysis between the U.S. monster movie representations, and those of Japan (1987, 64).

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this monster movie trend as well: with the Spanish Guillermo del Toro debut Cronos (1993), or later the French The Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) and the British Dog Soldiers (2002). However, fact remained, that Europe could not compete with the U.S.'s and Japan's popular aesthetics of giant monsters on this global scale for three essential reasons: money,

production value and a lack of monster movie history:

From Bram Stoker's Dracula to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Godzilla, the bugaboo of big money cast its shadows over the traditional sine qua non of Hollywood monster movies: their simple ability to elicit the cathartic thrill of fear. As in other genres, spectacle overtook storytelling, often filling theaters, but just as often leaving critics grumbling. (Skal 1993, 399)

There was no such “thrilling” cinematic monster movie tradition in Europe and European filmmakers could not compete; and, perhaps, did not even find the need to. Giant monster movies suggest that nations, such as Japan and the U.S., used the giant monsters to

demonstrate their arsenal of powerful institutions; as either the institutions as portrayed in the films themselves (army and government), or the film itself, as a strong cultural commodity that contains the monster as a symbolic showcase for these forms of power.18_{But, as so often}

happens in cinema, a counter-movement to the Hollywood spectacle - and the horror genre as it existed - was initiated by independent filmmakers, who immediately received commercial attention.

In the 1999 the monster and horror genre introduced a new aesthetic with The Blair

Witch Project (directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez). It was handheld 16mm and

Digital Video (DV) camera, and an amateur handling of these devices, that we might recognize from family video's, that changed the experience of horror. Spectators became immersed in the idea that it was people like them that suffered the ordeals of horror

storytelling (Harris 2001), and, according to Paul Wells, it was this documentary-like 'verité approach' that attracted audiences all over the world; it is still considered one of the main game changers in the horror and monster genre, by bringing the documentary-verité-style into the realm popular fictional cinema (2000, 108). The film’s set-up revolves around young amateur documentary-filmmakers that investigate child murders in the town of Burkittsville, Maryland. Supposedly these children were killed by a witch that haunts the woods of the town. The filmmakers endeavor on a journalistic journey into these woods and slowly fall victim to all the urban legends that circulated this witch, eventually experiencing its horrific 18 Albert Bergesen has argued in favor of a hegemonic model for giant monsters, and how they can be of influence on, and reflecting, the world-system. (1992, 209-211)

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truth. It used no non-diegetic sounds, in contrast to later found-footage films such as Troll

Hunter, or Cloverfield, and was completely independently produced. In his article "The

'Witchcraft' of Media Manipulation: 'Pamela' and 'The Blair Witch Project'", Martin Harris suggests that the popularity of The Blair Witch, and the sudden rise of its aesthetic, might also have something to do with the rise in first-person shooter videogames during that time (Harris 2001, 14). A similar point-of-view handling to that of found-footage features is applied in the aesthetic of such videogames, which supposedly immersed the more active film-viewer (or game-player) into a fictional text. In the found-footage film this tendency between being a witness to things that could actually happen (that verisimilitudinous sense) and the marvelous premise of what it could possibly be like (the dramatization of fiction) is utterly symptomatic (North 2010, 84). However, there is something more immersive going on in this aesthetic. Because, as Harris argues, the enigma within the diegesis should be similar to the enigma of its making; to retain the premise of historical fact (2001, 3).

Harris has drawn from past news media that "the sudden, phenomenal success of The

Blair Witch Project [...] represented a story as absorbing and suggestive as the one told by the

film itself" (2001, 5). Its inter-textual relay has therefore become an ultimate one, due to its premise that intently relies on a great deal of verisimilitudinous elements (Burkittsville's actual history, the lost filmmakers, and so on) and fact claims within the diegesis.19_A

found-footage film not only draws from these elements, it is – a fictional - version of the authentic (as it is made as a document). That is why there are no opening credits in found-footage, to keep the illusion of its authenticity intact, as long as possible.

The Blair Witch was a media event and it gained controversy over something that

appeared to be a mystery (Harris 2001, 2). The appeal of this new style became apparent very quickly in European monster and horror cinema: The Descent (2005), REC (2007), REC 2 (2009) and, arguably, Monsters (2010). However, generically, the U.S. remains the main force behind this aesthetic in horror with films as: Paranormal Activity (2008), the REC-remake Quarantine (2009), V/H/S (2012) and, confined around a few scenes wherein 8mm home video footage is revamped, Sinister (2012). With Japan being mainly restricted to the Orient, the U.S. and the Hollywood studios were the primary distributors of giant monsters globally: with Cloverfield, arguably, as a reaction the 9/11 amateur footage of destruction,20 19 Is the film referring to socio-cultural referents, "quoting 'authentic' discourses, artefacts, and texts: maps, newspaper headlines, memoirs, archival documents, and so on" (Neale 2000, 33), then one can see that a film draws heavily from verisimilitudinous elements.

