I don't remember exactly when it was. Maybe 20 years ago. It was the first time I saw the brief animated film called BAMBI MEETS GODZILLA in a theater. There was 30 seconds or so of peace, watching Bambi as he peacefully grazed in a meadow. Them WHAM! Godzilla's foot smashed Bambi into a pulp. I laughed with everyone else. It was funny. It was also the beginning of the end.

I didn't realize it then. But that short little film was a viral message that eventually consumed our entire culture, that is American Culture. And to a large extent the same virus is infecting Europe. It is a virus that is backed by Big Business, Big Government of all stripes, youth and adult, hip and square, conservative and liberal. It is the virus of "the strong shall consume the weak" and let's get on board for the (albeit short) inevitable ride.

It's the James Dean joy ride to the Apocalypse. Get out of the way, man, or you'll be toast. Don't fuck with America. We will consume you, and if you get in our way, we will KABOOM you right into the ground if you try to stop our way of life from prevailing on the planet. FREEDOM at all costs, even if the cost is the death of freedom itself as we try to make ourselves safe from terrorists. "Leave no child behind… er… outside of surveillance" is the new motto of the Bush administration. It's the GODFATHER PART II as national politics: destroy the family to maintain the family, remove freedom to maintain freedom.

Thus our War on Terrorism could ultimately become a war on ourselves. We are witness to a cultural bungee jump, or maybe it's the trick that Daffy Duck pulls in the cartoon… "only can do it once…" straps himself with dynamite, takes a big gulp of nitroglycerine, and BOOM! Blows himself up. What a show! It's the internalization of BAMBI MEETS GODZILLA, where Godzilla crushes himself in self-destructive glee. Because whether it's Oklahoma City or New York City, the human bombs are here, and the more we try to crush them, the bigger those bombs will become. They are now inside us, geographically and spiritually, festering.

I recently read two articles in The Washington Post -- one a review of the film BLADE II and the other a story of a new breed of female Palestinian suicide bombers have such a lack of belief in any future that they will freely destroy themselves, becoming, in a sense, our reality-based Daffy Ducks.

They were linked, these two articles, these two reflections of BAMBI MEETS GODZILLA, like two peas in a pod.

The review of the film stated boldly how wonderful BLADE II was because at least the filmmaker had a world view, even if that world view was "the strong shall crush the weak."

Now what does that statement imply if you think about it for two milliseconds? It implies the following:

1. That film directors today have no worldview.

2. That any worldview is preferable to no worldview.

Any person with any level of morality -- no, intelligence -- would say to oneself: this is a pretty stupid assessment if you take it out to the level of the entire society, if everyone believed what this reviewer was promoting then we are pretty well dust, because we were all on our way to hell in a handbasket pretty damn fast, and our cultural bungee jump (aka "The American Experiment") is about to come to an end because we didn't measure the dive quite correctly.

But then it's only a movie. I can hear the Post reviewer in my brain as loud as an out of control teenager who wants to rebel against his unhip parents: I'm only a goddamn reviewer of a goddamn stupid movie. Give me a break you Bambi!

Now I am no moralist. In fact, I am tolerant beyond ridiculousness, to the point that I will support the right of people to be cultural Godzillas. That being said, I try to be aware enough to understand that the message of BAMBI MEETS GODZILLA is that weakness cannot be tolerated in nature, or in ourselves, and that cynicism is in fact part of nature, and in fact one is a wimp to believe otherwise. This mindset mocks on multiple fronts: mocks the humanist who actually believes that human beings are inherently good when it is obvious that humans are inherently bad. And in fact you absolutely must be inherently bad to survive in nature. So get with the program. If you don't you will be crushed.

Ironically, while I tolerate Godzilla, Godzilla will not tolerate me. Moreover, that is why people like me seem to be losing the cultural argument.

The other article, as I said, was about the futile mindset of a Palestinian woman who eventually became a suicide bomber. The reason I said these two articles are linked is that the depression, frustration and anger felt by this woman as she railed against her enemies brings with it a clear message: it is futile to fight Godzilla because I will be crushed, and because of this fact I will hasten the crushing. In fact, she became an emblem of the crushing, making it tangible.

