Reva McAulay
MHC 200
10.29.12
The problem with discussing a movie like Koyaanisquatsi is that it is very difficult to remember. Normally, the parts you remember in a movie are the plot, some important dialogue, and maybe a few key visuals, especially in action movies. This movie had none of those things, and there were so many shots of different scenery, most of which were very brief, that it was hard to remember any individual one. Similarly, as a not musically-inclined person, I was not able to remember any piece of the music more than a few seconds later, especially because it had very little if anything in the way of melody. It seems that the only real way to remember a movie like this is to remember the emotions or thoughts it invoked.
My first impression was that someone had set a computer screensaver to music. Admittedly, this is in no way the film’s fault as it had been made many years before the invention of the screensaver, but it still diminished the emotional impact of the movie for me. Pictures of nature are everywhere, so seeing them on a small television screen is nothing special. This, again, is not the movie’s fault, because I’m sure seeing it on a big screen would have at least some of the impact of seeing such views in real life would. I found the scenes from the latter two-thirds of the movie to be more interesting than the first third, which was mostly the slow movement of such nature scenes. Initially it was because I thought the nature scenes chosen for Koyaanisquatsi were far from the most impressive sceneries in the United States. I’m not sure whether the Midwestern desert and rock formations were chosen because the director liked them or because he wanted to portray a sense of time, but they didn’t appeal to me all that much, so watching them for close to half an hour got boring. The images of industrial plants were much more interesting, because they were more dynamic and colorful. Things were happening, and explosions are fun to watch.
The city scenes were generally more interesting because they were time lapsed. This meant the movie actually was showing something the viewer had never seen before. Time-lapse offers a way of seeing changes and patterns in something that you see every day but only in isolated fragments. In addition, they were the only parts that held any sort of emotional quality. Several of the scenes were so hectic as to make me feel somewhat anxious or claustrophobic. I suppose many of the other things might have had a similar effect on people who aren’t as used to rushing crowds as I am. If somebody was used to quiet serenity, then the film might succeed in showing nature as calming and soothing and urban areas as hectic and unfortunate. There were some scenes that were just brilliant though. The still shots of people posing for the camera, particularly the one of the group of women all dressed in orange, was genuinely creepy. The factory scenes succeeded in showing the repetitiveness and futility of just manufacturing endless amounts of things nobody needs.
The music, however, gives the viewer a stronger indication of what feelings the scenes were intended to invoke. The first part, with the long, sweeping, unchanging views, has slow, calm music. This is replaced by fast, repetitive music that seems to foreshadow change and impending doom and that comes with sped up footage of moving clouds and waves. Then the music stops, and the nature is replaced by a large industrial complex. The fast, repetitive music comes back in as the screen shows machines and explosions. Then the music slows down and becomes much calmer as the picture switches over to people lying on the beach. This sets up a contrast as the camera pans out to reveal that the people are lying in front of a huge nuclear power plant. Then there’s more repetitive music binding together a parking lot full of cars, some old war tanks, US Air Force planes, rockets, and explosions. Sad violin music is the background for broken down old buildings, huge piles of rubble, people sitting on stoops in streets full of garbage. The violins are joined by loud vocals as huge buildings and bridges are demolished and cranes fall over. Creepy music goes with the creepy stills of people posing, and loud and fast music goes with the time lapses of people rushing and factories operating. Angelic-type vocals play over the image of a TV combining current events with consumerism, the sum of which gradually gets more and more disturbing.
I agree with one of the points that was clearly made in the movie, but not with the one that I think was the primary message. Throughout the whole movie, humans and nature are entirely separated. The only times humans are shown interacting with nature is to destroy it. That seems to imply that humans are incapable of enjoying nature or of preserving it. The message becomes not that humans should live with more contact with nature, or that humans should stop destroying nature, but that humans are only capable of destroying nature while being generally incapable of creating anything good. There’s no way a human population of any significant size, let alone the size of ours, to avoid leaving a mark on nature. Yet every mark on nature is portrayed as bad. This is a problem for which there is literally no solution other than the nonexistence of large human populations. That is pessimism of the highest order: framing a situation in such a way as to eliminate all possibility of a good outcome. Yes, maybe there are things that should be changed about society. But there are also many good aspects, and focusing solely on the bad ones is a very limited, and ultimately fruitless, way of looking at it.
Part of the Koyaanisquatsi website says that it intends to question the “vastly promotive, over-the-top positive” view of technology that comes from the producers of technology. The one that promises “a glowing wonderland of unlimited opportunity is promised by the good life of the technological order” (http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/aboutus/aboutus.php). I don’t doubt that that is an accurate description of how technology is portrayed by producers of technology, in ads and commercials and various other means of making people believe that they need to buy the latest of everything. Nor do I doubt that it is often portrayed that way by people unconnected with the business of inventing and manufacturing and selling technology. There are plenty of movies, books, political campaigns and who knows what else that promote the limitless possibilities of technology. The problem is that art is not, and should not be the same as business and political propaganda. Businesses and politicians show only their side of the story, and only bring up alternative views in order to dispute them.
Art, on the other hand, is supposed to be more reflective of reality. Everything has good and bad sides. Even a movie with a very heavy handed message saying that war is horribly will usually show some small good sides, like the heroics of some people involved. Koyaanisquatsi really did not seem to grant more than a tiny bit of attention to the beauty and accomplishments of technology, and it is hard to tell if those were intentional. The scene of the space shuttle quite clearly shows the disaster that comes with technology, that comes of overstepping the boundaries of nature. It foreshadows the potential failure of technology. And yet what of the brilliance of being able to visit other planets and to see the Earth from the outside? The movie tries to paint even the best pieces of technology as awful and that makes all of it seem disingenuous.
The message I do agree with is the idea that technology is not a cure for all of the world’s problems. Technology will not cure the environment, end war, or end starvation (that takes economics). I even agree with the judgment Koyaanisquatsi puts on technology and consumerism. I don’t like them much either. I just don’t think they are inherent parts of humanity, at least not to the extent Koyaanisquatsi depicts them as.
