“I don’t remember the moment, I tried to forget,

I lost myself, is it better unsaid?

Now I’m closer to the edge.”

It is always a great moment when Pandora puts on a song with the perfect lyrics for the moment, especially right after my conflicting feelings and thoughts due to watching Koyaanisqatsi. Even now, after thinking about it for quite some time and feeling as if I’ve understood the message behind it, I still get uneasy thinking about the way the movie expressed it. Long (very long) minutes of beautiful, natural scenery to fast paced seconds of the technological, gray city life. I’ll be honest and say that during both the fast and the slow moments, I had my moments of boredom. I feel this is because the movie transitioned really well into the fast moments. It didn’t happen immediately, but instead took its time. For example, instead of going straight from the many long shots of the desert environment to the really sped up people going on the escalators, the movie instead had us have a transition moment that included the interaction of nature and technology. It showed power lines amongst the nature scenery and atomic bomb denotations in the desert. But I feel the most important nature/technology interaction was the first one shown: suddenly on the screen, a shot of a big, green truck appears and it covers everything around it in black smoke.

I honestly thought I understood the entire movie just from this one scene. The black smoke engulfing everything was what I thought was an obvious indication of how many people (and they are right in believing so) believe that we are killing ourselves with the constant use of technology without care for the consequences. I thought it was brilliant of the producers/director/whoever thought of this to have the area surrounding the truck to be bright and pure and the smoke to be so thick and black that once it covers a certain area you can’t see through it anymore. Though this was a beautifully crafted scene, it occurred way too early into the movie. After watching the entire film, I can say that I wasn’t entirely foolish to think I understood the message behind it from that scene. I’d say I was pretty close, and I like how the film acknowledged what most people were probably thinking: technology has impacted us greatly. From a calm, slow life to a now fast paced, selfish one. Pretty much everyone agrees now that technology has changed us, but I feel there was more to the movie than just this. I felt like that was a very easy message to get out of it, and this film just seemed too complicated to simply take the easy route.

I wouldn’t say there was another scene that made me have a brain blast like the green truck one did. I don’t know exactly when I realized this, but I realized that this film wasn’t really about how we are affected by technology, exactly. For example, the film showed the manufacturing industry, from workers sewing pants to others organizing hot dogs. They went through this pretty fast, which is expected because in reality it does happen quickly. But it was interesting that right after that went by, people were shown eating food and shopping, and this was done at the same pace as the items being created. Everything was happening fast, even people just relaxing and having a good time was done at the same speed as people working. I felt like this was just one of many examples from the movie that really emphasized a switch we humans have made in our lives: from living in the Earth, amongst water and air and all sorts of organisms, to now living in a giant computer chip, filled with metals and electricity and “advancements.” This is our life now, whether or not we like it or acknowledge it. We move just as fast as machines do, which is a huge change from how much slower things were going in the past. Things were much calmer too, which is why I understand why people consistently discuss the past and how much it has affected us, but I think it’s a waste of time discussing this if we don’t do anything about it to fix it. Then again, I feel like this is not an easy situation to fix. For the most part, I feel this situation is quite irreversible. I’m not talking about the environmental issues here; I’m talking about the technological ones. We live and breathe iPhone 5s and iPad Minis. Our bodies have adjusted to it, how do we make our bodies go back to being satisfied with everything going back to a slow pace? I don’t see that happening at all.

But the thing is, I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing either. We can of course learn to do everything we’re doing now in a more environmentally friendly way, but either way we’re still going to do what we’ve been doing. People can’t imagine living without their Plasma Screen TVs and lightweight laptops. Everyone is constantly with a cell phone, always using transportation, having Google as his or her best friend. I really don’t see that changing, and to be honest I don’t see anything Koyaanisqatsi about that either (if I used the word correctly here). So our lives have changed, and pretty quickly at that. But why does that mean we are living a chaotic life? Of course, this depends on a person’s definition of chaotic. If they mean spontaneous, then yes, we really should think before our actions (the environmental crisis is a very clear example of that). But if by chaotic they mean out of control in a negative sense, then I don’t really agree. I feel like this new way of living, through technology, is very different, and we humans don’t have a past time period similar to this that we can look back to. So this is a huge change, and many people usually assume that change is bad and it’s best to stick with what we already know. But we can have control in this life, I am confident about that. As mentioned loads of times, it is possible, scientifically and even economically, to live the life we are all living now in a more environmentally friendly manner so that we don’t put the entire Earth at risk. I feel many people may get out of this movie that we have officially transitioned to not caring about the environment at all, and being all about the newest, latest gadgets, so there is no hope. But it’s just so wrong to think that way.

