Upon watching director Godfrey Reggio’s film Koyaanisqatsi, I’ll admit that I was somewhat perplexed at first.
“Is this a really, really, really long introduction, or is it just me? I guess it’s just me. No, I’m pretty sure that this voiceless prelude is a little bit longer than what I’m accustomed to.”
Following Dr. Langguth’s brief description of the film prior to our watching it, I had expected to become the invisible observer of an ancient Hopi civilization. But as I waited for the scenery detailing our natural world to subside, I realized that there would be no concrete diagramming of Hopi life through the actions of actors and actresses. Instead, the simplistic and natural lifestyle of the Hopi culture would be conveyed through a very telling contrasting of Earth’s primitive beauty with our technologically ensconced modern world. Or even more minimally, the theme of the film is conveyed through the picture’s very title, Koyaanisqatsi, which, originating from the Hopi, means “a life out of balance.”
The film is extremely unconventional, but its unconventionality is utilized to its advantage because it forces the viewer to contemplate for himself/herself the ideas of the film. I don’t think that I have ever watched a feature film which forsook speaking and verbal narration as a means to convey meaning to the viewer (avant-garde to say the least). Seriously, how many production companies today would be willing to help produce a film which failed to rely upon the spoken word? In our digital era, the percentage would be next to zero. Nonetheless, I don’t think that we should let Koyaanisqatsi’s alternative mode of communication turn us off to the message it relates and the considerations it invokes. I heard an undercurrent of moaning and horror as our class realized the entire movie would be watched without talking. Maybe this very fact proves that we are, as a society, too over-stimulated for our own good. Maybe this is just what we require (i.e. to sit and allow our minds to be liberated from the usual constraints of language and persuasion) if we truly wish to engender a genuine reflection upon the overall balance of our lives. I think that we should at least be willing to offer the movie a chance at stirring that musing. I was somewhat skeptical at first; but after watching several minutes of the film, I grew to understand why the director forsook language. In line with what we have been reading in Borgmann, sometimes it’s more informative if we forsake the apodeictic and turn to the deictic or paradeictic. In order to understand the paradigm, it sometimes helps to turn to a form of explanation which “articulates a thing or event in its uniqueness,” essentially “point[ing] up something in its significance” (page 72). As Borgmann relates, the subject comes to possess more preeminence than the method of discovery if we follow this path. Step away from scientific modes of deduction and the characterization of theses and antitheses and let your mind revel in staring at the outright existence and implications of what we are attempting to observe.
Although we only watched bits of the film, we received a taste of what its main premise is. One need only remember the urban scenes of refuse and waste to realize that our life is out of balance. Can the point be demonstrated any better through language? There’s a certain beauty, a certain simplicity, that we lack in our daily interactions with each other and the world around us. And although we haven’t been presented with an explicit picture of the Hopi world, the landscapes do offer us a glimpse of what that life must have held for those people. Today, the beauty and organic features of our earth have faded away, in both our environments and our minds, to the rigidity and linearity of our buildings, residences, and ways of taking up with the world. Just look at how our lifestyles revolve around technology and its promise. Just look at how stressful and clamorous our existences are. Just look. Let the scenes speak for themselves and listen. Maybe what we need to learn is how to just be…
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