Godzilla, John Wick and the Collective Subconscious
Listening to the estimable Zach Lowe’s NBA podcast this week, there was a brief, sudden digression to John Wick:
Lowe: We were all in Los Angeles… and I had dinner with a non-NBA friend. I call them ‘human friends’, like non-NBA humans…people are surprised that I have the human friends. One of my best friends now has moved to Los Angeles so I had to see his house…and he was telling me that on a recent flight I want to turn my brain off, I picked John Wick 2.
I said, I’ve heard a lot good things about these John Wick films…do you have to watch the first one? Like, am I going to miss…are there critical nuances from the plot that I’m going to miss if I just dive into John Wick 2, because John Wick 1 is not available on Delta, it’s a real John Wick dilemma.
And let me tell you: the only thing that happens in those movies is that John Wick kills people. There’s no break. There’s no, like, John Wick goes on a date with a love interest. He just kills people the entire move. So that’s it, I’ve spoiled it for you.
Guest: It’s very much an escape from reality, right?
Virgil: NO, I’M AFRAID THAT’S NOT RIGHT.
Ok, I added Virgil. But if John Wick is about anything, if this scene from Kingsmen is about anything, it is about processing our collective trauma. In the past decade mass shootings have become a commonplace, and the films are obviously - obviously about sorting it out, or confronting it, trying to make sense of a species of primates that has figure out how to drive some of its members violently insane.
Is there a subtle message here?
I casually mentioned this at breakfast this morning, and eyes opened as wide as saucers.
“Look,” I said, “Japan in the 40s face an aerial assault unprecedented in the history or warfare. We firebombed Tokyo, killing a hundred thousand people and driving a million from their homes. We dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And what sort of movies do you think they were watching ten years later?
Not a church or Glock in sight.
I tried to watch some of Godzilla to see how well-founded this opinion might be, but I had to stop. The visceral pain it expresses, of a human population helpless against a remorseless enemy raining death down on it was more than I could bear.
Yeah…
I’m done.