What I got from the movie was that we are living a different life than what we used to live. Especially now, during 2012, since I assume the film was made in the 1970s. Not only have our connection with technology strengthened and our relationship with nature weakened, but also amongst fellow human beings have we changed. The scenes in the film that zoom in on people’s faces, showing immense sadness in some, just broke my heart. Especially that first man shown, the one with the hat that said something about ferry rides. It showed again how technology driven we now are. If something doesn’t work, we just throw it out and get a new one. If something just doesn’t belong or you don’t have time for it, you just set it aside. We do this amongst each other now, in big cities the most. We care about ourselves first, our closest friends and family the next, and after that, you’re on your own. If we do this with each other, how can people not imagine us doing that to the Earth? Technology is our life, and I think our only option now is to figure out a way to live with it without putting an end to ourselves and the world around us.

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.

William Arguelles

Spiro Alexandratos

Seminar 3

October 25, 2012

Koyaanisquatsi Paper

            I’m going to say this right up front: I did not like this movie. I really did not enjoy the vast majority of the film. I had significant trouble with almost every element of the film, from the  “agenda” or “goal” of the piece to its horrible execution and accidentally tragic ending. I’m trying to stay as impartial as possible from this point on, and give you exact reasons for why I disliked the film, but I don’t know how feasible of a goal that is. In truth, there’s very little I enjoyed about Koyaanisquatsi, and almost none of it is what I think you’ve enjoyed about the movie. But enough exposition let me get down to the brass tacks.

I think the first thing I need to say is that the ending probably soured the whole movie for me in retrospect, even though it’s not the movie’s fault. Let me explain. One of the ending scenes is of a rocket launching into the sky and exploding, then a single piece that looked like a recovery pod falling back to earth as some Hopi chant plays in the background. My immediately thought that the shot was of the Challenger explosion, and I actually had to stop the movie and check that they weren’t that callous to use such a horrible tragedy for such a petty ending. Of course, I learned they didn’t and the Challenger explosion didn’t actually happen until 4 years later, but emotionally, the damage was done and I’d lost my last bit of respect for the movie. In retrospect, I can’t say why I equated the scene with the Challenger exactly. I think it was because of the falling piece looking similar to the falling crew compartment of the Challenger and that the rocket exploded in a nearly identical plum of smoke, but I’m not sure. I know objectively that this is not a valid reason to dislike the movie, but emotionally it is my strongest criticism of the movie and probably the reason I utterly couldn’t stand to watch another second of it.

Now having fully established that my opinion is biased and wholly untrustworthy because of misremembering of the video of the Challenger disaster that tainted my complete emotional feel of the movie, I’ll try to find actual reasons why I disliked Koyaanisquatsi. Perhaps on a basic level, I just honestly was not emotionally engaged by the movie until that “horrible” rocket scene. I found parts intriguing and others interesting, but nothing really wowed me until I was screaming at the movie near the end. I watched Koyaanisquatsi on Hulu, so commercials popped up every fifteen or so minutes. What is significant about that is that because ads are specifically designed to engage the consumer on some level, I found them much more memorable and interesting than the movie. Which boggles my mind, because I’ve never found commercials engaging before, despite the ads trying so hard.

Part of this dilemma was because Koyaanisquatsi lacked any real narration or plot. There’s a theory in English and Psychology called Narrative Bias that accounts for my biggest problem with this movie. Basically, Narrative Bias is the theory that our minds are pre-programmed to only retain information if it tells us a story in a clear arc. This movie, because it lacks a clear story, is less a movie then a fractured amalgamation of scenes strung together. That’s not to say that the segments weren’t visually stunning. I think individually, each of the segments could of worked as modern art or art house cinematography. But because this is labeled a “film” or a “movie,” I am going in with the preconceived bias that there will be a clear story-arc, and when there isn’t I feel betrayed. I’m not saying that it’s a fair assumption to make, but it is a very common and very basic assumption most people make about movies.

