The Monstrefact: Mothra

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the legendary Kaiju Mothra…

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
This week on Weird House Cinema, we'll be discussing the
classic nineteen sixty four Kaiju movie Mathra versus Godzilla, in

(00:31):
which the Great Divine moth comes to humanity's defense despite
humanity's obvious greed and corruption. Originally introduced in her own
self titled nineteen sixty one movie, Mathra has continued to
serve as a mainstay in the Godzilla franchise. In the
nineteen sixty four film, we see that Mathra's physical form

(00:52):
continually experiences death and rebirth via the hatching of an
enormous egg. In fact, the egg hatches to reveal twins,
providing the Great Kaiju protector with a strategic advantage over
Godzilla in their final fight, despite the larval forms that
she is restricted to. Now this led me to wonder

(01:13):
if natural world moths ever hatch twins, while insects do,
on rare occasions produce genetic twins, but there are also
accounts of double cocoons among silk moths, as pointed out
by Weighing at All in the two thousand and three
paper Analysis of the Movement of two silkworms during the
construction of double Cocoons, published in the Journal of Insect

(01:35):
Biotechnology and Serachology. That's the study of silk. Two mature
larvae sometimes jointly spin a large cocoon called a double cocoon,
in which they both develop into adults. Furthermore, the practice
seems to be more common in certain genetic strains of silkworm.
Environmental factors such as crowded confines also seem to play

(01:56):
a factor. Double cocoons are not ideal for silk production,
but one can easily imagine why these occurrences might stand
out as interesting curious. The emergence of twin larvae in
Mathra versus Godzilla, of course, mirrors the Kaiju's twin fairy
priestesses the shobitchin, though the main reason for the incorporation
of human twins here was apparently to capitalize on the

(02:19):
international popularity of identical twin Japanese singers the peanuts Emmy
and Yumi Eto. The original screenplay draft for nineteen sixty
one's Mathra apparently called for no fewer than four fairies,
but it ended up being these two lovely twins instead.
When Mathra battles Godzilla, we see her make use of

(02:40):
an incapacitating dust attack on the King of Monsters. It's
a great sequence that seems to play on the common
observation of fine dust on the wings of natural world moths.
As pointed out by Lewis Villason for BBC Science Focus,
these are actually tiny scales made from modified hairs, as
with butter flies. If handled roughly, the scales on these

(03:03):
wings will rub off on your fingers and appear as
some manner of fine powder. Perhaps Mathra really is making
use of some otherworldly dust, but it could also be
the power of her shed wing scales. Look, she's a goddess.
She can do it she wants. And of course, the
silk attacks used by her offspring in the film closely
match up with the silk production of silkworms bombyx Moy,

(03:27):
which clearly served as the major biological inspiration for Mathra,
Queen of the Monsters. Tune in for additional episodes of
The Monster fact The Artifact or Anomalius stupendium each week.
As always, you can email us at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
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