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Mega/City/Crime. Notes on the Cultural Significance of Reggio's' Koyaanisqatsi' (1982)

Abstract

In his “non-narrative” film Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi for 'life in imbalance') Godfrey Reggio documents the ecologically disastrous 'imbalanced' life in modern, industrialised mega-cities. In the film, he seems to mourn the loss of what he suggests was a more 'balanced' form of life, when Man was one with nature. This contribution draws on elements in Hopi culture and reads Reggio’s iconic film as part of a cultural trend in which submission, in all its guises, is no longer accepted. In this cultural trend submission always is submission to code (that is: to a certain structured solidity or ordered coherence), and therefore, to wasteful destruction and to ‘life in imbalance’. This trend has, however, in the course of the decades, also spawned a void of “Luciferian” desires of absolute sovereignty, and has done this to such an extent as to undermine the conditions of possibility for anything like a non-submissive life ‘in balance’ to endure.

Acceptance Date Aug 12, 2018
Publication Date Aug 17, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal International Journal for the Semiotics of Law
Print ISSN 0952-8059
Publisher Springer Verlag
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-018-9581-x
Keywords Hopi culture, Koyaanisqatsi, sovereign Self, Luciferianism, conservationism, non-submission
Publisher URL https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-018-9581-x

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