20 In the commentary on the DVD of Cloverfield, director Matt Reeves admits that he wanted his film to be a commentary on the contemporary time, and also, as is tradition in most giant monster movies, he wanted it to resonate to a trauma of some sort; in this case the events of 9/11 (52:49).

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Super 8 as a reinterpretation of Spielberg's E.T. (1980) , Pacific Rim wherein not just

national, but international cooperation between East and West, and Russia, is proposed, and

Godzilla (2014) where again the atomic fears are criticized in a contemporary context,

retaining the original Honda-premise. This short history suggests that the giant monster cinema has its roots in monster horror films and has become the most sizeable variation in its genre, eventually suiting the studio-produced structures the best, becoming big budgeted and well-distributed. Films as King Kong, The Beast From 20.000 Fathoms21_{and American} remakes of Gojira - Godzilla (Emmerich 1998), Godzilla (Edwards 2014) and its

reinterpretation in Cloverfield - suggest that there is a demonstration of power at stake in the showcasing of these giant monster and that giant monsters, beside its implications in

collective anxieties of the 1950’s, can represent a transnational cultural exchange in exotic commodities and East-West convergence as well.22

1.4 An aesthetic shift in attention

According to Neale, what could mainly determine something (a film's content or structure) to become generic is the extent, or reach, of its 'inter-textual relay' (the extent to which a text refers to other texts):

Testimony to the existence of genres - and evidence as to the boundaries of any particular generic corpus - is to be found primarily there. Moreover, it is only on the basis of this testimony that the history of any genre and an analysis of its social functions and social significance can begin to be produced. (Neale 2000, 43)

So, the extent to which a text refers to other texts determines the extent to which it becomes present in our daily lives and practices, for it to become the norm. As both Neale and Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner argue, when something becomes the norm in a film cycle, it can gain social significance and force, and can, therefore, become an important factor in the analysis of a discourse (Neale 2000, 43; Ryan and Kellner 1988, 12-13). This phenomenon works both ways. In one way, the film, or commodity, can start something to happen in the culture of a certain society. As, for example in American culture, Jaws supposedly made people afraid of the sea and its monstrous inhabitants (Lee 2001, 48); and The Blair Witch

Project stirred controversy around the believe that its makers fell victim to an evil witch in

the North American woods of Burkittsville, Maryland (a similar happening to the Orson 21 This film is widely considered as a major influence on Ishiro Honda’s Gojira (Noriega 1987, 66). 22 Nowadays, Godzilla is as much a Japanese as it is an American commodity (Bergesen 1992, 213).

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Welles 1938 radio broadcast of H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds) (Harris 2001, 9). The fiction has a force on our daily lives and in some cases even intends such (abovementioned) effects. And in the other way, events can force themselves onto the fiction, as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events did for Japan's Godzilla monster, the communist fears of McCarthyism in the U.S. for Them!, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks for Cloverfield. These principles of conventions and relay to other ‘known’ texts are used as a proxy by filmmakers/producers for the audience to gain access to the film material more quickly;23_{so they can better understand}

a film's intentions, and be entertained without too much effort or conflict in creating the potential truthfulness of these fictions for themselves (Neale 2000, 31).

Through conventions the audience knows what to expect; they know with what 'types' they are dealing. "The audience draws on accumulated experience", or the "repeated patterns" these images convey, which is an “iconography of the genre” (Neale 2000, 15). Steve Neale's notion of inter-textual relay not only refers to the fact that a generic commodity has to 'relate' to other texts that the audience can refer to as a category - as something they 'know' already, yet slightly different - but also that those texts also have to work commercially. Therefore, we cannot accredit the commercial successes of the giant monster movies today solely to its emergence in the 1950's, but predominantly to its continuation in such recent high-grossing and iconic films as Cameron's Aliens (1986), Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993), or Roland Emmerich's Independence Day (1996), which had monsters, and either destruction or

invasion, as their theme. This predominance in global box-office revenues, and its continuous repetition in different cultural strata, suggests that, in our collective memory, monsters and the giant monster movie genre, with all their implications, have indeed become archaic and ubiquitous. For Japan Godzilla (Gojira) has become archaic to its nation and culturally embraced and cherished (Napier 1993, 349-350; Noriega 1987, 70-71); according to cultural

23 Genres “consist also of specific systems of expectation and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact with films themselves during the course of the viewing process. These systems provide spectators with means of recognition and understanding. They help render individual films, and the elements within them, intelligible and, therefore, explicable. They offer a way of working out the significance of what is happening on screen: a way of working out why particular actions are taking place, why the characters are dressed the way they are, why they look, speak, and behave the way they do, and so on" (Neale 2000, 31).

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anthropologist David H. Stymeist it has arguably become an indelible myth24_{that actually can}

tell us something about who they are (2009, 397-398).

