Very few people have realised it, but the reason why the Godzilla films continue to exert an incredible fascination on people's minds, including many adults, has to do with a biological and cognitive legacy that our species has been passing on to itself for millennia, and which over the centuries has marked the history, the epic and the very existence of all civilisations that have appeared on the face of the earth.
That same legacy, known as the collective unconscious, continues today to inspire the daily work of marketers, storytellers, writers and storytellers, and psychologists (since the time of Carl Jung) are always working to decipher some of its more mysterious aspects, which we will probably never fully understand.
In Jung's treatment, the protagonists of the collective unconscious are the archetypes, the enigmatic creations of our mind, suspended between dream and reality, which the human brain has always created, and which it continues to recognise even today in the images and visual representations to which we are exposed every day.
Although they are a nebulous creation, often not clearly delineated, archetypes possess characteristics that are immediately recognisable on an unconscious level, leading human beings to vaguely (almost always unconsciously) recognise them in a person, a character in a film, a book or a painting. When we recognise an archetypal figure, we seem to feel a certain familiarity with it, as if we have already seen or known it somewhere.
The truth is that it is a figure firmly rooted in us from the first day of our existence, since it is an integral part of the cognitive baggage of every human being.
The role of archetypes
The success of the Godzilla character over the years may be linked to the power of certain archetypes, and in particular those figures capable of evoking a sense of mystery, fear, oppression. In a certain sense, monstrous figures like Godzilla represent the embodiment of our secret fears, of all that we do not know or cannot understand, of all the mysteries that have always fascinated or frightened us, leaving us in a curious feeling of suspension between wonder, enchantment and fright.
In this sense, the portrayal of a gigantic monster in the shape of a dinosaur, also endowed with strange powers belonging to other sci-fi universes, is able to exert an irresistible attraction on the human soul, a partly inexplicable feeling in which fear, a taste for sci-fi characters and curiosity about a mystery that has never been fully revealed, whose name we barely know, find their place.
In the figure of Godzilla, our souls inevitably recognise the archetype of the monster, of everything that has always frightened human beings, and which therefore constitutes a very strong source of attraction.
Beyond passions
This also partly explains the fact that many adults, even over 40, continue to be irresistibly attracted to this violent and monstrous character. It is not simply a passion for the science fiction genre, but the special attraction that each of us continues to experience towards all that is incomprehensible, frightening and mysterious.
The human soul has always been attracted to these magical, elusive elements, and will always be so, until the ultimate extinction of our species.
The figures of the archetypes are so powerful that nowadays, more often than one would think, they are still used by certain companies in their communication strategies, with the aim of making them even more attractive and exciting for their audience.
By identifying a certain archetype, or a situation that could also be defined as archetypal, companies thus try to continuously improve their communicative firepower, turning it into an all-encompassing experience that can also engage people's unconscious.
A strategy of this kind is also often used by some of the best online gambling portals, which for some years now have been offering incredibly intense and exciting experiences to each of their users. Within these portals, each player will in fact be able to find the casino games best suited to their needs and personal tastes, with the possibility of trying them out in total security.
In addition to being safe and reliable, each game also has the ability to immerse the player in the typical atmosphere of traditional casinos, thus activating the archetypal situation often observed in films or TV series dedicated to the world of gambling. The games offered by the site are carefully selected according to stringent criteria based on their security, reputation and punctuality of payments, and therefore represent an absolute guarantee of reliability.
Each of us has to fight against an invisible monster. Sometimes, in front of the television screen, these fears materialise, taking shape in a gigantic being from which we cannot take our eyes off.
