I was expecting something quite different when I began this film. I expected an extensive documentary which sent out to investigate a problem, interviewed regular people as well as representatives of business and government. I expected each point to be concise but well-developed, and to lead together into a decisive closing statement. Instead I saw a poetic vision of the natural earth, of human industry and its excesses. The film was about images and emotions, accentuated by continuous music, rather than ideas, statistics and solutions. It takes the positives and negatives of human influence and organizes them into three dichotomies: natural beauty and human decay, the greatness of human achievement and the fear of human destructive power, and productivity and consumerism. In this way it engages us emotionally in an easy to understand and thought-provoking manner.

The main portion of the film opens upon beautiful landscapes which appear to be from the American southwest. These locales are open and clear and probably more beautiful than any place I’ve yet seen, and seem almost entirely free from human intervention. Our point of view drops down immense caverns, past towering rock spires, and eventually switches to scenes of untouched mountain ranges as clouds flow over and around them. This segment serves to introduce the beauty of the earth free from human exploitation, and what is and will continue to be lost every day as development continues.

Next, the scene shifts, accompanied by ominous music, producing the second half of the first dichotomy. The setting still appears to be somewhere in the southwest, but humans have left their mark. Industrial complexes surrounded by chemical-filled pools (very reminiscent of those set up by Mobil’s near Arthur Kill).  Later we see scenes of abandoned buildings, of poor neighborhoods and poverty. Throughout the film there are scenes of the negative aspects of urban life, with the high summer heat, the crowds, and the congestion. Each of these contributes to the next stage of emotional engagement. Similar to the “problem phase” of MHC 200’s arc, these scenes show us some of our largest mistakes. Industry creates and motivates, but not all of its creations are positive. With production comes waste (barring green engineering) inequality. We’ve built ghettos alongside our financial centers, and waste holding sites along our power suppliers.

Scattered throughout the film are scenes of human achievement and destruction. We create our own hills and mountains in high-rises and skyscrapers, and our own streams and rivers in roads and highway complexes. The film shows us the beauty of these creations, with blue sky and clouds reflecting off the mirrored side of a business building. Later we get bird’s-eye views of the city a night, which, at least to me, are nearly as beautiful as the wonders of the southwest we saw earlier. Still later we see images of highways as cars move about them like red blood cells in an artery. When the camera’s viewpoint accelerates, moving us faster and faster through the streets at night, the neon lights blend together like something from a science fiction movie. In my interpretation, these scenes show the strength and glory of human creations.

They are countered by our ability to destroy. Throughout the film, we see visions of destruction along with our visions of creation. When I see an aircraft carrier with the equation “E = mc²” emblazoned on its deck, I think immediately of the nuclear reactor deep within. At a different point in the film, we see that energy directed purely for destructive purposes: an atomic bomb detonates. Other scenes of destruction haunt us throughout the film. We see military vehicles repeatedly, along with ICBM launches, fighter jet rockets exploding, and other, unexplained explosions. At one point the afore-mentioned scenes of poverty collide with destruction: the demolition of a whole series of decrepit high rises happens before our eyes. Along with the power to create comes our power to destroy. It is awe-inspiring, but also frightening and worrisome. It’s importance must also be understood in the context of the cold war, when this film was made. The growth of our productive forces led directly to our ability to destroy, and exists as a constant threat both to us and the environment. Explosives that don’t detonate can act as mines in the ground for decades. Chemicals within them, as well as weaponry like depleted Uranium rounds, contaminate the environment and create a large risk of birth defects. Nuclear war, more of a threat in the 1980s than today, poses the ultimate risk of a nuclear winter.

The third dichotomy relates to productivity and consumption. On the one hand, Koyaanisqatsi gives us several looks inside the productive and financial centers of our nation. We see assembly lines creating cars and stock markets where new companies find capital. Cars and businesses both create great wealth and productivity in our society, but neither of these things, so well-loved in America, are without their drawbacks. Each is an icon of our current way of living, of individualism, prosperity, and success – but also of consumption and greed. The film proposes a balance with these institutions, but the balance is shifted when we see what many other factories produce. The film focuses in on a hotdog factory and a Twinkie factory, examples of low-quality, unhealthy food. From there the scene brings us to food courts and shopping malls, places of conspicuous consumption and waste. The film seems to linger here with this idea of wasted potential. It shows us the immense infrastructure we have built that is capable of creating marvels, but is instead oriented towards trivial pleasures. We have mined and built upon great swaths of the earth, but largely not for any important reason – just to consume more and more.

The film ends with an explanation both of the title and of the Hopi words sung throughout. Koyaanisqatsi means “life out of balance”, which cannot be maintained. This is clearly evident, both from the film and from myriad other expert sources on the environment. The first prophecy, which says, “if we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster,” seems at first glance to be the naïve saying of a pre-metallurgic society. While the Hopi of the past couldn’t have known what environmental problems we of the present face, I can only think of how appropriate the prophecy is in the light of coal mining and oil drilling. These industries have invited disaster in numerous ways, both in terms of toxic chemical release, environmental disruption, and the ultimate threat of global warming. The second prophecy, “near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky,” is less transparent, but these “cobwebs” could certainly be interpreted as carbon dioxide and the any other gases and particulate matter we have released into the atmosphere. The third prophecy, “a container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans,” seems almost prescient in the light of global warming. We have placed those chemicals in the sky, and they do threaten to desertify our land, to melt our icecaps, to destroy our ozone layer, to acidify our ocean and to raise temperatures everywhere.

The first and last scenes of the film are of a rocket taking off. The rocket, built by human ingenuity and manpower, lifts powerfully into the air, soaring off into the heavens. It is finally on the verge of escape from this planet when it explodes. One interpretation of this image is quite dark. We have come too far on ancient sunlight, and altered the environment too much – the only thing left is to wait for our hubris to consume us, like Icarus flying too close to the sun on waxen wings. But there is a second interpretation: Only that we can’t run away from the problems we’ve created, that we need to face the challenges before us.  The second interpretation seems true for now, but the challenges we face grow more dire every day.

This seems to be the overarching theme of the film: we need to make the right choices. We as humans have so many capabilities: we can change the world, or we can leave it be. We can create beauty or we can create destruction. We can direct our industry towards meeting the challenges we face, or we can continue to produce only the purpose of consumption. Until we make the right choices, life will remain “out of balance,” and we will continue to put ourselves and our society at risk.

