Seong Im Hong
October 29, 2012
Koyaanisqatsi: A Wordless, Infatomable Critique
Koyaanisqatsi is a wordless critique of the “out of balance” modern life that utilizes slow motion and time-lapse images of nature and man-made phenomena as well as repetitive sound track. Its wordlessness is both refreshing and frustrating to behold, since most environmentally focused movies tend to be stock-full of statistics. However, the fact that the film is obviously attempting to emotionally engage the viewers, it is frustrating to be left without concrete facts to convince the viewers that the images of excess and destructions that the director has selected is, in fact, a good representation of the modern world.
Koyaanisqatsi begins with what is presumably an ancient Hopi pictogram of dark figures surrounding a taller figure. This image is introduced with a slow repetitive chanting of the word “Koyaanisqatsi.” Given that Koyaanisqatsi means “life out of balance” or “a state of life that calls for another way of living”, it is reasonable to assume that the pictograms were used to forge a popular connection between Native Americans and environmentalism, which seems to have gone hand-in-hand since the Crying Chief commercials. (Never mind the pop culture understanding of Native Americans being entirely harmonious with Mother Earth is problematic in its fetishistic romanticizing of an utopian past that may or may not have existed as we imagine it to be.) This pictogram is revisited at the very end of the film, perhaps as a reminder of what should be.
Then, the viewers are introduced to panoramic shots of natural landscape of what seems to be the New Mexican desert set to a foreboding music that is chant-like in its repetition of a single note over and over and over again. Soon, majestic horns are introduced as the viewers see clouds and waves that are of vast magnitudes, showing nature to be gigantic, grand, and magnificent. At this point, I started to feel my thoughts wander as I longed for the sound of human voice that could provide meaning to these shots. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the video more if I were used to the grainy color of the video, but to the modern audience who are used to HD documentaries, the panoramic shots seem substandard and outdated rather than awe-inspiring.
Despite how badly the video has aged, however, it is obvious that the director was skillful in manipulating the human emotion. To me, at least, this was the most interesting part of the documentary. After shots of jagged nature, we are introduced to fast panning over a colorful field that seems unnatural and striking in its geometry. Meanwhile, the sound track speeds up to amplify a sense of inevitable and potentially horrible change. We are then introduced to shots of man-made explosion that disturb the soils and trees as if to be reminded of what is the cost of geometric orderly fields: disturbing the earth’s equilibrium.
The video continues to show man-made structures in close-up shots to a truck that is obscured by black smoke. Meanwhile, the music takes on a darker tone as it introduces low-key instruments. Then, we are introduced to extensive piping and other man-made structures that now block the panoramic views of nature that we had in the very beginning of the film. One shot that stands out in particular is the aerial view of reservoirs near a factory. The complementary color contrast of the orange desert against the blue water as well as the highly ordered edges of the water reservoirs are jarring and striking.
We are then shown humans going about in their modern life. We are shown Broadway, Park Avenue, and Grand Central, which seem to be the quintessence of the modern life. People are packed into small spaces while they litter without care. We are shown bright glittering lights of time-lapsed videos of highways and dance floors. Stimulating images bombards us. We are shown Twinkie factories and poverty and Wall Street, until we finally focus back on the pictogram we were shown before. When we were shown humans for the first time, I found that I had snapped back to attentiveness. (Until, of course, the repetitive music and images made my attentions eventually wander again.)
Call it anthropocentrism or call it practicality, but I was getting bored of seeing the effects that breaking the equilibrium had on nature. What about me? I thought. This moment, to me, accentuated how hard paradigm shifts can be. I had been in MHC 200 seminar for two months now, yet I still feel myself apathetic to solely environment-focused environmentalism. Yes, I know that breaking the earth’s equilibrium must surely have a negative effect on us in the long run. However, unless I am confronted with a reason why I should care (because it effects me), I still find myself bored. I am not sure if this is a bad thing, however. I would still care if I had a specific change to fear, rather than a general “things will change for the worse” fear. Maybe in this case, what could be gained from caring about a vague change (but not having enough information to do anything about it) is not as much as what could be gained from not caring and going about my merry way.
This brings me to another problem I have with this documentary besides the painfully grainy colors: its emotional engagement without education. The fact that the filmmaker decided to start the documentary off with pure untouched nature and then proceeded in showing us the ugliest of human buildings (because really, oil rigs aren’t built for aestheticism) with a side of anxiety-provoking foreboding music as well as prolonged shots of The Challenger disaster makes it clear that he is trying to emotionally engage the viewers. Emotional engagement, as I’ve discussed with Professor Alexandratos before, is not bad in and of itself. Emotional engagement without education, however, is unethical. For example, the filmmaker decided to paint the modern life in unflattering light by showing demolitions, poverty, and aging rather than vaccinations, the increased middle class, and healthier, longer lives that almost everyone enjoys. However, he never bothered to tell us how common those signs of life of moral corruption (Koyaanisqatsi) are. Have they increased or decreased over the decade? What are their effects on the environment? I am unsure if the filmmaker assumed to be presenting in front of the educated audience who were already well schooled on the issue of environmentalism and the effect of modern lifestyle on earth. If not, is it ethical to show the general public this kind of image (a cherry-picking of degenerations of the modern life) without any facts to salt the emotional message with?
Perhaps the assumption is that with a strong enough emotional engagement like Koyaanisqatsi, the public will actively seek out facts pertaining to environmentalism. However, that puts much weight on the public’s proactiveness. I would not be surprised if the public walks out of the theater with the vague idea that “our way of life = bad” without any incentive to change their ways. Besides, we all know that modern life is horrible for the environment. This is a message that we’ve heard multiple times from multiple authorities over and over again. Maybe it was not a common knowledge in the 1980s, but at this point in our society, we don’t need another preachy film. What we need is an instructional film that, rather than simply showing what is wrong, shows what should be done and what could be if the things that should be done were actually done.