Adding fuel to the fire, another issue that I had with the movie was the soundtrack. This movie has practically no narration, which means the soundtrack of the film has to take the place of telling the story and setting the tone. Of course, the soundtrack to this movie would be done by probably my least favorite composer of all time, Phillip Glass. While this wasn’t the cacophonous monstrosity I’ve come to expect upon hearing that dreaded name, it didn’t add anything to the film, and in fact damaged it because it failed to take the place of the missing narration. The soundtrack sounded very similar and repetitious the whole time, causing it to blur the movie into a meaningless mass of random images, which just further worked against the narrative bias I had going in to this film. I found this most apparent during the beginning shots of the canyons. Because Glass’s music is both grating and monotonous, I couldn’t appreciate the beauty of the canyons. I think this is because mentally I associate quietness and serenity with nature, not strident caterwauling and irksome howling. I know objectively this is my bias seeping through, but to me, the soundtrack is just another nail in the coffin of this lifeless film.

In fact, Glass’s masterfully done music prevented me from appreciating the truly stunning visuals to such a degree, that half way through the movie I muted the film and found myself actually started to enjoy the film. I absolutely loved several of the shots of the machinery and technology because they were just so visually stunning and impressive, and carried individually so much meaning. Two of my favorite scenes and the best transition of the film happened at about the twenty-eight minute mark. We’re treated to this fly-by shot of a lot filled with multicolored cars, where the camera initially zooms in on one of the cars and then slowly zooms out while panning up towards the heavens, slowly revealing the army of brilliant cars, dazzling in their Technicolor beauty in the sun. Then the film cuts sharply to an older seemingly World War II era newsreel with the camera zipping by these rows of perfectly aligned tanks, slowly panning down from the heavens back to reality. It’s really impressive editing and cinematography, and if it were a standalone exhibit at something like MoMA, without any sound just the visuals, I’d be singing the praises up and down of the scenes. It’s a beautiful artistic critique of the industrial production system and of the human need for order. The shot of the cars are beautiful and colorful and so incredibly vivid, yet they’re paralleled by the antiquated and monotone visual of the tanks in similar lines heading off to war. The juxtaposition seemingly implies that the cars are equivalent to tanks, that our industrial production of both these terrifying war machines and wondrous vehicles is really just the same monster. We may not view the cars as damaging or as dangerous as the tanks, because of their presentation and how they’re elevated in our view, but when viewed from an equal level they both can be used for incredible destruction.

And then there is the fact that all the cars and tanks are neatly aligned, fitting into perfect squares, is reminiscent of man’s struggle to make sense of a senseless world. What I find striking about the organization of the car scene is that the cars themselves have no discernable pattern to their placement, yet they are shaped into perfectly ordered rows and columns. It’s like someone was trying to impose order onto them, to make sense of this plethora of random cars. But because there’s no reasoning to the organization, the cars appear to be chaotically placed, only ordered in name but not in reality. Which to me is symbolic of man trying to understand the world by imposing his order onto it. That just like the organization of the cars, we might not truly be ordering anything in any meaningful way. But because we need some kind of order on a basic instinctual level, we continuously search for a way to shape the world into something we can understand and comprehend. That when we see this shot of the cars from above, we instinctually recognize that they’re in a specific order, therefore there has to be some meaning to it. When in reality, the cars are just parked lined up in the lot randomly, with no real reasoning to why it exists.

This little three minute section is just a snippet of the visual wonder and storytelling Koyaanisquatsi could tell if it wasn’t this continuous mess. Individual segments of the film are so interesting and intriguing, but they get lost in the horrific screeching sounds and the just overload of imagery. Since there’s not a readily apparent plot to the film, yet it’s all forcibly tied together by the nightmarish soundtrack, it comes across as these chaotic flashes of brilliance and confusion all tied into one disjointed package. Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the organization, but I didn’t really feel there was anything unifying to the entire film, no underpinning to the movie that had it make sense.

I think it was supposed to be about the world being out of order, given that the translation of the title literally means “unbalanced life” but I feel like it did a terrible job if that was the goal. Maybe because I’ve grown up in a very urbanized area, I didn’t find most of the images unnatural or unbalanced. I mean I do come from the suburbs, but the suburbs are a merger of city and rural, which is what I thought of most of the images, such as the shots of the electrical wires in the desert. Sure, it’s no longer completely natural, but there’s a balance and a beauty to the imagery of the geometric wire towers against the endless orange sea. And the shots of the city under the overcast sky just struck me as an incredibly shady and cool day, which is pretty much my favorite kind of weather. I understand that the clouds are supposed to be symbolic of the trouble looming over the city from not dealing with the environmental problems, but emotionally that’s not how I read it.