Political activism takes many forms and exists on many levels. On the national level, organizations raise money to elect and lobby candidates in their own interests. On the community level, a group might sponsor an ad campaign, gather signatures for a petition or a hold a local event to raise awareness. And on the individual level, everything from the food one chooses to buy to the beliefs one expresses while in company can spark new thoughts and a change in the behavior of those nearby. When it comes to the personal choices one makes, artists have yet another option—to unleash their beliefs and feelings into the world through their art. This is what Frances Ford Coppola does with his 1982 film, Koyaanisqatsi.

Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi word whose shades of meaning include “crazy life”, “life out of balance” and “a way of life that calls for another way of life”. Coppola illustrates it through his juxtaposition of a classical Philip Glass score and Hopi chanting, by confronting viewers with the disparities between things wrought by nature and things that are man-made. It is an avant-garde film—perhaps not excessively so for somebody that has gone near the visual arts scene in 2012. The film itself has no characters, only scenes of the Earth and the variety that spreads across its surface. It tells a story but does not have a plot, nor narration. Its slow pace could make it more difficult to ingest for people used to the fast flashes of today’s movies, to six-minute-tops YouTube videos. The way that it lingers on each scene stresses in viewer’s minds the passing of time. It emphasizes the enormity of all things nature created, the cheap transience of what humans make, and how quickly humans can destroy both.

The scenes of nature that the movie begins with are mostly landscapes—deserts, oceans, mountains, clouds—that hit the viewer with the grandeur of the Earth. One could find beauty on a smaller scale, but rather than focusing on plants and animals, Coppola decides to highlight the vastness of the planet. Watching it makes you feel small. Taking in the massive mountains—that stand for countless human lifetimes—makes you feel insignificant. You realize how slowly the land forms, ages and changes on its own. It dawns on you how small a fraction of time you’ll be alive in its presence. In the scenes with clouds, racing or rapidly shifting, you notice that fluidity and movement are also a part of the earth’s equilibrium. It illustrates how, though faster at changing than huge rock formations, water and the atmosphere do not leave a trace of a scar. They, and whatever they carve over time, fit neatly into their place in nature, however chaotic or uncontrollable humans find them. The shot taken from a plane as it flies just above the surface, over mountain, tree and water—the horizon rushing towards the viewer—gives you the sense of something limitless.

Entering the scenes of human creations, viewers encounter a very different set of ideas. Some sort of land-clearing vehicle, quickly obscured by the black smoke of its own expulsion, marks the ominous transition. It disappears completely into the fumes—you never see it move, but the scenes begin to shift, and explosions begin and spread. The mountains—whose strength and endurance you had just finished appreciating—crumble to debris in seconds. Power lines cut across skylines, power plants flatten the landscape they lie on, and the level of variety on the Earth’s surface plummets. Soon, the only surfaces you see are flat ones—glass, concrete, sidewalks, walls. Soon, things become predictable. Lights switch on and off in windows as sunlight slides over and past them. Assembly lines run on a repeat loop endlessly, churning out everything from cars to prepackaged food. Highways grow crowded at the same time every day because the practices of a human society demand it. Life has sunk into a rushed routine. And for what? As you watch, you get the sense that humans are making themselves part of a machine that runs their lives, one that they’ve constructed themselves. Soon the images shift again, and you see humans tearing down their own creations. TNT winds and snaps through city buildings, making them rubble as dust spreads outwards. You see flashes of today’s tools of war–the magnitude of the world’s investment in military technology. Military aircraft, aircraft carriers, tanks, and missiles give way to the explosions of the atomic bomb. In the final scene, we watch a space rocket rise into the atmosphere and explode due to a malfunction. Even after the rest of the rocket has disintegrated, a shard of its booster continues to consume fuel and spew out flames as it falls, spinning, from the sky. An unintended catastrophe, but a catastrophe nonetheless—and, some might argue, a highly preventable one.

The movie employs both sound and visuals to express its heavy symbolism. Throughout the movie, the music relates to what Coppola wishes to convey. The chanting of the phrase “koyaanisqatsi” is only present during the scenes with the spacecraft—during the opening credits, and during the last scene. These are the scenes that put an emphasis on the wastefulness of human practices that are completely unnecessary to life. The instrumentals sound smoother, softer and sweeping during the opening landscapes and quicker, more urgent and panicky, as the film phases into the details of human creation. The use of humans themselves in the film is also symbolic. The cave paintings at the beginning and end of the film show a type of human expression that can endure almost as long as the rock itself—a form of expression that came about before mankind upset the balance of life on the planet. The moving portraits of modern humans, meanwhile, illustrate the fast pace of life today. Some people smile at the camera, others scowl and look away, and others pose, but all of them seem too occupied with their lives—with wherever they need to go next—to give much thought to most of what is around them. One shot even shows people lying on the beach as a horrible power plant hovers over them, just on the other side of a nearby fence. What this says is that modern humans are too preoccupied with their conveniences to care much about sustainability. They’re too busy, and too estranged from the planet, to create anything truly lasting.

There’s a line from an e.e. cummings poem that goes, “Progress is a comfortable disease”—and that fits the theme of this movie exactly. To me, that line rings true. The surface of our planet—the very literal landscape—has been transformed by human greed, and our lives haven’t gotten any better in the process. What is progress, anyway? The earliest human societies were hunter-gatherers. They were communal, and small enough that everybody knew everybody else; there was no currency, not even any form of permanent settlement. There were also no homeless shelters, no orphanages, and no gas stations, because these things simply weren’t needed. People took care of each other. They had what they needed to live. Today, people in huge swaths of the world have more. They have much more than is enough, and they still don’t feel like it’s enough. So what has progress done? Has it taught us to be humbler, more compassionate, and more appreciative of what we have?

I’m not suggesting that scientific inquiry and business activity must halt—these things have always been a part of human life, and always will be. But, as Koyaanisqatsi shows, mankind is destroying the bounty of its own home. Humans today don’t value the Earth enough to keep from stripping it down and wasting it. What I’m saying is that our gifts can be used to bring us to a future where we’re still connected to the roots of our humanity, rather than to some stressful, unhealthy, unsustainable machine we’ve created. It’s a different kind of progress—one based on people acting in their own self-interest without being selfish. And, yes, it is possible. It can happen if people stop being hasty and recognize that when they improve the quality of life for the people and creatures around them, they do so for themselves. I believe that we will only have achieved real progress when people value everything that nature gives them and remember, as some cultures have long taught, that nobody floats above the web of life on this planet.

