The com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry of Godzilla’s gender

You could be for­giv­en for think­ing that Godzil­la is unequiv­o­cal­ly male. It arro­gant­ly stomps around like it owns the place, belch­es blue atom­ic breath, and has a promi­nent phal­lic sym­bol in the form of an enor­mous tail that pre­sum­ably grows back when ampu­tat­ed. That fact that every Eng­lish-speak­ing Godzil­la film made has referred to the mam­moth rep­tile as a ​‘him’ is also prob­a­bly a bit of a giveaway.

The sequel to Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzil­la has even been giv­en the gen­der-inflect­ed sub­ti­tle King of the Mon­sters, bor­row­ing its name from the 1956 Amer­i­can adap­ta­tion of the Japan­ese orig­i­nal. But there’s still some con­fu­sion sur­round­ing the creature’s sex, stretch­ing all the way back to the orig­i­nal Toho fran­chise. The Japan­ese films always refrained from using male pro­nouns, instead elect­ing to refer to the mon­ster using the gen­der-neu­tral pro­noun ​‘it’. Then, in 1967’s Son of Godzil­la, the monster’s hatch­ling Minya was intro­duced, lead­ing many to spec­u­late that Godzil­la must be female.

Mat­ters were com­pli­cat­ed fur­ther by Roland Emmerich’s 1998 fias­co star­ring Matthew Brod­er­ick, which fea­tures a heav­i­ly bas­tardised ver­sion of the crea­ture that also laid eggs. How­ev­er, the char­ac­ters soon con­clude that Godzil­la is repro­duc­ing asex­u­al­ly, as some species of lizard do. On the DVD audio com­men­tary of the film, spe­cial effects artists Patrick Tatopolous even stat­ed that they sculpt­ed female gen­i­talia onto Godzil­la, but he still referred to the crea­ture as a ​‘he’.

Despite there being more than enough evi­dence to sug­gest that Godzil­la is female, or per­haps her­maph­ro­dit­ic, the Eng­lish-lan­guage films have con­sis­tent­ly labelled it male – pre­sum­ably because the idea of a mas­sive, god-like crea­ture that wreaks hav­oc on a city being any­thing oth­er than mas­cu­line sim­ply doesn’t compute.

In 1954, the pur­pose of the orig­i­nal Goji­ra was to com­mu­ni­cate a sense of nuclear para­noia, fol­low­ing the atom­ic bomb­ings of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. Adult audi­ences were faced with dis­turb­ing images of burn­ing build­ings, over­flow­ing hos­pi­tals and peo­ple suf­fer­ing from radi­a­tion sick­ness. It’s telling that, in sub­se­quent Amer­i­can ver­sions, film­mak­ers have auto­mat­i­cal­ly per­ceived such a threat com­ing from a male crea­ture, per­haps because it helps to demonise it.

Is this default assump­tion of gen­der just plain sex­ism? Like when you see a dog and say ​‘there’s a good boy!’ before check­ing if it has a penis. If any­thing, in more recent adap­ta­tions Godzil­la has come to rep­re­sent Moth­er Nature’s fight against the destruc­tive influ­ence of man, a divine being that restores the nat­ur­al bal­ance of the world after it has been sul­lied by nuclear pol­lu­tion. And in a lit­er­al sense, the 350-foot behe­moth pro­tects human­i­ty from all man­ner of mas­sive beasts like a moth­er bird fend­ing off preda­tors from its chicks – but acci­den­tal­ly crush­ing some of them in the process.

Edwards described his iter­a­tion of Godzil­la as a ​“force of nature, like the wrath of God that comes to put us back in our place”. Tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from the Japan­ese orig­i­nal, his film was very much a mat­ter of ​‘Man vs Nature’. And Godzil­la: King of the Mon­sters con­tin­ues that theme, with its star Vera Farmi­ga affirm­ing it is ​“a film about sav­ing the environment”.

For a block­buster with such lofty ideals, where Godzilla’s sex plays no essen­tial part in the sto­ry, it makes just as much sense for its sex to remain ambigu­ous, much like it did in Toho’s Shin Godzil­la from 2016. That film pre­sent­ed a crea­ture that evolved before our eyes, adapt­ing to its envi­ron­ment and ene­mies to become an ulti­mate, inde­struc­tible organ­ism, one that tran­scend­ed the unnec­es­sary con­straint of gender.

The numer­ous con­tra­dic­tions between the Japan­ese and Amer­i­can Godzil­la films sug­gest we will nev­er have a defin­i­tive answer regard­ing the creature’s sex. Even Haru­ou Naka­ji­ma, the man who orig­i­nal­ly donned the rub­ber suit and stomped around a minia­ture city, hadn’t a clue if it was male or female. But at least from the ter­ri­fied civil­ians’ per­spec­tive, that means they’ll nev­er have the added hor­ror of star­ing up at a mas­sive lizard’s sex­u­al organ.