One unique and unusual aspect of my current semester of grad school is I’m doing my first ever independent study. Specifically, a study on several films directed by Ishiro Honda, the lauded director of many Godzilla films. It took a little work to convince my university’s resident film professor (and most reclusive man in the English department) to do this with me, but he agreed. Not only that, but he actually liked the first film I wrote about in this study, 1955’s Half Human, and said the cinematography reminded him of Akira Kurosawa! I’m excited to be introducing him to films he isn’t familiar with.
One fun thing about this is I got to write my own syllabus for it. Here’s an excerpt:
Objective: The goal of this study is examine six films directed by Ishiro Honda and connect their stories to contemporaneous cultural and historical events in Japan. Films are never made in a vacuum, and knowing and understanding their original contexts is vital to appreciating them.
There will be a special focus on discriminated people groups in this study since half of the films being covered will involve such groups.
While Honda is best known for his Godzilla films, I will be focusing on several of his non-Godzilla genre pictures spanning a ten-year period that included what’s considered the “golden age” of Toho tokusatsu (special effects) filmmaking. Honda also directed dramas, war epics, and light comedies, but these films are sadly unavailable in the U.S. currently.
The films and related topics I’ll be examining are Half Human/The Ainu; The Mysterians/Japan and the U.N.; Varan the Unbelievable/The Burakumin; Atragon/Japanese WWII holdovers and the resurgence of Japanese nationalism; Matango/Japan’s newfound opulence;and Frankenstein Conquers the World/The Hibakusha.
This came about because I wanted to fill a few credit hours and make the research I’m doing for my new podcast, The Monster Island Film Vault, count as school credit. Because why not?
There are reasons why grad school might be the best thing in my life right now. J