Dialogue is often considered the defining element of a movie. Some of the best movies of all time are also the most frequently quoted. It gives viewers a channel with which to relate to the characters, to the situations and the overall pathos of the movie. It gives viewers an idea of the message the producers are trying to send, the tone the director is attempting to the set, the personality actors are trying to portray.

Koyaanisqatsi is not however, a traditional movie. It possesses no real characters, no discernible plot and on the surface, seemingly no organization. Indeed, there is not a single line of dialogue from beginning to end. In effect, Koyaanisqatsi is more accurately a work of art than a work of cinema. As such, it is very much open to interpretation. With no words at its disposal, the movie makes no attempt at indoctrinating or necessarily even at maintaining a constant message. 

The narrative, if indeed one can be considered to exist at all, is thoroughly driven by the score. It is alternately fast and slow, languid and dynamic. The music invites contemplation and what message that can be derived from the structured mess of images flashing by on the screen is one the viewers must search out and discover for themselves.

The score in the background provides a general mood but makes nothing obvious. Mournfully slow music accompanies both sunrises painting the horizon and images of industrial plants hovering in the distance as beachgoers relax on a sandy shore. Fast paced tunes underscore both shots of river valleys and wide swaths of farmland. Almost frantic music accompanies chaotic and conflicting scenes across the screen. There are shots of clouds roiling and spilling over the mountaintops, of walls of water crashing and smashing into each other, of mountaintops blown sky high in a shower of rock and dirt, of people swarming along sidewalks and through streets.

Fundamentally, the movie appears to be an exploration of the interaction between humans and technology. Throughout the course of the film, there are more and more depictions of this interaction. A sizeable segment of the beginning of the movie contains successive scenes of nature at work. Darkness creeps through a canyon as the sun goes down, swallowing the rock face inch by inch. Wisps of clouds float in and out of existence, roiling like the seas and bursting up like the flares on the sun’s surface, expanding and ballooning. A rushing waterfall spills by the millions of gallons into an abyss, eroding the rock below through sheer force of the torrent and throwing mist into the air for miles around.

Then come factories spewing steam and dust into the atmosphere, rows of tanks as far as the eye can see, fighter jets lined up with military accuracy, bombs falling and tumbling through the air toward earth and a rocket launching up into the black void of space.

New York City itself is shown with darkened clouds floating through the skyscrapers like spirits. Cars rush past like ants on hyperdrive, trash and debris pile up on the dirty sidewalks while broken lampposts swing in the wind. Explosions take down buildings, bridges explode, cranes topple, debris is thrown into the air, flying here and there as if with a mind of their own. In the midst of this, the music stops and black clouds loom on the horizon. Lightning strikes again and again as night descends, lights flutter on and life continues.

There is again, no overt message. The film can be taken as an accusation of the damage humankind has done by misusing their profound gift for invention and creation. Or it can be seen as an ode to that exact ability to subordinate and master the forces of nature with our ingenuity and brilliance. Or perhaps it is a mix of both, a mix of exaltation at our many accomplishments and an expose of our numerous faults. What we choose to take from the movie perhaps tells us more about ourselves than the movie itself.

Personally, I prefer the last interpretation. Just like humankind’s interaction with nature and technology, the movie is not simple. It is not as easy to interpret as a straightforward yea or nay judgment on our tenure on this planet we all call home.

In the images of mists hugging mountain faces and undulating waves, I glimpse something of the awesome power of nature to both destroy and nurture, communicated in a way words can never do justice to. In the juxtaposition of images comparing the layout of a modern city to the layout of a microchip and depicting a fast and gleaming world made possible by the teeming highways, I see how technology, in its many forms, has made life possible and comfortable for so many people. But then there are shots of dynamite blowing apart age old rock faces to help machines spewing dark soot get at the raw materials helping to drive the modern world, of a radioactive mushroom cloud expanding and propelling itself up into the atmosphere, a testament to what our destructive tendencies are truly capable of. Many of the scenes have a more ambiguous meaning than the explosion of nuclear bombs. There are skyscrapers extending up, their glass surfaces reflecting the blue sky and clouds that ring it. There are buildings imploding in on themselves, at once a representation of destruction and a symbol of rebirth and renewal.

Perhaps the movie’s most important effect then is to spur the thinking processes of the viewers. When the last scene fades away on the screen and the three quotes appear one by one against the black background, the audience cannot but help reexamining the effect of technology on our lives and on the environment around us. No matter what conclusions they come to, at the very least, they are spurred to think these questions, which are integral to the future of human civilization itself. That itself is a worthy accomplishment in a society which often shrinks away from even thinking about the consequences of their actions, especially when it comes time to consider the costs of the life modern technology enables us to lead.

The way Koyaaniqatsi nudges viewers toward consideration of this topic is not so heavy handed as to cause them to recoil. Like all art, it inspires dialogue and puts the seeds of thought into the minds of the viewers. This is itself a boon for in raising awareness of the issue, at the very least more people will understand a problem exists. In a way then, Koyaaniqatsi is doing its part in affecting social change, pushing the segment of the population that views it to a heightened consciousness of our responsibility to be informed, if not necessarily to take action. For often, the most important revolutions must first be completed in the mind before they can be acted on in truth. Only when people are convinced of the need to act will they bend their efforts and sacrifice their comforts to a purpose. If we are, as a species, to perpetuate the good and eliminate the ills pictured in Koyanniqatsi, there will have to be sacrifice and there will have to be careful consideration. The movie’s purpose and its greatest success will thus be in causing us to think about these topics in different ways. What we do with the conclusions we reach and the resolutions we make is our own. 

I started watching Koyaanisqatsi not knowing what to expect. I had heard what it was going to be like from other students and I began to dread having to sit through this movie. I don’t have electricity in my house at this moment, let alone Wifi to stream the video online, so I had to sit in a local Starbucks to watch this documentary. As I settled in at the conveniently provided desk with my cup of coffee, I began watching the movie, preparing myself for a long and boring 87 minutes.

The first thing that caught my attention was the music. The music was grand and dramatic, at times both calming me and increasing my interest. It seemed to hint at the importance of the images being shown. It added to the immensity of the canyons and deserts on screen. From these to sunlit streaming through the clouds in the sky, waterfalls and oceans, the first part of the movie revealed the enormity of the world around us and how small we are by comparison. I am always especially impressed by the ocean, with its rolling and crashing waves. It seems as if these aspects of nature are ever-present and beyond our control. Our lives and actions seem small and insignificant and it seems almost surreal to think that our actions could forever alter these parts of nature.

