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Roughly half a year ago there was a discussion here on the cultural legacy and (then) recent renewed interest and negative portrayal of the Woodstock ’99 music festival in the mainstream media. I haven’t seen the two documentaries in question but I’ve heard commentaries on them, and they agreed that much of the sneering and hostility present in their narratives is actually directed at the nu-metal genre in general, and the antics of Fred Durst in particular. I was sort of surprised that nobody mentioned this in the discussion. Anyway, it certainly doesn’t surprise me that much that they’d contextualize the whole incident in that way, as nu-metal is generally seen as an embarrassing and pathetic cringefest which was a plague upon pop music at the turn of the Millennium, thankfully one that largely disappeared after a few years as quickly as it appeared. And it was roughly at the zenith of its popularity when this festival took place, which was dominated by nu-metal bands.
When I’ve heard these commentaries I started looking for more on Youtube as my interest was piqued. Back when the BBC Learning TV channel existed it ran a rather good one-hour documentary on the incident but unfortunately I wasn’t able to find it. (I saw one or two other short documentaries from the same period i.e. 2000/2001.) I do recall, however, finding some news report which featured a segment from an interview with Sheryl Crow, who also performed at the festival and had a rather bad experience. I saw this YT clip about two years ago and can’t find it again unfortunately. To paraphrase from memory, she argued that the reason she found the whole scandal repulsive was that the white male nu-metal fans who committed numerous acts of arson, vandalism, rape, harassment etc. were mostly from functioning middle-class homes in the suburbs, objectively privileged by global standards, yet were constantly angry and destructive and couldn’t even put it in words why. She basically accused them of toxic masculinity even though I don’t recall her using that exact expression, but I wasn’t surprised anyway because she came across as the average lipstick feminist.
Leaving the subject of the festival aside, I wonder how nu-metal will be viewed in the context of the culture war. It appears to me that as a phenomenon it was a canary in a coalmine, providing an outlet for the angst of the young white (mostly) male members of a social class that was turning into the precariat under a system of late-stage capitalism, whose average quality of life was about to start collapsing. (Rising rates of mortality, alcoholism, illegitimacy, fatherlessness, unemployment, opioid addiction, prescription pill abuse etc.)
IMO the better explanation is that the music culture itself led to the antisocial behavior. It valued short term gratification and the expression of rage, reinforced through catchy songs and interesting music videos. Once you find that “cool” as a kid, it’s only a matter of time before there’s temptation to imitate that behavior. What better place to do than then the live performance of the band? Social ills don’t have to factor in at all, and in fact we can see the social ills as also being a product of the culture at the time, which includes music culture. Kids look up to their favorite artist, and they love imitating people they up to, and music is the best way to communicate an emotional state. So it shouldn’t be surprising if they internalize the emotional state that they spend hundreds of hours listening to, and if that’s an aggressive state then they will behave aggressively.
More generally, 1997-1999 was a really weird period where the US economy was booming, America was undisputed global hegemon, and unemployment was very low. In this environment of them mid-late 90s a weird post-Nirvana alt scene evolved that was weirdly self destructive, nihilistic and generally full of rebels without a cause.
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