DagorausWhear

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

Thanks for your work on the Tuckerman article. I had never heard of this guy, and you have doen a good job on the earticle.

I just changed a bunch of links from generic last names to full names, which is part of the process we call process we call "disambiguation" (a truly ugly neologism.) I'm fairly sure I picked the correct names in all cases, but please check Bryant. Did you mean William Cullen Bryant, or John Delavau Bryant? For your future refrence, you can create a dab link by using "pipe syntax." for example, [[William Cullen Bryant|Bryant]] displays as Bryant but links to the William Cullen Bryant page. -Arch dude (talk) 18:24, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help and kind words. DagorausWhear (talk) 00:09, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Your Godzilla edits

Hi. I was reading your latest edit to the Godzilla page, and while it is fascinating you have to realize that not once has any of Godzilla's creators cited that book as an inspiration. Tomoyuki Tanaka was the man who created Godzilla and he cited King Kong and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms as his influences. He wanted to make a giant monster film ever since he saw King Kong breaking box offices records in Japan in 1933. When he was able to get his project off the ground at Toho he even stated, "I want to make a movie where a big monster attacks Japan the same way King Kong attacked New York". In fact one of the early designs for Godzilla was a creature that was more simain looking than reptilain. He was also inspired by The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms after he read about the movie in a trade magazine and was marvelling at its box office success.Giantdevilfish (talk) 18:57, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

The reasons I included the edit were that the resemblance was so striking and the book cited was a very popular serial and novel in Japan. Plenty of creative artists willfully avoid naming certain sources of inspiration -- the old "Anxiety of Influence" thing a la Harold Bloom -- so that does not preclude it being an inspiration. If it had been written by a Russian and was circulated in samizdat form, the stretch I was taking would be inexcusable. Do you feel it has no value in this article, or could it be titled differently?

Something like "Resemblance of monster concept to fantasy segment in popular Japanese literary work of the 1920s and 1930s"? Please advise. DagorausWhear (talk) 07:58, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The latter one would seem better. The problem is you can't write this sort of thing on an online encyclopedia, because what you are doing is speculating and assuming. (Especially when the title of the section contains the word "possible"). Encyclopedias are meant to state neutral facts (preferably cited). The whole speculations and theories aspect should be reserved for message boards or chat rooms. More than likely Tanaka didn't even read or hear about this novel because he would certainly have mentioned it through the years. He stated he was influenced by Shigeru Kayama's writings, which is why he hired him to write the original story. He was also influenced by Kazuyoshi Abe's artwork. It was some of his Dinosaur illustrations that influenced Tanaka to change Godzilla's appearance from an ape/whale creature to a Dinosaur creature. Writing "Plenty of creative artists willfully avoid naming certain sources of inspiration" doesn't make any sense because Tanaka cited King Kong as an influence (I gave you a direct quote which could be found in the Japanese book "Godzilla Days"). Its also been stated he was inspired as well by The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. (These were the monster influences behind the story). Of course the thematic influences were the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the Lucky Dragon incident. So you have evidence of him naming certain sources of inspiration both foreign and domestic. So more than likely if he was influenced by this novel he would have mentioned it through the years which he didn't. Merian C. Cooper (who created King Kong) cited "Tales and Explorations in Equatorial Africa" and "The Dragon Lizards of Komodo" as influences. So there is another example of how these creators do indeed cite their inspirations. Until you can get a quote from Godzilla's creator or a source from a book citing the influence, (and I have quite a few Japanese books and periodicals and none even mention this book), its best to leave it off because its simply speculatory. Or you could use the title you suggested and mention how before Godzilla this piece of Japanese literature that was written between 1921-1937 contained a sequence with a giant monster that predates Godzilla (but avoid calling it an inspiration)Giantdevilfish (talk) 17:04, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. "Possible influences" are part of the intellectual activity of even the highest brands of "scholarship", so I would like to leave it in with the added qualifications you recommended. It is a commonplace in literary scholarship for poets and prose writers to willfully avoid making mention of certain influences. So, I do not believe that it is beyond the realm of possibility that the creator of a Japanese monster movie could do the same. Thanks again for your help. DagorausWhear (talk) 14:41, 4 December 2010 (UTC)