Ep. 6 Woodstock '99 & The Hippie To Yuppie Pipeline
or: misogyny ruins the fun for everyone
Content Warning: this episode discusses sexual assault, rape, and death.
Well, I watched a documentary and then had so many thoughts I watched four other documentaries about Woodstock and now I’m here to talk about how communes were really the miracle at work in the ‘60s! How quickly did individualism poison society? Why was Michael Lang ever allowed to continue promoting music festivals after the first Woodstock? And how are we still treating sexual violence as an unfortunate byproduct and not the distillation of the terrible ideals and rape culture of the time?
A festival allegedly promoting Peace & Love was held on a literal military industrial complex. You can’t make this shit up!
Mostly, what I came away with feeling after learning everything I did about the ‘69 and ‘99 festivals was that there wasn’t really a difference in greed (they were super bummed about how many people “got away” with not paying for the first festival) but there was a massive difference in care and personal respect for one another—and love really is what keeps us together. (And degrading women constantly will tear us apart.)
Anyway, take a toke every time I blame Woodstock ‘99 directly on Ronald Reagan!
Link It Up Baby, Link It Up
Netflix Docuseries - Trainwreck (three parts, lots of history, graphic images throughout of sexual assault)
HBO Documentary - Woodstock 99: Peace Love and Rage (spoke more about the death and medical emergency aspects, more blaming of everything on MTV by my nemesis John Scher, if you don’t have time or want to watch the Netflix one, this was interesting)
Documentary on ‘69 - Woodstock: Three Days That Defined A Generation (my fave doc that I watched throughout this thing, just voiceovers to original footage from the ‘69 festival. Spent most of the doc amazed at the quality of the film they shot on)
Documentary on ‘69- Woodstock Three Days of Peace & Love (Director’s Cut—if you want to watch a lot of performances, this is the one! Kind of THE doc and has the most influence on how the festival was remembered.)
Washington Post Article in ‘99 about the sexual assaults (and lack of action by security—we DID know how bad it was back then, the promoters are absolute shitheads, I will be enraged forever) (cw: very graphic and horrific descriptions in this article as well as victim blaming)
Spin.com live coverage from 1999
Rolling Stone - Woodstock ’99: Rage Against the Latrine
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