Perhaps the most emblematic image of this problem happens at 39:56. If you freeze the frame, you get this picture of the Microdata glass paneled building with the blue sky and white clouds reflected onto it. If it weren’t for the iron support beams and the name of the company in the top left, the building would appear to be a seamless merger of sky and building. If the message is that the world is out of order, why show an image of modern technology seemingly blending in and almost fusing with nature? It just looks so natural and so balanced, that I don’t understand the intent behind the shot. It seems to imply that we do exist in balance, that the world does make sense.

So in my obviously expert opinion, Koyaanisquatsi fails on a few critical levels. As a film, it lacks any coherent plot line or a single thread that runs consistently through it. If you take Koyaanisquatsi as a piece of propaganda for environmentalism, that the world is out of order and we must fix it, the movie falls short in several key parts which seem to almost glorify cities as natural elements. If Koyaanisquatsi is artistic cinema, it’s too long and chaotic to be a single piece of art and isn’t presented as a set of disjointed segments due to the movie format. So if it’s none of these things by my estimation, then what exactly is it supposed to be? I honestly don’t have an answer for that question.

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.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Koyaanisqatsi is a reflection of the events on Earth, starting with its creation, leading up to the rise of humans, and ending with the destruction of all that is man-made. According to Coppola’s film, we are our own destruction, especially in light of all of the changes and amendments that we have made to planet Earth. These changes are, ultimately, the ones that will destroy us in the end. In persuading the viewers of the film to see this prediction as well as to realize the beauty and purity that is nature, Coppola employs dark-toned music, emotional outreach, and strategic effects and symbolism.

Koyaanisqatsi begins with a still of what seems to be cave drawings, and cryptic ones at that. That is, the drawings are somber and create a dark tone for the movie. These drawings may foreshadow that what the viewer is about to see has a grave ending, especially because the drawings depict human-like figures in constrained forms. After the shot of these drawings, the viewer sees explosions occurring, which I felt were synonymous with the big bang theory, or the predicted mechanism by which the universe came to be.

Supporting further my inference about the explosions are the subsequent shots of different locations on Earth, such as natural rock forms, moving clouds, cascading and glistening waters, green mountains, and endless rows of plants. These shots were, in essence, of an untouched Earth; that is, an Earth untouched by humans in which nature runs high and low, and far and wide.

The films comes to a pivotal point once the camera approaches and then travels over a rock-like projection, which perhaps represents a transition to a different time in the Earth’s history. This new timeframe introduces humans on Earth. The film wastes no time in demonstrating that the effect humans have on the Earth is a destructive one, for the clips after the camera makes it way over the rock projection involve many explosions of rock forms, which may be for the creation of human mines, caves, or industries.

Coppola expounds on the devilish nature of humans with regards to the Earth in the film when he introduces the viewer to a machine or industrial vehicle that strategically has the number six on its structure. Although this notion may be far-fetched, I felt as though the number 6 may have been a reference to the devil in lieu of 666. Even more, the machine becomes engulfed by a black smoke, which might be a reference to the ashes of hell.

After this scene, the viewer observes different clips of man-made creations, such as power plants, highways, buildings, and the atomic bomb, symbolizing the intrusion of humans, their intellectual superiority, and advancements on Earth. Again, the film reaches another pivotal point, in which the camera moves across abandoned, run-down buildings. Many buildings are then demolished by the traditional, anthropocentric manner. In other words, the buildings are blown up.

Following the demolition of the buildings are clips of cities and people within those cities. We see that life becomes structured and industrial goods and services become the norm. Long lines, crowded streets, and overpopulated cities do not seem to bother people. An interesting scene in one of the clips of the city life was an electronic sign with the words “Grand Illusion” forming. I believe that this was an ironic suggestion, in that our lives are like a grand illusion because we often live them as though we are most important and no other issues are as important as the ones we have. In actuality, this mindset is highly unrealistic, because our actions have consequences on other organisms and the balance of the Earth and all of its ecosystems. In a way, we see that the demolitions and the cities highlight our anthropocentric views because they demonstrate that we feel at liberty to build, destroy, and then rebuild again without regards for our environmental, societal, and economic consequences.

Just as we feel at liberty to create cities and places for humans to comfort themselves, the film also demonstrates that we tend to produce excessively and, consequently, indulge excessively. Coppola includes in the film many clips of industrial workers and processes in which all sorts of products are mass-produced, including jeans, sliced meat, hot dogs, cars, and Twinkies. This production adheres to the notion that society is constantly on the upward move. That is, much of society wants to increase its profit and status, since with such achievements comes power. I believe that power drives the actions of many people, since being in a position of power gives a person the right to be right. Once again, however, reality shows us that, in the environmental crisis that we are in, we cannot focus on power and who has more money or investments than everyone else. Of essence to the survival of other organisms, the Earth, and ourselves is minimization. I do not imply that we should not be able to enjoy life. Rather, I mean that we should practice limits.