However as the documentary continues we see that this in not true. We see huge fields of crops growing, and it is crazy to think that these large areas were planted all by man. It is clear that man can create something on the same level as nature. In a very symbolic scene we see a man on a tractor being engulfed by the black smoke he is creating. This is reflects the idea that we will lead to our own downfall through the pollution we are creating. The music takes a more urgent and unsettling tone as the telephone wires, and huge factories are shown. Our actions are shown as destructive, we using explosives or fire–an atomic bomb is shown. The image of a baby on a beach is juxtaposed with that of the factory looming behind the beach. To me, this expresses the idea that we are not only harming the environment with our pollution, by ourselves and most importantly our future generations.

Not all human activities were reflected with such a negative light in my mind. The huge skyscrapers or the big jet appealed to my sense of amazement at our ability, as a species, to create. The group of people taking pictures shows the kind of innovation humans generally revere. We are able to create such impressive buildings, build a method of transportation that defies gravity, mass produces cars and other objects in such quantity. Many of humanity’s most impressive accomplishments are in the military–shown by the tanks, fighter jets, and rockets. The problem is not that we are unable to take steps to save our environment, we just do not have the drive to do so. We have a tendency towards violence and self-indulgence that will only lead us to further harming ourselves.

The next images we see are the less impressive or grand elements of human creation and consumption. We are shown images of garbage littering the cit streets. Moreover, we are shown people living in this garbage, children playing in water with litter in it, parks and streetlights falling apart. Broken windows signify abandoned buildings that could be used for some other purpose. Some of the most stimulating images of the documentary for me are the falling and crashing buildings that are being destroyed. These images seem to show the less appealing nature of humans, how we not only have harmed the environment in creating these buildings and structures, but that after we build them we do not look after them properly–leading us to harm the environment even more when we take them down.

As the human race is shown in large groups in cities and such, the music speeds up. The music now is in a clear contrast to the slower, grander melody at the beginning of the movie. The film is sped up showing people and cars moving at ridiculous speeds. This was the most hypnotic part of the film as it gradually increases in speed flashing images of human consumption onto the screen. Humanity is shown to be busier, and faster than the steady images of the oceans and mountains. Humans have already managed to impose a significant amount of damage onto aspects of nature that have existed for many, many years in a relatively short period of time. We are constantly moving, constantly consuming–and through this constantly polluting our environment.

The name of this documentary, Koyaanisqatsi, is an Hopi term meaning Life Out Of Balance. I think that this term is a very apt name for this presentation, and that this theme is represented in different ways. First life is clearly out of balance with respect to nature and humanity. We are creating, and destroying at such a great speed, that nature cannot compete with our rate of consumption. In such a short amount of time we are undoing the perfect that nature took millions of years to create.

There is also a clear unbalance within humanity itself. We desire to benefit our lives and improve our condition, however we do not realize that in doing this we are in fact destroying the only place we have to live. We desire to protect our young, yet we think the best way to do this is to buy them toys, food, diapers, clothes–as much as we can–in fact we live in a society that marks success on how much you can buy. But by buying into this idea we are supporting a system that is raping our environment and natural resources. It is this system that will harm our young the most, by preventing future generations from having a safe environment to live in. Humanity is also unbalanced in the fact that we have such great technology and resources at our fingertips, yet we do not chose to use this to benefit the environment. We do not try to save the very thing we need the most.

The last fifteen or so minutes of the film show that humanity is actually fragile and so very dependent on the environment. There are slower paced images of people hurt, bleeding, and unhappy–a reminder of our mortality. It may seem that we hold the upper hand against nature; that life is unbalanced but tipped in our favor. This is not true. We are constantly at the mercy of nature. If there was any doubt of this in my mind Hurricane Sandy served to erase it. I have no electricity, no way to store fresh food, no way to heat my house, and only the limited light of a flashlight at night. Yet I am still one of the lucky ones–people living not too far from me have lost there homes, cars, or even their lives in the destruction caused by this act of nature. As our consumption, and pollution serves to upset nature, nature will only return the favor onto our own artificial and self-made world.

While this is not to become my new favorite movie, I think that I enjoyed and understood the message of this documentary than I originally thought I would. It was at times a little difficult to focus on, but the images and music were as a whole fairly stimulating and served to capture my interest. I think that is a documentary that everyone should see once, as its message will stay with the viewer long after the presentation has ended.

As an English major, I often find myself writing essays and examining literature.  Since middle school at Hunter campus schools I have heard the words of my eighth grade teacher Ms. Fink every time I write a paper or read a book: “show, don’t tell.”  In terms of writing, what Ms. Fink meant, is that it is more interesting for a reader to be led to a conclusion rather than for the author to directly and clearly express the message.  For instance, in Ms. Fink’s English literature class, we read Hamlet.  Shakespeare’s work, as old as it is, is still relevant in the classroom in part because instead of writing explicitly that Hamlet has or has not gone mad, Shakespeare leaves it up for further interpretation and debate for the future readers.  This is the type of stylistic decision I was looking for in Koyaanisqatsi.  While watching the film, I heard Ms. Fink’s voice in my head yet again, this time in reference to Godfrey Reggio’s stylistic decisions.  After watching it for the first time, I did not care for it.  The film seems to be, on first review, an environmentalist piece preaching the director’s ideals.  Without any writing or narrative, the movie is eccentric and goes outside the cultural norm for films.   The reason I had trouble digesting the movie is due to the barriers it breaks; it is almost avant-garde, and because of this I felt that it was forcibly pushing a message out, because it forced me to think.  I did not like the movie, because Reggio seemed to go against everything Ms. Fink had taught me.  I understand that is an idea that is hard to wrap one’s head around: a film without words, telling rather than showing makes no sense.  Alas, that is how I felt.

The beginning of Reggio’s film highlights the beauty of nature.  Each shot another landscape, untouched by human tampering.  A major theme throughout the movie is vastness, seen in the shots Reggio highlights.  Reggio selects parts of the country that lend themselves to large sweeping shots.  Without obstructions, Reggio is capable of setting the tone without language by capturing so much space into each shot; sometimes miles at a time.  Another tool that Reggio uses to highlight the beauty of the natural world is his use of time-lapse video editing.  By speeding up shots of slow moving nature, like clouds, Reggio is showing his audience an everyday sight in a new way.  This brings a newfound attention, or awareness to the audience’s surroundings in the natural world.  Reggio spends so much of the film with shots dedicated to the beauty of nature, that the initial tone of the film is environmentalist.  Reggio’s choice to start the film with those shots leads the audience to believe the intention of the film is to educate, or inform.  The reason this upset me, was because it goes against what Ms. Fink had taught me years ago.  Reggio gains no power in expressly telling the audience what it is he wants them to get out of his film.  As opposed to so obviously tipping off the viewers of the overall message, or telling them the message, a wiser decision is to show the audience by driving them to think deeply about subtle hints that draw out the greater moral.