To summarize its symptoms, or conventions, it becomes clear that in this genre we are not dealing with local, but with global significance. These films deal with ‘big ideas', or themes, concerning national trauma, ideological fears, scientific critique and institutional scrutiny. They generically establish the symbolic monsters narratively and visually as both

formally disgusting, socially subverting, destroying cities and societies, and in full view of

the frame, for us to see clearly what we are dealing with and how difficult it will be to defeat. And, perhaps, more interestingly, we even have a chance to align with the monster’s ordeal: we become part of its point of view, or eyelevel (as is more clear in all the Gojira sequels, where the aesthetic focuses mainly on the monster’s perspective presentation). This could mean that we ourselves become part of the threatened monster, and may identify with it, on its level.25

On the other hand, the people its narrative mostly deals with are scientists. They are, or advise, the protagonists in these films and eventually lead the story towards a catharsis and a secure closure of some sort; it always remains "secure horror" as in the end everything ‘sort of’ works out (Napier 1993, 332). These films find beauty in disaster and in the monster, not glorifying it, but using its mere unearthly (or sublime) awe-inspiring presence to deliver a serious message. It draws from contemporary issues to give credible weight to these products of fantasy. Giant monster movies (and aliens) are therefore mostly rooted in the imminent realities of our/their human and national condition, sporadically giving of an anti-Utopian air (Napier 1993, 338), and always apply and rely on certain forms of verisimilitude; a

rootedness in the factual imminence of contemporary actuality (such are the referents to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Communists, Lucky Dragon no. 526_{, mutation). Both films have}

enjoyed academic scrutiny for a long time now, and Gojira has arguably become a myth,

24 “These films may seem trivial and childish, but they provide a template for the expectation of a

technological solution to all of our problems that has very real consequences for how we think and behave toward the challenges we now face” (Stymeist 2009, 404). David H. Stymeist argues that films as Godzilla or

King Kong share a lot of tropes in everyday routines of certain nations, that are similar those principles of myth

– as it is defined in anthropology.

25 J.P. Telotte in her article “The Movies as Monster: Seeing in King Kong” writes: “What happens is that we find ourselves –like Kong – becoming the dual figure of menace and menaced, threatened subject and monstrous other” (1988, 395).

26 The Lucky Dragon no.5 incident in the 1950's refers to the Japanese fishermen that suffered from radiation sickness that was caused by the fallout of U.S. nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll.

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containing significant aspects that define modern post-WWII Japan, still serving as a template for all films that imagine the destructive, big, or feature rampaging creatures. Still, this does not account for the movement of these films into the aesthetic of found-footage. As film history has shown, it is not solely on the basis of metaphors or big ideas (rooted in factual life) that films are allowed to thrive in popular culture. It is also a question of pure experience and thrills in its less semantic form that may determine its current

following - as will be the case with found-footage. Therefore, the more abstract question of "why do monsters happen?" is not sufficient to account for the genre’s adoption into found-footage. To better understand the addition of found-footage in contemporary giant movie monsters, the more fitting question is perhaps: who experiences monsters?

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2 Point-of-viewing: Capturing giants on smaller frames

It's eating people

- Marlena (Lizzy Caplan, in Cloverfield)

In Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield it is explicitly mentioned that the monster is now eating people, as a Japanese Godzilla never really did. The film intently focuses on the victims that suffer the destructive ordeals as caused by the giant monster. This is to make sure the audience can experience how scary such an ordeal can be; the case of suffering (or a reaction to it) has always been symptomatic to the monster genre - as its history and representations have shown. It is the townsfolk that suffer initially (it is the working class or citizens that take the first and hardest blows) and the establishment that eventually survives to interpret the events In films as Gojira, Tarantula, Rodan, The Beast From 20.000 Fathoms, King Kong and

Them! it is the establishment that has the final word and it is with them the emphasis lies with

near the end of the film's arch; they trump the townsfolk in cinematic attention, either narratively or aesthetically.27_{To understand the found-footage aesthetic, it is within this}

discourse the shift in attention becomes apparent. Looking at the narrative of these films, another question arises: whom do we follow? The main paradigm shift in contemporary found-footage films, and therefore the found-footage monster film as well, is to be found in its focus on the townsfolk (the 'ordinary' people). The villager, or civilian, is a type of person that has something more primal to lose than the institutional clerks, or officials, with their relation to the national ideology, or identity, namely: his/her life.

In this chapter the aesthetics of personalized immersion in the found-footage giant monster movie will be explored. The four films that will be discussed here are Cloverfield,

Troll Hunter, Monsters and Pacific Rim – with a preliminary connection to Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla (2014). Little has been written on the subject of found-footage, and, therefore, some

of my observations ought to be considered preliminary. I will mainly draw its definitions and aesthetic purposes from the observations of Daniel North and Martin Harris, and my own analyses.

27 David J. Skal tells us, that the monster movies of early cinema (e.g. Frankstenstein’s monster) show that it is the townsfolk that deal with the ordeals of the destructive monsters the most, incidentally becoming angry villagers (Skal 1993, 34).

Framing the Monster: Into the Body