With this said, I can see why Coppola included many of the different forms of recreation in Koyaanisqatsi, such as the people playing Pacman, bowling, watching movies, and shopping in malls and grocery stores. We are consumed with playing the best video games, buying the best products, and having luxurious-type lifestyles, many of the times at the abuse of depleting materials and energy resources. In the film, we also see the individuals increasingly consuming fast foods, which mirrors the increasing consumer activity in the world on products that we probably do not need but want for personal pleasure.

Like the swipe of a public transportation card, as seen in the film, our lives have become extremely predictable and mechanical. We are machines that run on schedules and so we want machines and products in our lives that ensure that our schedules run smoothly. Our need to satisfy our schedules means producing speedy cars, unhealthy electronics such as cellular phones, and other environmentally unfriendly products. In addition, companies feed off of the wants of consumers and, resultantly, seek cheap labor, which dehumanizes people in many other countries and causes the quality of life to decrease for many people. Here we see that environmental issues run deeper than just the environment.

An interesting scene to me, which is probably one of the last pivotal points in the film, is one in which the television displays different products, issues, news stories, obscenities, sports games, and other programs. After this shot, the setting of each clip becomes more frantic and the people look flashier. Eventually, another scene related to television sets appears in which the sets all explode, perhaps representing an overload of consumer wants, business greed and profits, and environmental havoc. After all of the franticness, Coppola employs pathos in the film to invoke emotional engagement, in my opinion, for the environmental issues. He does so by appealing to the human heart by displaying what many of us consider unfortunate and immoral ways of living life. It is as though we are all brought back to reality and realize that…oh yes…our actions do have an impact on the world. In a sense, when we see the impacts, such as depression, poverty, substance abuse including cigarettes, prostitution, and violence, we have a partial messianic moment and realize that action must be taken to overcome the environmental issues to rectify the social adversity. I mention partial because it may not be that viewers feel completely ready or able to do something about the issue; the viewers simply know that they must do something.

One of the most brilliant parts of Koyaanisqatsi is, perhaps, the last scene, in which a rocket ship blasts off into the air and blows up while in the air. The whole ship burns and eventually a small piece remains and slowly deteriorates. The dwindling piece of rocket ship represents our society. If we cannot find ways to restore the Earth’s balance, it is this slow, sad demise that we are headed for. Only we can stop this atrocity from occurring, and only such can be done if we all employ environmental sustainability and remain emotionally involved with the issue.

Coppola makes sure that the audience realizes its impending doom via the strategic, dark-toned music of the movie. The song where the singer repeats “koyaanisqatsi” is quite chilling. This song is present at both the beginning and end of the movie and is a reminder that we must act fast to correct our environmental wrongs. Even more, the film provides several definitions for koyaanisqatsi, which all ultimately culminate to a meaning of an inefficient way of living that needs to be changed. The human-like drawings, which were present at the beginning of the film, and the Hopi prophecies are symbols that represent the wrongdoings of humans toward the environment and the consequences we will have to pay if we continue to live the way we do.

Koyaanisqatsi is a brilliant reflection of what the Earth has become largely because of the actions of human beings. The film compels us to evaluate our own lives and pinpoint what it is that we are doing wrong and what we can ultimately do to amend our wrong actions. Even more, the film juxtaposes a beautiful, natural world with a polluted, corrupt one to probably show us that our actions are more detrimental than we think. To walk away from this film feeling defeated by the simmering rocket ship part is not the intention, then, that I feel Coppola had for us all. Rather, I feel that he wanted to make us think about the issue and realize, in a messianic-like moment, that the Earth is in a critical state and we must do something about the environmental issues. By taking such actions, we can change our predicted fate and prevent our society from becoming the simmering rocket ship piece.

Sherifa Baldeo

KOYAANISQATSI! When trying to fall asleep an hour after I finished watching this bizarre movie, all I could hear in my head was “KOYAANISQATSI” in that slow, robotic voice. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but what I do know is that I did not enjoy this unique movie. Although there were several intriguing and symbolic moments, it was just not my cup of tea. However, I did see some value in this movie in the way it portrayed the world and left it open to interpretation.

