Mucha na Dziko

Hey Guys,

I haven't been to the Woodstock '99 festival (it happened a year before I was born). But I've always been interested in any counter-culture/musical stuff that was happening anywhere, anytime and anyhow.

So, I'm watching the HBO documentary film about Woodstock '99, and I jus can't keep myself from getting frustrated how much his documentary seems forced, and idiotic.

I mean, first of all, they are applying 2021 values to judge a 1990s festival (they even try doing this in he film with the Woodstock '69 festival – which seems even more absurd):

1. Like there's a 10min part about a concert by a rapper named DMX or something, and he's singing a song where he word "******" is being shouted by the crowd. And the commentators in he documentary are all about "how the black minority at the estival must've felt, when their white friends were shouting '******'". Like... what?

1.1 When you see both white and black people dancing and singing the word. Or you can see just pictures from the event, where here's plenty of people of any skin colour having fun together.

2. There's a 5-10min part about how women were topless at that festival and how hat is showing us how the 90s culture was all about making women feel inferior, or that they were only sexualised objects (and not real participants).

2.1 Even though on the photos/videos from the festival the are shown in the film, you see men and women laughing and having fun, and not caring about touching breasts or whatever (on most of the videos shown from the concerts, you even get the idea, that the men touching those breasts are boyfriends or whatever of the girls).


The point here being that the documentary wants to impose some sort of interpretation of those events on me, but it does so in showing me elements that were actually good (not bad).

This goes on.

The documentary also shows many people taking about what an awful experience the whole event was. How everything went wrong. There ain't a single thing that was good about it apparently.

In my opinion (based on the documentary itself) the film shows only a fractured picture of the festival, and is trying to make that event seem like a "lesson from the past", but art the same time it's incapable of doing so (as you see all these people having fun, and dancing, singing, etc).




The doucmetntary leaves me with a distaste.

But not with a distaste for the festival, but for people making documentaries at HBO or any other big american company.
It all makes no sense.

1. How come you can see all these happy people having fun, and yet saying it was a nightmare?
2. How can you say it was all a nightmare, but then show photos and videos of people having immensely a lo of fun?
3. Why would you do this documentary in he first place? Why not show me archive footage (apparently there's plenty of it), and let me decide for myself was I a nightmare or no?

Also, most of the stuff the authors are saying where awful (like: mud everywhere, the showers not working, the toilets being overused, people having and using drugs), would seem to me perfectly normal and fine. Like...where do you thin you're going to? A corporate yoga class? It's a 90s hippie-ish festival! What were you expecting?



My point is:

Are there any Woodstock '99 attendees around here? Can anyone tell me they actually thought of this festival as a "nightmare"? Or was it the other way around? Or was it something in the middle?
Was it worth it? Was it not worth it? Say your thoughts on it (and on thee documentary, iff you will)!

Speak up!
Educate me, please

This document leaves me only with thoughts of how low people would go in order to make some sort of "politically correct" propaganda (I'm no sure if this sound well, but I'll be glad to explain more thoroughly if someone would feel offended).





The worst part of the documentary is this guy called Morris or something. He's a journalist for he New York times apparently. Every time he speaks I just wan to get up front he couch and punch the screen in. Like what the hell are you talking about man?

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rubber soul

I wasn't at Woodstock '99", but I certainly remember the coverage on MTV. I don't know about much of what you're saying. I do remember the shock of Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit more or less inciting a riot and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were left to pick the pieces up. Did the documentary mention anything about the conditions at Woodstock? Word has it that the promoters didn't think ahead in terms of supplies and facilities and there was a lot of price gouging for basic necessities like water. It pretty much set up a tempest for Durst to exploit and the end result wasn't pretty.

It may have been different for those that were actually there.

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Mucha na Dziko

I'm watching the film right now, I'm about in the middle.

Haven't seen the riots or the Peppers yet, so dunno


I was just sharing my thoughts on how the thing is covered here, and wanted to get some feedback on people who attended the thing.

Because it's just hard to believe it was as bad as this documentary tries to tell me it was
(especially when half of the things that the film says "where bad", I would actually find quite good and fitting for a festival of this sorts [like baking tin mud and overall nudity)

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rubber soul

I don't remember it being considered all bad. The news reports said it had started out rather peacefully and only got out of control a bit later. Again the living conditions were poor and that was said to have been a factor in the eventual violence but the initial intentions were certainly good.

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Frownland

Lotta people got raped. I imagine most people aren't interested in footage of that.

Documentaries are too connected to cinematic standards to be fully accurate, don't expect them to be.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Exo

I just watched it last night. I enjoyed it. There were plenty of interviews with people who were NOT comfortable with how the crowd was behaving. Some of the talking heads did seem pretty biased towards PC culture though. There was specifically one female speaker who seemed like she just wanted to seem outraged at anything. Other than that, I thought it was well done.

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Norg

1999 the good ol days pre 9/11 were white guy and his black friend could jam out at a concert and both shout the n word and spit the DMX lyrcis live

TheBig3

We had different 1999s.

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Mucha na Dziko

I don’t expect the documentary to show me footage of people being raped. Just a documentary made without ideology behind it. They could just show footage made at the festival and have some sort of off-screen narration from time to time (if they wish to have a message being sent by this film).
But here, when watching it, I just felt like someone wants to sell me an idea, and not facts. Like listening all the time to people who were saying it was **** (because you had mud next to your tent, or because the showers were not functioning, or because people got raped — and it’s all literally just shoved in together)

well, documentaries are supposed to be documents of the time; facts not fiction

So, expecting them to be accurate isn’t much of an expectation

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Mucha na Dziko

How so?

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