As a direct result of having to write a paper on the film, I chose to do further research instead of write off the movie as a well executed, but preachy couple of hours.  While discussing the movie with James, we came to a fundamental disagreement.  While I was arguing that the movie tried too hard to portray a “green” message, James provided a useful alternative perspective.  I will leave James’s thoughts on the movie to his assignment, but the conversation sparked some research that left me reconsidering my first impression of the film.  Found on the film’s website (http://koyaanisqatsi.org/films/koyaanisqatsi.php), Reggio spoke about the intentions in making the film:

KOYAANISQATSI is not so much about something, nor does it have a specific meaning or value…It stimulates the viewer to insert their own meaning, their own value. So while I might have this or that intention in creating this film, I realize fully that any meaning or value KOYAANISQATSI might have comes exclusively from the beholder

This idea that Reggio expressed, that he may have had his own intentions behind making the movie, but its power is that it is whatever the audience chooses to make of it.  I had trouble buying into what Reggio said, because after all, the movie had not changed since hearing Reggio’s intentions.  I re-watched portions of the film again to gain a better sense of what Reggio had written on the website.  The beginning portion of the film remained unchanged in my eyes, but as I continued to skip through the film I noted the turbines of oil in a desert, contrasted with the barren desert beforehand.  Reggio uses the same technique of sweeping the view of the camera from far away to give a better understanding of the scale of the landscape.  When watching the oil turbines for the second time I was impressed by the magnitude of the scenario and realized that even though mankind’s hands had touched the previously barren desert, it was not necessarily a bad thing.  This had me thinking that I may have judged the film too early on, before taking the shots in at face value.  I sought so intently for some sort of message with the lack of dialogue, that I neglected to watch the film in the only way Reggio had intended – at face value, to be absorbed before overthinking.

After accepting that I may have read too much into the intentions behind the film, I bought into Reggio’s website.  While reassessing the film, I noticed that the first shot and the final shot were bookending the experience, were of rockets.  In the first shot, we see the rocket propel into the atmosphere, while in the final one the rocket fails.  By changing my scope of my viewing it seemed that the repetition was not a coincidence.  The film depicts growth.  The film begins in media res, Earth at the peak of its growth.  Shots of the desert open the film, but later we see deserts occupied by mankind.  At first I saw this as an invasion of the natural world for selfish, instrumental means.  After reconsidering, I saw the beauty not only in nature untouched, but also in the accomplishments of mankind.  The turbines, which at first seemed to be an eyesore, plaguing the otherwise beautiful desert, now looked impressive.  The time-lapse was used at first to slow down the passing clouds, and later to speed up the headlights of cars on a highway.  The movie gains a new meaning with a different perspective, showing mankind flourishing and expanding through nature to take control of the Earth, but not necessarily in a negative way.  The final shot is of the rocket failing to make the same trip the first one accomplished, which sparked a question for me.  The film shows the power of nature, followed by mankind overpowering nature, finally showing man’s weakness, failing to fly the rocket.  The film seems almost to end on a cliffhanger, implying that mankind has plateaued, requiring further evolution to overcome the stopping point and make way for further growth.  In forgetting Reggio’s influence on the film, and taking a meaning that was purely my own, I was able to take a greater point from the film.  Perhaps we are now due yet again for a paradigm shift, yet this time to find a happy medium between the beauties in the first and second half of the film.

“This is the highest value of any work of art, not predetermined meaning, but meaning gleaned from the experience of the encounter. The encounter is my interest, not the meaning. If meaning is the point, then propaganda and advertising is the form. So in the sense of art, the meaning of KOYAANISQATSI is whatever you wish to make of it. This is its power.” – Godfrey Reggio

“For when a work is finished it has, as it were, an independent life of its own, and may deliver a message far other than that which was put in its lips to say” – Oscar Wilde

