The so-called “crying Indian” ad is the most famous (or infamous) example of a patronizingly essentialist view of American Indians as environmental augurs:

I think Koyaanisqatsi is another. The only words you hear in the film are Hopi. Koyaanisqatsi means “life out of balance,” and the chorus that is part of Philip Glass‘s score intones three tribal sayings that can be interpreted as being warnings about the impact of human actions on the world.

It’s certainly not mean-spirited but can nonetheless be as limiting and de-humanizing as any cowboy-movie stereotype.

Look what was in my mail today:

In this short promotional video for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Philip Glass talks a little bit about his increasing interest in the classical-music tradition as a source of inspiration:

This has been going on for a while. Some people love his symphonies, string quartets, and the like; others don’t. Back in the fall of 2010, Robert McDuffie toured the country with Glass’s nod to Vivadli, American Four Seasons. In the Chicago Tribune, John von Rhein called it, “a Glass half empty.” Mike Paarlberg loved the piece, mostly for not sounding like Koyaanisqatsi.

Across the pond, two different reviewers for the same paper had very different opinions, as Richard Guerin points out. In the London Telegraph, Ivan Hewett hailed American Four Seasons as “classic art”; Michael White called it “unmitigated trash.”

Here’s the last movement. Decide for yourself: