Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi

I like Koyaanisqatsi. Maybe you remember this 1983 Godfrey Reggio film. Maybe you thought it was weird. Most people seem to. In fact, I don't know anyone (as far as I know) who likes the film at all, let alone as much as I do. I saw Koyaanisqatsi back then, on PBS, and it stuck with me. I videotaped it the next time it was on, and have watched it from time to time over the years. Phillip Glass' soundtrack for it is really great too. The music is awesome, and Koyaanisqatsi is the best movie with no plot that I've ever seen! I've become a Phillip Glass fan too, from this movie. I have the soundtracks to both Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi.

I just watched Powaqqatsi. Made in 1988, I hadn't seen it until now. I decided I wanted to see the other two (Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi) and got the DVD from the library. It was amazing! The music was awesome!

You could drive yourself nuts trying to figure out what these movies "mean", and I think that's probably why many people don't like them. They don't understand them and these films don't explain themselves, nor are they in a genre that anyone would recognize. They're artwork. They have a message, but in the same way that an abstract painting would. That is, the message is there, but most people (myself included) likely wouldn't get the particular message the artist intended unless the artist explained it himself. That explanation of Powaqqatsi by the way, is in my opinion the first and only DVD "special feature" I've ever seen that was worth anything. DVD "special features" are always afterthoughts to whatever movie they're for, and thus never so "special". Anyway, I've always been of the opinion that if the message the artist intended is so hard for people to get, then it has to be secondary to the artwork anyway. Since it's lost on most people, I always thought such artwork was more valuable for being thought provoking. In this case, the artist, Godfrey Reggio understands this. Powaqqatsi is definitely thought provoking:

Provoked thought #1: Most Americans have no idea how other people in the world live. Other than how people in North America and Europe live, I think we're just really clueless as to how the other billions of people in the world simply conduct their daily lives. How they do their laundry and grocery shopping. If in fact they shop for groceries. Powaqqatsi seems to give many glimpses into this. I felt like "wow, so many people in the world!" So many different cultures! Many, many I couldn't even recognize!

I suppose by the same token other people in the world really have no idea how we live either, but as the current dominant culture in the world ("western" culture, North American and European culture), I think we should take a real interest in other cultures. Perhaps if we did, other cultures would resent us less. If in fact they do universally resent us. I'm not sure that they do "all hate us", even after September 11.

I can understand why Americans would turn away from trying to understand other cultures. It's because were conditioned to think the third world's lack of civilization and squalor and starvation is our fault. Usually when there is something on TV about a third world culture, the story focuses on the real problems and hardships they do face, but the implication always is that it's America's fault for not doing something about it. Well thank you liberal media. The state of the rest of the world is not our fault. We are an extremely generous nation. If our attempts at charity are diverted by warlords into their own pockets, or even when they do help people but end up like a drop of rain in the ocean, I don't see that as our fault. The alternative would be to give up and not even try. The more the media blames us for all the world's problems, the more we do give up and the less we try. That's the real problem. A news media encouraged sense of guilt, futility, and apathy.

Anyway, I've seen one other culture in the world, one as it really is, not packaged and made quaint for the tourist industry. The culture of China. Oh yes, they package their culture and make it quaint to sell to the tourists too, but I've been lucky enough to see the real China. Street shopping in Hong Kong -- that's one amazing aspect of the real, modern China that doesn't look so good on a postcard. My wife is Chinese. I guess you really have to know someone from another culture well, and go there with them, to get past the tourist version. China is one of the world's great nations and oldest civilizations, in the process of making a comeback. For thousands of years China was the height of civilization while Europe and North America were in the dark ages and largely pre-literate, respectively. Roman (western) civilization collapsed. It took Europe a thousand years to rebuild civilization. Chinese (eastern) civilization never collapsed, though perhaps it did get a little tired. This resulted in an inexplicably weak Chinese empire when European traders started making serious contacts in the 1700s. I think future historians will recognize these past three centuries as an aberration in the history of China. It's clear today to anyone paying attention that China is already a force in the world to be reckoned with. They will soon be a truly great nation once again, and for them it will be a return to their former glory. Personally I shudder to think of China as the dominant culture in the world, but with 1,284,303,705 people, it may be inevitable. Lets just hope they ditch communism and other authoritarian forms of government by then, but I'm not holding my breath� (the U.S. is 280,562,489, a distant third behind India.)

Anyway, back to Powaqqatsi and provoked thought #2: Seeing some of how other people in the world live, my initial reaction was pity for the lack of civilization. Later though, I realized if you go back far enough, our culture -- all cultures -- lived in similar ways. Farming with hand tools and doing back breaking work all day to survive is humanity's natural state -- civilization is the exception. We don�t pity our own medieval ancestors... Well maybe in some particulars yes, we do, but in general we don�t. I'll try to remember that "civilization is the exception" when I upload this to the internet�

Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi are in my opinion best appreciated like poetry. They're films to be seen and experienced, not really to be understood in terms of logical, rational thought. Wow, that really sounds luddite, but I'm going to continue on to say that a lot of what you get out of them is what you put into them. That's the big half for me, in fact. They're thought provoking. Whatever murky message the artist intended aside, there isn�t really a lot to be understood, but there is a lot to see and think about. A lot.

Provoked thought #3: I wonder if our dirty cities look to the third world like the shining cities we envision in science fiction? Wouldn't that be a twist? Do people in third world countries think of us like the kind of advanced civilizations we put into those shining cities in our science fiction? Are we the Minbari? The Vorlons? Is New York city Tuzanor? Is America Trantor or Couresant?

Next I need to see Naqoyqatsi...





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