Hayley Desmond
Contrast and Ambiguity in Koyaanisqatsi
The resounding theme of Koyaanisqatsi is the disconnection between the natural world and the modern lifestyle. Starting with sweeping shots of natural landscapes, the film progresses to bustling scenes of urban life, then splicing the two together. While the contrast the creators seek to create is clear, the statement driving the piece is less forthright. One might wonder whether there is any thesis at all. In certain moments it seems to tentatively toy with issues such as income disparity, only to quickly retreat to sped-up footage of traffic. It sometimes seems to be a critique of consumerism, and other times of urban living in general. The cinematography is masterful, but it is used more to illustrate contrast than to comment on it.
Koyaanisqatsi juxtaposes several themes, the two most prominent being nature and industry. To do this, it relies heavily on abrupt cuts between scenes, sometimes accompanied by changes in the accompanying music. Following several minutes of peaceful shots of nature, a truck suddenly comes on screen, hurdling towards the audience. The next scenes, of electrical lines, digging cranes and explosions, are set to building music. A shot of a mushroom cloud slowly zooms out to reveal a tree in the foreground, again showing the vicinity of industry to the natural world. Perhaps the point is that these processes are not removed from nature: they take place within the context of Earth’s ecosystems. That is more a viewer’s extrapolation than anything deliberately stated in the film, however.
Some other sequences seem to bring in a related phenomenon, the military-industrial complex. An image of a camouflaged jet flying through a desert landscape brings another aspect to the juxtaposition of industry and nature. This theme is developed further by an aircraft carrier with the phrase “e=mc2” on it and gratuitous footage of explosions with frenetic music playing in the background. Demonstration of the human consequences of military action comes much later, just before the credits start to roll. It would have been much more effective to include at least some of the footage of wounded people nearer to the military montage. As in many cases, here Koyaanisqatsi would have benefitted from being more ham-fisted. The viewer is left guessing about the director’s prerogative for most of the film. Regardless, the military uses of technology and natural resources are certainly brought to the audience’s attention.
The other major relationship stressed in the film is that between nature and the modern lifestyle. A scene of people reclining on a beach, set to peaceful music, pans out to show some sort of giant industrial plant in the background. This the same technique employed earlier with the mushroom cloud and the tree. It hints at the failure of society to connect its use of natural resources with the actual natural world, as the beachgoers all appear to be serenely enjoying the setting, paying the plant behind them no mind. Clouds are also used thematically to connect nature and modern living. Much of the footage of nature features large, fluffy clouds rolling across landscapes. There are also many shots of similar clouds being reflected on glass skyscrapers. This particularly resonated with me, as it is a view I am very familiar with: my window at the residence hall faces the windows of Bellevue Hospital, and much of the sunlight that comes into my room is reflected by that glass. When I look out my window, I often see a blue sky and large clouds on the glass, so it was startling to see the exact same thing on screen. I consider myself to be fairly connected with nature for city-dweller, but the familiarity of the shot in the context of this film made me reconsider how we view nature in an urban context.
More than concerning itself with just the modern lifestyle in general, the film focuses on urban living. The first shots that are not of landscapes or giant hunks of metal are of the streets of New York. Throughout the rest of the piece, shots of cars on overlapping freeway ramps and of people rushing through city streets abound. There does not seem to be much distinction made between industrialization and cities. Urban environments are not presented as a third entity, but rather lumped together with factories and mining, in contrast to Earth’s natural state. Since the film is, if nothing else, a critique of industrialization, I, as a city-dweller, found this somewhat bothersome. While it is industrialization that makes cities possible, suburbs and rural areas also are affected and contribute to the waste and environmental problems that are so patent in modern living. It is not fair to present industry and cities as one and the same when indeed it is the lifestyle enjoyed by all people in developed nations that is depleting global resources. The association that I am complaining of is evident in certain sequences. A scene of a hotdog assembly line cuts to very visually similar footage of people on escalators. Sped up recordings of people working in a warehouse are juxtaposed with shots of New York waking up, the sun rising and people starting to go about their business. Interspersed in the film’s most cohesive montage of consumerism are glimpses of lone people in crowds, looking forlorn. I am not sure whether the film looks at city living in particular because it is the most disconnected from nature, but that is the best explanation that comes to mind.
Koyaanisqatsi, as just mentioned, has one major sequence on consumerism. It blends footage of children watching television, advertisements for canned soup, and other, similar scenes. For me, one of the most powerful moments in the film comes at this point: a billboard advertising “a place in the sun” stands before a backdrop of smokestacks. This exemplifies the commodification of nature. Our usual lives in the post-industrial world are so removed from nature and centered around consumption that even trees and unobstructed sunlight become things to be sold to us. This shot reinforces the divide between the natural world and our world. The rest of this montage also briefly touches upon income disparity, with a man being moved from street to stretcher just before a glamorous-looking lady gets in a cab. Shots similar to this are present throughout the rest of the film, but never more than a few seconds are spent on the topic of wealth distribution. I was disappointed that consumerism and social equity were relegated to such a small timeslot, while plenty of screen time was given to highway traffic set to the same few bars of Philip Glass.
This film is an amalgamation of themes, with only a couple being well-developed. I would say something about the major points, but there are no points, only themes. The viewer gets a general sense of the director’s stance, but this does not count for much given all of the room for one’s own interpretations. Thus, I feel that much of the analysis I have written here has been little more than my own biases manifesting themselves on the ambiguous canvas that is Koyaanisqatsi.

I’m in thought. The streets of New York City flicker by as my M15 rumbles along 1^st Avenue. There’s a sense of disconnect between the images I’m seeing and the thoughts that accompany them. I’m thinking about the cars as they pass by, the buildings as they escape my view, and the clouds as they float overhead. But on some level, I’m thinking more about how small and insignificant I am. Here I am, living my life, in face of what seems like a world untouchable by my actions. I could do whatever environmental harm one uncaring man could feasibly muster and the world would just shrug me off without so much as a care. It wouldn’t feel like I’m doing something unethical necessarily—just that it’s not so bad in the grand scheme of things.

I’ll be honest and say that I started watching Koyaanisqatsi expecting a lot more of a compelling storyline. The first five minutes was essentially me waiting for the movie to begin. When I realized that what I was seeing was going to be the general flow of the rest of the movie, I trudged through the next 25 minutes before finally stopping. I wasn’t expecting what I saw and I wasn’t in the right mindset to appreciate it. After about a month of not watching Koyaanisqatsi, I finally sat down to watch it again—this time being aware of the style of movie before me. I was ready to take it all in at once. It’s not as if I hadn’t noticed certain compelling themes the first time around, but I figured the movie was nearly an hour and a half for a reason, rather than just the 30 minutes I watched.

That time around, I felt like I saw exactly what Koyaanisqatsi was trying to paint a picture of. I went through the first quarter of the film appreciating nature as it was—its beauty, its independence, its enormity. The sad juxtaposition came when it showed human ambition and technology, and their encroaching tendencies. But what really struck me was that humankind was beginning to parallel nature in its enormity. By far, this was the scariest thought of all.

Seeing myself as one perpetrator among many is one thing, but witnessing the sheer magnitude of what humans have accomplished is inconceivable in its own rite. Infinite dilution may have once been the answer to justifying our environmental impact, but I daresay that before industrialization, technology didn’t have the same mass-production of waste that it does now. Nature is taking part in a war against the machines. Literally. The machine of what is has come up against the machine of what is created. Koyaanisqatsi merely reiterated what I always knew, but couldn’t fathom with my individual five senses. Watching the film, I could feel the enormity of two powers colliding. I feel convinced that now, more than ever before, the growing mass of humankind has the power to change this seemingly gargantuan world. Even throughout this course, such a thought might have occurred to me only vaguely; statistics, pictures, and historical records can only go so far to prove a point. Knowing myself, I need a fully engrossing experience that captures human interference at its worst to get me to fight for something. It’s horrible that human sympathy is only as truly strong as empathy. We need to feel for ourselves those very things that seem to us horrible. Problems on paper become much more real when they are seen or experienced firsthand. Until all of us can genuinely develop such an emotional attachment, humans now and in the future are bound to suffer heavily because of the mistakes we’ve made.

On some level, I’ve always just assumed that humankind as we know it wouldn’t last past the year 2100. Call it pessimism. Call it reactionary existentialism. But it’s not a thought that I ever regarded as strange or depressing (unless, maybe, if I thought about it for too long). It’s just something that always entered freely into my mindset. This thought process probably coincided with when I first learned to reason scientifically; the little evidence I had before me indicated that human society was headed towards a point of destructive inevitability. Nothing in my intellectual proximity seemed to indicate otherwise as time went on. The mentality must have stuck with me ever since.