Before starting this movie, I knew nothing about it. All I had heard was that someone had said in class that it was something like the show Planet Earth. It turned out to be very different from what I was expecting as the movie consisted solely of slow, panoramic views of random sights ranging from the Grand Canyon to car and pedestrian traffic without any voiceovers. I assume the background music was supposed to be soothing, but I found it rather irritating. Perhaps I was just not in the proper mood to watch the movie. I feel like it would make for a better watch in the wee hours of the early morning.

The movie started and ended on the same note with a rocket being launched. I guess this showed how far we have come as a human race in that we are able to launch rockets into outer space. However, we still have so much more to go as we have barely begun to explore space. There is still so much more room for technological advancement, and hopefully we are on the brink of breakthrough.

The biggest message I took from the movie is how we are small, helpless, and insignificant parts of the world. It is almost comedic the way we drive our cars around, listening to traffic lights, having no way to get to where we want to go faster. We just accept having to stop and follow all the rules of the world without questioning them, like stopping when the light turns red.

There were many beautiful sites shown in the movie. The Grand Canyon is a beautiful place where I would like to visit someday. It seems like it would be extremely relaxing there. At one point in the movie, there was an astounding field of many different colored flowers. It was an extravagant array ranging from pink to green that reminded me of candy, however it was still a site unmatched by anything I have ever seen.

My favorite site in the movie was a skyscraper that was shown along with dozens of tourists admiring it. The sides of the building were glass, so it reflected all sorts of light and images off of it. The way the sun reflected off the glass was a remarkable sight. I believe the tourists were well warranted in admiring the spectacular, once in a lifetime view.

I was very confused when there was an airplane on the screen for several minutes. The pilot was nowhere in sight. The airplane was moving and you can see into the cockpit, but there was no one there. This was alarming because a moving plane should have someone flying it.

I immediately noticed the incinerators when they were shown because of the giant chimneys. These incinerators are an example of a necessary but unfortunate part of our world. We need a way to dispose of our waste and there are no better current alternatives. The sight of these incinerators reminded me of our need to find better ways for waste disposal. Going along with items relevant to our class, there was a landfill featured in the film. I was able to see the massive mounds where garbage would be dumped and was able to tell the landfill stretched for many acres. Landfills and incinerators are currently our best two options for waste disposal, but personally, I advocate incinerators over landfills. I believe landfills waste too much land and incinerators are getting better at filtering and limiting the toxins emitted into the air. The movie also showed a lot of oil drilling. Once again, the movie was showing a finite resource that we rely on to live our lives, so we need to find alternatives for it. Oil drilling has many consequences including destroying the icecaps, endangering Arctic wildlife, and maybe most importantly affecting decision making at the higher level because everything always comes down to money. We need to be careful when it comes to oil drilling.

At one point in the movie, a passed-out homeless gentleman was put on a stretcher and taken to the hospital in an ambulance. This reminded me of the internship I am doing now. I am a research assistant in the Emergency Department at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, so I see intoxicated patients come in all the time. The emergency room staff hates dealing with them because most of them come in frequently and act obnoxiously and are harmful to themselves and others. I witnessed one intoxicated patient bite an emergency room physician as well a different intoxicated patient slap an EMT. Many times, the staff is forced to sedate these patients, as they are an inconvenience to the employees as well as other patients. It is a shame and we need to work better to improve unemployment and get help for people suffering from mental problems and other disadvantages.

Something that I thought was symbolic was the buildings collapsing or being demolished. I thought that this was saying that we need to keep advancing and making progress or we are going to crumble like those buildings. The sight of those buildings falling was tough to watch and the amount of ash and dirt released into the air when these buildings collapse is disgusting.

The outdoor elevators on some of the buildings really captured my attention. The elevators were outside at each corner of the buildings, and they reminded me of the wonkavators from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I think buildings in Manhattan should make elevators like that as they would transform a normally boring experience into a fun one.

The movie showed a full moon bigger than any moon I have ever seen before. Strange things tend to happen under a full moon and according to the messages at the end, I have many strange thoughts on the movie. The title is very fitting as it translates to life out of balance or crazy life. I like the way the movie reveals these translations at the end. It makes sense as the movie shows random scenes of beautiful, natural sites like the Grand Canyon as well as damaging, manmade sites such as oil drilling. This is a great example of how life is out of balance. A translation for the Hopi Prophecies sung during the film is, “If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.” This is what we have been learning in our class as messing with the equilibrium always has bad consequences. It would be better to harness natural energy, specifically solar energy to fuel our society instead of finite resources like oil, which we must remove from the land.