Laura Paquette - Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance

 “Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance”

"life of moral corruption and turmoil"; "Life as chaos"

This is what the word Koyaanisqatsi translates to in English from the Hopi language. Out of the weirdest films I have ever seen, this by far takes the cake. Upon starting the film, I found myself submerged in this changing landscape that resembled more of a piece of art than a film or documentary. I perceived it to be an experience that extended to all of my senses, dulled the mind, and coaxed my inner being to think. The thoughts it provoked? I think the director Godfrey Reggio put it best, "Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe so we are no longer conscious of its presence." This sentence has leaked into my conscience. However, I believe Reggio would make a distinction between technology being that which humans have created such as forks, wheels, bricks, pencils, or bags, and the technology of electronics that we have come to be unable to live without such as cars, buses, computers, phones, and lamps. What this documentary did was fill my soul with a deep sense of longing for human interaction.

The following Saturday, I went to the Shenandoah mountains to see the sunset and the stars with my mother. Before we began our descent back down, we stopped at the Skyland restaurant for some food and drinks. As we sat waiting for our food, my attention was drawn to the table beside us. There were about 5 children and 3 pairs of adults. Each child at that table was watching a show or playing on their tablet that was inches from their face. I couldn't help but be filled with a sense of dysphoria, thinking about what would become of, socially, those children in the future. At that moment, I thought back to Koyaanisqatsi and the evident sense of hopelessness that remained on every frame. How much are our lives are tied -no chained as though slaves of our own technology? How long can we go without wanting entertainment? Are we growing into beings that cannot think because of the constant need for noise? Will this make us forget about what is going on in the world? Life outside of this technology?

I wish those children could've gotten the same childhood I did. Where I would go outside with my little sister and pretend sticks were swords and the trees were our friends. Where movies would be something we rarely wanted to watch but when we did, we spent hours afterward talking about it and deriving our next games from them. How sad it must be to be a child with no creativity.