At the beginning of the arc of this course, I can’t say that my mindset was changing in any respect. It seemed depressing on the surface and then hopeless after more discussion. It all seemed to flow back to the issue of intrinsic vs. instrumental value. This central flaw is what needed to be addressed. It seemed like all the problems caused by corporations and people could be reversed with such a paradigm shift. This absolutely has to bring us back to the issue of sustainability. Koyaanisqatsi doesn’t refer very much to this because it sticks to painting its massive picture of rising technology in face of nature. We must be willing to admit that the closer we get to the future, the more our environmental situation becomes unstable. We need to invest in sustainable development now before the subject of the second half of the movie becomes the whole of our reality. Sustainability should be an absolute social and legal must. It needs to become an idea that captures our society at the very core of its mistakes; humankind will simply continue to cause harm to the environment and to the future without the necessary consideration that they both deserve.

The end of Koyaanisqatsi was what really drove home the message. The slow-moving men and women at the end really reminded me why we should all be doing this. It’s for life. Each scene in the movie presents a life or a way of life that not only deserves to live in its own way, but that fundamentally has that desire to live. The end of the movie showed me how capable we are of sowing the seeds of our own destruction. We can build to the greatest pinnacle of our mind’s power, but that reality has led us to a state of life that is begging for change—not just for ourselves, but for all those things and people who become affected. It really is a crazy life. A life in turmoil and out of balance. It’s a life that is disintegrating. But most of all, it’s a life that begs for another way of living.

“Koyaanisqatsi” is not a film in the traditional sense. There is no discernable plot besides the eruption of modern times across natural landscapes. It is an artwork created to provoke questions and answers both, from the viewer. Perhaps it is because of the class in which this film was assigned but the main message I perceived was one that championed nature and sustainability over technology and excess.

Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi Indian word meaning a life out of balance. As the film develops koyaanisqatsi is featured as the opposite of sustainability. The film begins with images of nature, shifts to the destruction and use of the original Earth, and finally showcases the manmade environment that replaces what was once there, for better or for worse.

The origin of the word koyaansqatsi is particularly important in regards to this theme. Native Americans have always been very respectful of nature, making sure to use all that it has to offer efficiently and sparingly. For example, when they hunt they use every part of the animal they absolutely needed to kill. This origin is explored early in the film as the camera glides over Lake Powell, home to the Hopi tribe. The Hopi Indians used this lake and the red sand rocks for shelter, living in small nooks they carved. The canyons in the lake served as buildings and the animals in the area were food and clothing. This harmony of mankind with nature, however, is unfortunately short-lived.

Nature is processed and regurgitated. The red rock formations are now skyscrapers. Animals are anonymously slaughtered and pumped out of machines as frankfurters. The areal views are now of cars zipping along chaotic, intertwining highways. From up close, the movement of cars seems very ordered, confined by the white paint and speed limits. However, from a more removed vantage point, there is chaos. The multiple roads and weaving cars become apparent. This begins to hint at a sinister, hidden element of human organization. At first it seems that humans are investing energy to order nature, decreasing the entropy of the universe, bringing balance and organization to a chaotic natural world. After all, an assembly line takes effort and lead to products that are combinations of many parts. However, there is a tendency towards entropy that is actually accelerated by human activity. “Koyaansqatsi” features footage of industrial parts being manufactured where flames erupt off of newly smelted metal. Buildings are demolished to make room for new buildings that will be demolished for yet newer ones and so on and so forth. When the film shows parking lots full of identical cars, perfectly lined up, there is a focus on all the different colors scattered randomly. This scene quickly fades to reveal a line of tanks preparing for war. Though the tanks are similarly manufactured they hold so much potential for destruction and disorder. Perhaps, then, the mechanization of nature is not the story of a beast being tamed by man. “Koyaanisqatsi” begins to suggest that mankind is a virus, spreading over a healthy planet, and making it sick.

One of the major consequences of this shift from original nature to the man made replacement is captured in the acceleration of tempo in the footage and music. In stark contrast to the opening of the film, with its droning cry “Koyaanisqatsi” and slowly panning camera, the cinematography is now in fast forward and the music is a cacophony of staccatos on the violin and cello. This faster pace is representative of the increased rate at which humans use nature in the infrastructure of modern times. The metallic copy of the natural world operates in larger quantities and at higher speeds. Here, Koyaanisqatsi is observable. There is an imbalance between the rate at which the Earth can provide and the rate at which humans consume.

The fast-forwarded footage has another effect that accentuates the imbalance. The film shows people shopping, eating, driving, and taking escalators, all at high speed. The way these people tumble through the world, making their way through narrow areas, is reminiscent of flowing blood cells. This suggests that the Earth is a living organism that relies on its cells to circulate and, as biology dictates, use a minimal amount of energy. The main point is that koyaansqatsi, a life out of balance, paints a picture of a sick planet whose cells are leeches, tainted by the spreading virus of modern times. The planet is no longer in balance with the Earth’s capacity to provide.

“Koyaanisqatsi” proceeds to pervert the notion of the Earth as a living organism into an image of the Earth as a machine. The camera floats around a city peeking into windows and watching car lights streak across the roads at night. Suddenly, the skyline appears to be a motherboard of a computer. Each building looks like a microchip. The people inside, flickering their light switches on and off, are electrons zipping along the processor. The music becomes dark at this time, highlighting the tragedy of mechanization. At this point, the humans have successfully converted the organic, natural, living Earth into a machine.

There is actually a moment in which “Koyaanisqatsi” appears to praise human achievement through music. Once the cityscape emerges the music sounds like the background track of a show like “Modern Marvels” or “How it’s Made” or the overture to some fantastical movie. The cascading flutes and airy strings back up an angelic quire as the camera zooms around capturing the tumult of the urban environment.

However, the hustle and bustle of modern times starts to reveal images of excess. Soon the film is saturated with frames of people eating and shopping endlessly. “Koyaanisqatsi” questions if the golden era that mankind imagines for itself is substantiated. It asks why we have replaced nature with a metallic version sustained by the very nature we uprooted. There is a beautiful shot of steely glass windows perfectly reflecting drifting clouds that directly juxtaposes these two worlds against each other. The angelic voices, now tooting for ten minutes, appear more haunting than glorifying. The film questions the assertion that technological advancement and expansion is inherently good. It shows that the apparent positive is really unnecessary excess and contends that using the planet at the rate that modern times calls for is unsustainable.

