What Godzilla can teach us about Donald Trump

Classic Japanese kaiju movies provide an allegorical framework to better understand the American president

He tramples things without intending to. He was created by us. He never permanently goes away. In recent years, metaphorical representations of Donald Trump as the Japanese kaiju Godzilla have become common. Now, a paper published in De Gruyter Brill’s The Forum argues that the Showa period Godzilla films (1954-75) can be read as an allegory of Trump’s political career from 2016-24.

Such an allegory provides a far deeper and more informative representation of Trump than mere metaphors or comparisons. It also helps us to understand his allies, his antagonists, and his potential legacy in a way that simple metaphors cannot. While metaphor and allegory capture features of the thing they resemble, allegory is richer and wider-ranging: an allegory of a particular event implies that it will follow a particular path; for example, Richard Adams’ allegorical novel Watership Down shows not just what totalitarian rule is but how it will develop.

In this paper, Professor Robert Boatright of Clark University, USA identifies a narrative arc in the Showa era Godzilla films that parallels the first Trump presidency and his 2021–24 interregnum. In all but the first of these films, Godzilla fights against another monster that has different characteristics and powers – such as King Kong – and the audience has to decide who to root for, and whether it is better to have Godzilla at large or decisively defeated.

Professor Boatright does not only compare Trump with Godzilla. He also compares other contemporary American political events with events in the films. For example, Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) is like a parable describing the fate of Representative Liz Cheney and the House Select Committee convened from 2021 to 2022 to investigate the January 6 insurrection. Similarly, the ending of Destroy All Monsters (1968) has parallels with the rise of Trump-like candidates in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Professor Boatright explains: “This article explores the lessons we can learn from the plot and characters of the Godzilla films of the 1950s through 1970s that will help us understand developments during the Donald Trump presidency. Lessons from films such as these are more familiar to most citizens and politicians, and thus are more likely to be used to interpret and respond to political events than are the historical patterns often used by scholars to explain political behavior.”

The paper can be found here: