🎬 Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Godzilla We Never Knew

📖 Based on research from JS Center:
👉 jscenter.ir/jews-and-the-media/jews-and-hollywood/14720

🕊 The Tragedy That Hollywood Silenced

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the first and only use of nuclear weapons by a government against a nation — a horrific act of genocide carried out by the United States of America.
Every American president since then has visited Japan and bowed before the memorial of the victims… yet not one — Republican or Democrat — has ever apologized.

International courts and human rights institutions have also remained silent, even as the world’s only nuclear war criminal continues to police others’ nuclear programs.

💥 The Birth of Godzilla — A Cry from Hiroshima

In the world of art and cinema, few works have truly captured Japan’s pain. But in 1954, Japanese filmmakers created a powerful symbol — Gojira (Godzilla) — a monster born not of myth, but of radiation and trauma.

His scarred, rough skin reflected the burned flesh of atomic survivors.
His rage symbolized the wrath of innocence betrayed.
And his story, a warning to humanity: If nuclear testing continues, new monsters will rise again.

During the years of U.S. occupation, when Japanese artists were forbidden from criticizing America, Tomoyuki Tanaka and Ishirō Honda created Godzilla as a secret protest — a metaphor for the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Honda himself had witnessed Hiroshima’s ruins on his return from the war, and the horror he saw became the emotional heart of the film.

🎞 When Hollywood Took Over

In 1956, when Godzilla reached America, Hollywood rewrote history.
All political messages were deleted — the bombings were no longer crimes, and America was no longer the aggressor.

By 1998, Hollywood went further: the monster was no longer born from U.S. nuclear testing, but from French experiments, turning America into the “victim” — and finally the “savior.”

In 2014, the distortion reached its peak. Nuclear weapons themselves became the heroes, the “solution” to the monster they once created.

☢️ The Message They Tried to Erase

Despite decades of censorship and narrative manipulation, Godzilla’s original message still roars through time:

“As long as nuclear powers exist, the possibility of new monsters — and the death of humanity — remains.”

🕯 Remember Hiroshima. Remember Nagasaki. Remember the Godzilla they tried to silence.

#Godzilla #Hiroshima #Nagasaki #HiddenHistory #Hollywood #NuclearWar #USWarCrimes #FilmHistory #JSCenter #MediaManipulation

✅ @rahyafte_en

🎬 The Cold War's Grip on Iranian and World Cinema
https://jscenter.ir/jews-and-the-media/jews-and-hollywood/9715

On the occasion of the screening of "#Abi_va_Rabi" – Iran's first silent feature film, shown at Mayak Cinema (Dec 30, 1930):

The post-World War II era saw the world divided into a bipolar order, with the Soviet Union and the United States as rival superpowers. While they never engaged in direct military conflict, their global rivalry—known as the Cold War—lasted 45 years and reshaped international relations.

The term "Cold War" itself was first used by an American Jewish politician, Bernard Baruch.

🎥 Cinema as the Main Battlefield

This period proved that the primary arena of superpower conflict was not direct warfare, but the realm of "Soft Conflict" – a battle for hearts and minds. Cinema became the ultimate weapon in this struggle.

· In the Eastern Bloc, Vladimir Lenin declared, "For us, cinema is the most important art," and put his wife in charge of Soviet film. The state used it for socialist propaganda in films like Battleship Potemkin and Solaris.
· In the Western Bloc, Hollywood took the lead. It projected American myths, lifestyle, and liberal values worldwide, constantly strengthening its media power to win the ideological war.

Historical analysis suggests that many regional wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Korea) and crises (Berlin Wall, Suez) during this time were, in essence, proxy battles and tools for these superpowers to expand their global influence through media and propaganda dominance.

🇮🇷 The Lost Path of Iranian Cinema

While the world was engaged in this cultural-ideological war, the Iranian film industry, which began in 1904, took a passive and directionless path.

· For its first 26 years, Iranian screens were dominated by foreign films from America, France, Germany, the USSR, and Egypt.
· When Iran finally produced its first silent film, Abi and Rabi (1930), and later its first talkie, The Lor Girl (1934), it did so without a clear intellectual direction or regard for the profound global transformations.
· Instead of addressing national concerns or the impact of World Wars, Iranian cinema under the Pahlavi regime became a tool for Western cultural infiltration. It focused on shallow entertainment, romantic melodramas, and gradually morphed into the infamous "Film Farsi" genre.

🍿 The "Film Farsi" Phenomenon

By the 1960s, Iranian cinema had crystallized into "Film Farsi," a unique hybrid that mixed shallow Hollywood and Bollywood storytelling techniques. Its hallmarks became:

· Sensationalism (sex, alcohol, cabaret dancing)
· Violence (fistfights)
· Shallow plots centered on trivial relationships
· A growing emphasis on indecency and breaking social norms

The peak was the massive commercial success of films like Ganj-e Qarun (1965), a copy of Indian melodramas. However, by the early 1970s, the Iranian society began to reject this culture of "distraction" and moral decay that Film Farsi promoted.

The Cold War era starkly revealed cinema's power: it could dismantle cultures or help civilizations rise. While the superpowers wielded it as a strategic weapon, pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema, unfortunately, became a vehicle for cultural alienation and lost identity.

Source: Jewish Studies Center - "The Reign of the Cold War in Iranian and World Cinema"
Author: Dr. Musa Ismailnejad

#ColdWar #IranianCinema #FilmHistory #Hollywood #Propaganda #FilmFarsi #AbiAndRabi #SoftPower #MediaStudies

✅ @rahyafte_en