The main purveyors of the mindset of "people are capable of good" (even if they are inherently bad) are humanists and the religions of the world (yes, even fundamentalists). Thus humanistic, spiritual, compassionate and communal values have become the logical poster children of the Bambi side of BAMBI MEETS GODZILLA. The values of individual freedom, however, are represented by the hero Godzilla (the pragmatic materialist) who stamps out the weak Bambi (the naive idealist) who must die in order for the laws of nature to prevail, and thus the morality of nature to prevail in a free society. The values of nature in a free society are, according to the Godzilla interpretation, the values of global market economics in support of the individual's right to happiness -- that is, buying whatever the hell they want, and the more one buys the better they are. The primacy of materialism, according to the skeptical Godzilla, is the only viable alternative. It is ultimately these global market values that must crush humanistic and religious values -- and for that matter any values -- that stand in their way because it is the values of the market, the values of Godzilla, that will supposedly ensure the survival of the species against the natural world. For this reason, Godzilla is not a monster of chaos, but a monster of control.

Get the message being pushed (or is it stomped?) on us: the one world religion of consumerism must prevail in order for humanity to survive.

Cultural Godzillas, fearing loss of control, must intimidate us all into believing it.

A minor problem is that consumerism/materialism never made anybody happy, and its current incarnation in fact leaves many suffering. This is the materialism of inequitable global capitalism that ignores basic needs while focusing on the wealth of a few. The motivating factor of greed that lies behind the current system, and the hatred, animosity, inequalities and injustice that it leaves in its wake, cannot sustain global survival into the future.

So a serious moral conundrum faces humanity at the moment. How do we continue to support the hero worship of Godzilla without having Godzilla destroy the very thing that sustains it? How far must Godzilla go, how many Bambis must be crushed, before all the Bambis are gone, and Godzilla reigns triumphant, and the various qualities of Bambi -- spiritual longing, communion with nature, sensitivity, empathy, tolerance, a live and let live attitude, a sense that life can "just be" and that that is ok -- how long before these spiritual and humanist values are finally crushed (or worse, co-opted endlessly into mindless sentimentality -- the Disneyfication of life) so that global market economics and the supposed security it offers can prevail? Is it only when we have dehumanized ourselves into universal BLADES that we will feel safe in nature? Is it only once we have warred with and killed all those nasty little Bambis that we will finally be able to stand forth as the triumph of nature over itself? Stand forth as a shining example of humanity that has beat the final and ultimate Bambi: the planet herself? Get the message: hate nature, benign as she may sometimes seem, for she is your enemy.

Make no mistake. Unrestrained global consumerism has at its core Cold War nuclear logic all over again: destroy the planet to save yourself.

The difference is that we will now likely do it.

The culture of BAMBI MEETS GODZILLA is a complex of mindsets, a self-sustaining cultural belief system that reinforces itself and is instinctively against anything that stands in its way, and thus brings together odd bedfellows. Boston economists who support "market ecologies." Technologists who believe that there is no environmental crisis. Intimidating International Monetary Fund policies (can you say Argentina?). School-boy debate tactics on cable television. Hyper-violent action movies, video games and music that make people numbed to violence, and less prone to outrage when we drop bombs on the wrong places. Cool New York hipsters who support cynical, non-issue "art films" as a "rebellion" against the (often phantom) Bambi values of their parents. The Heritage Foundation. New York and LA-based media marketers who want to get past those goddamned human values that restrain consumer hunger for new stimulus, new joy rides, the insatiable desire that will increase market churn tenfold and make us all rich if we come on board. Religious fundamentalists who want to crush other religious beliefs and will side with Godzilla in a marriage of convenience -- until at the last moment, once all the bad Bambis have been destroyed, then the good Bambis will overtake Godzilla in the end.

This is our insane culture of BAMBI MEETS GODZILLA. Will there be a sequel? Will Super Bambi (or perhaps many Super Bambis) finally stop Godzilla -- perhaps Dr. Helen Caldicott II?. If it doesn't happen soon, it never will, and Godzilla will look triumphantly out over a rather barren landscape populated by fellow Godzillas, each armed with credit cards and cell phones, loaded with anti-depressants or Ritalin, SUV's a blazin', plugged into some kind of mega Neighborhood Watch program, ready to keep the good 'ol USA one more step ahead of its competitors and safe for fresh new generations of Godzillas to come.

If they come.

-- Don Thompson

Discuss this article on the nextPix FORUM by going to its discussion thread: [click here]

Don Thompson is a filmmaker/producer and co-founder of SolPix. You can find out more about Don by going to the website for his production company nextpix. You can also email him at don@nextpix.com

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