"These films however, have ambiguity built into them, because it's too easy in film to make a strident work of propaganda or advertising, which are really the same thing anyway, meaning the message is unmistakable"
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Reggio is basically confessing a fear that cinema’s strongest muscle is also its most dangerous one: clarity. Film can shove an idea into your body at 24 frames per second, bypassing argument and landing as feeling. That’s why he builds ambiguity in on purpose - not as a trendy aesthetic move, but as a form of ethical restraint. If the message is “unmistakable,” he implies, the work has already slipped into the logic of persuasion, where the viewer’s job is to receive, not to wrestle.
The jab that propaganda and advertising are “really the same thing anyway” is doing heavy lifting. He’s collapsing the moral distinction audiences like to keep: propaganda is what bad regimes do; advertising is what normal life does. Reggio suggests they share a common tactic - manufacturing consent through seductive images - differing mostly in branding and target. In that frame, a film that announces its thesis too cleanly starts to smell like a campaign.
Context matters: Reggio’s best-known work (the Qatsi trilogy) is essentially nonverbal cinema built from montage, music, and spectacle. Those films hover between critique and awe: technology is monstrous, but also mesmerizing; modernity is dehumanizing, but also sublime. Ambiguity becomes the engine that keeps you alert. You can’t file the images under a single moral label, so you’re forced into active interpretation - and in that space, Reggio is betting the viewer might regain something film often steals: agency.
The jab that propaganda and advertising are “really the same thing anyway” is doing heavy lifting. He’s collapsing the moral distinction audiences like to keep: propaganda is what bad regimes do; advertising is what normal life does. Reggio suggests they share a common tactic - manufacturing consent through seductive images - differing mostly in branding and target. In that frame, a film that announces its thesis too cleanly starts to smell like a campaign.
Context matters: Reggio’s best-known work (the Qatsi trilogy) is essentially nonverbal cinema built from montage, music, and spectacle. Those films hover between critique and awe: technology is monstrous, but also mesmerizing; modernity is dehumanizing, but also sublime. Ambiguity becomes the engine that keeps you alert. You can’t file the images under a single moral label, so you’re forced into active interpretation - and in that space, Reggio is betting the viewer might regain something film often steals: agency.
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