The film mocks this way of life by ridiculing the human desire for excess. In one scene, assembly lines spew out thousands of frankfurters. In the scene immediately following this one, people exit escalators in huge numbers, like hot dogs in a factory. In fact, “Koyaanisqatsi” seems to find fault in technological advancement and human proliferation in general. The final scene, of a rocket taking off into space and crumbling in the air, summarizes this feeling well. The rocket represents the failed attempt of mankind to create a beautiful but artificial world that feeds off of nature. This attempt leads to koyaanisqatsi. Human ambition and meddling throw life out of balance.

I do not agree with this message. Human involvement has definitely contributed to koyaanisqatsi but this does not mean technological advancement and some degree of luxury is totally incompatible with nature. Though humans should not remake the world using nature as fuel, they do not necessarily have to leave it in its raw form. There are sustainable ways of creating a balanced planet. Solar energy and green engineering are perfect examples of human activity that can actually enhance the planet and reinforce the balance. The denouement of “Koyaanisqatsi” does show images of introspective and remorseful humans. The pilot, the factory worker, and the commuters all seem cognizant of the state of their world. To me, this is a sign that change is possible and imminent.

Koyaanisqatsi Response Paper

Koyaanisqatsi is a movie like none that I have ever seen before. After watching it for the first time, I was left puzzled. There was no plot, no commentary, nothing concrete that my mind could really grasp onto. But that is the beauty of this film – to be left open to the viewer for interpretation. I viewed the movie for a second time, and I was able to appreciate it in a much greater sense. I thought that Koyaansqatsi parallels some very interesting ideas and events that are relevant to our MHC 200 course and leaves a strong message in the viewers mind.

Koyaanisqatsi starts off with panoramic views of unaltered nature. Shots of the Grand Canyon, sand dunes, and clouds are all shown, and then paralleled with monstrous power lines interrupting the beautiful landscape. This is the first view of human action in the movie, sending a profound message to the viewer. Humans are willing to sacrifice nature’s intrinsic value so that they can route electricity from power plants located hundreds of miles away to their homes. In the past, nature was thought of as a disposable entity. It was thought that we could do what we wished without any responsibilities and without any repercussions. Oil drilling, for instance, was and still is a way to obtain a source of energy. Koyaanisqatsi depicts oil drilling and power plants, and immediately after shows video footage of nuclear bomb test sites. This style of cinematography is used to instill the thought that we are in fact destroying our own land, as a nuclear bomb would. We are making the land uninhabitable, destroying ecosystems, and throwing life out of balance by disrupting equilibrium.

The movie then shifts towards corporations and the development of automobiles and airplanes. People were in awe of the first skyscraper – they have never seen a building of such magnitude before in their life. It was the beginning of the corporate era. Cars were produced efficiently with the development of the assembly line, and airplanes were invented. However, all of this technological development was not used for good. Instead, this technology was utilized for the war effort and weapons of mass destruction were created. One scene that caught my eye in particular was when they paralleled a parking lot full of cars with a parking lot full of tanks. Was it really necessary to mass-produce this many war machines?

The human race constantly wants more than it needs. Foods with almost no nutritional value, such as hot dogs and Twinkies, were and still are being mass-produced in the United States. This surely is a sign that Americans are indulging themselves in non-essential items. Many people were spending hours in a bowling alley, playing video games, or watching television, oblivious to the world around them. People appreciated these items simply for what they were and took no consideration in how they were created. If something tasted good, people ate it without question. If Americans had fun doing something, nobody questioned how the machinery was produced. In the 19^th and even 20^th century, there was an overwhelming stench of anthropocentrism.

There was an interesting scene in which the cinematographer filmed people walking on the sidewalk. Each person went about with their life until they realized that they were being filmed. Upon realizing that somebody was watching them, they seemed to become more self conscious about what it was they were doing. This is a common occurrence on both the individual and corporate level. When corporations were unregulated, they would dump huge amounts of hazardous chemicals into surrounding waters. No care was taken to maintain the environment, and corporations took any action necessary in order to raise profits. Once the EPA began to watch these companies closely, more careful in their actions were taken. I find it sad that people have different ideologies when they are being watched than from when they are not being watched. People should practice what they believe is right, regardless of if their actions are being overseen. People’s morals should ring true with how they wish to be viewed ethically. The EPA should not have had to mandate the Hazardous Waste Management Program in order to get Exxon Mobil and GE to regulate their hazardous waste. Chemicals should have never been disposed of in waterways to begin with.

There is always the publicly traded side of corporations as well, centered on Wall Street. In the last few moments of the movie, there is a time lapse of what seems to be the New York Stock Exchange. What grabbed my eye was that the actual infrastructure was apparent, but the traders had a somewhat transparent aspect to them. They were depicted as ghost-like. It seems like there is so much going on within Wall Street, yet these peoples’ lives are so transparent that they have no true significant meaning. These investors have become so focused on earning money and put all else aside. The final scene in the movie is directly after this typical day on Wall Street. It is a scene of a rocket being sent into the air, exploding, and disintegrating into a small piece of burning metal, which falls for the final duration of the movie. This last scene, juxtaposed with the Wall Street scene, leaves me with a strong message. Society has become something that values money above all else. By valuing our own self-interests above all else, we will make progress, but in a self-destructive manner.

Koyaanisqatsi is a moving film that depicts how society has become so disconnected from Nature. It is a perfect portrayal for the rise of the arc, showing the many problems that the Earth faces as a living organism.  However, I feel that a lot of progress has been made and is still currently being made to address the many issues that were represented in the movie. When this movie was filmed, I believe that many people were practicing what their current technology allowed. For instance, people were only able to utilize oilrigs because that was the only available source of energy for the human population. However since the 20^th century, there has been a slow, but sure, shift in how people think.

The only thing that worries me is how much time it will take for this shift in ideology to fully take place. In my eyes, the world is currently in a state of emergency. Even after twenty years from Koyaanisqatsi’s release, we are only beginning to propose solutions to the problems at hand. There should be more strain put on the importance of shifting to renewable energy. The problems that humans have created thus far continue to get worse on a daily basis, and until the day that BP or Exxon begins to supply renewable energy, this downward trend will remain. As said in the Hopi Prophecy sung in Koyaanisqatsi, “If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.” People will exploit these non-renewable minerals until humanity realizes that there is much more to gain than just money. The Earth is in our hands, and it is in our power to decide the world’s fate. We must stop inviting disaster, and shift our values to those of a sustainable future. We must find another way to live that better suits the environment.