Ultraman

Today was Screening day! Well, to all you Science students out there a Screening class is when you come to class to watch movies. How sweet is that? I bet it's a few times more fun than your chemicalish, frog slaughtheringish class right? That's the sweet life of a Mass Comm student.

Today before the movie we discussed on the latest movie everyone had seen and the most probable answer was of course, Ghost Rider. There was this debate with one side saying that it is crap while the other side is praising it for its superb technicalities. Well, I haven't watched that movie myself but from the arguement, I can conclude that the movie is great techincally, but it fails in storytelling.

Anyway, from that arguement came the topic of metaphors in films since my friend Zain insisted that the director was a mere fanboy who doesn't include any metaphorical qualities in the movie apart from flash bang bang. My lecturer then brought up this topic on Ultraman. Yes folks, we brilliant folks here do discuss about Ultraman in class, with our lecturer.

Well, I never thought of this but Mr. Eric definitely have a great understanding about metaphors in Ultraman. Ultraman came about after the world war when Japan was under huge sanction by the Allied forces, especially the United States. Life then was hard and people need something to look up to.. and the were given Ultraman.

If you remember Ultraman, you can see that his outfit's colour is red and silver.. just like the Japanese flag. Yes, of course the flag is has white instead of silver. Want to know why? Silver is the common colour people will associate with technology so in this case, Ultraman symbolizes a technological Japan in a form of a huge superhero.

Then came the monsters. As we all know, the monster would usually come from some factory due to some animals got infected by radiation and stuff so it became gigantic and thus wreck havoc on the Japanese land. In every episode it would be almost the same stuff with cities destroyed and all that catastrophe. Sounds familiar? Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Both got banged by a nuclear bomb and were utterly destroyed not to mention several other cities that got bombed every day. That's the idea of the monster. You remember some of these monster came from the sea? That's another metaphor. If you go east from Japan through the sea, where would you land? Bingo. United States of America. So there's where those monsters came from..

And so Ultraman will fight off the monster and in every episode, he would fail the first time and then suddenly he'll get back on his feet and beat the monster before throwing the carcass into the sun (or other similar stars).. Japan, Land of the Rising Sun. Go figure.

Well, inevitably Ultraman is a symbol of a new Japan that is based on technological advancement as well as something the Japanese people can look up on to as a symbol of hope. It is true now that Japan, after the World War managed to get back on its feet and became a very successful nation, just like Ultraman.

Now, what about Cicakman.. what does it tell about our people?