This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Where three people died, eight women miscarried, and the logistics were so badly planned that the organisers had to appeal to local farms to provide food and water?
I still don't understand why Woodstock occupies such a vaunted stature in the American imagination. "Hendrix played 'The Star-Spangled Banner', but he made it all, like, distorted and stuff. Far out." Okay?
I see that others already gave detailed answers. I’d add a couple of things. Michael Lang, the organizer of the original festival was also an organizer of Woodstock ’99, and probably (the documentary doesn’t go into detail about this particular aspect) had a big role in promoting the event as them paying homage to the original after 30 years, resurrecting the old spirit of peace and harmony, bringing people together and basically providing the same great experience. It was the BS they kept repeating even as the disaster unfolded, in order to conceal what a naked money grab it was actually supposed to be.
You and I will probably never understand Woodstock because neither of us are liberal US Boomers (I presume) nor were we there. With regards to its cultural legacy, the deaths and miscarriages don’t matter one bit. It was surely the one defining, uniting life experience for hundreds of thousands, taking place before their illusions and ideals were forever shattered.
More options
Context Copy link
The stuff around Woodstock is "good ol days" type remembering by Boomers (including by plenty who weren't there) about how great their early 20s were (basically an Onion headline about some guy remembering how great and trouble-free the world used to be, which just happened to be when he was 22). It got cemented by a hagiographic documentary released in March 1970. If you watch the original with none of the later extras, it looks like a 3day party with amazing music.
In hindsight, it was easy to paint as the highwater mark of the 60s. Altamont was December 1969. The Manson murders were summer 1969 but the trial didn't start until summer 1970 (which is amazingly fast by modern murder trial standards). Not hard to pull them together into a death of the 60s montage.
I like pointing out that the summer of love was 1967, and there were already people calling BS on the whole thing at that point. Also worth noting that HST claimed the highwater mark was SF in the mid-60s, not anything about Woodstock.
🎶 Those were the best days of my life 🎵
More options
Context Copy link
https://theonion.com/area-man-always-nostalgic-for-four-years-ago-1819566584/
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah that's basically what I've come to think about it. This NYT article about its history. Basically, it was a muddy, disgusting mess, that mostly became famous because of a very carefully edited movie about it that came out a year later. The iconic Jimmy Hendrix performance was actually the last act, a day after it was supposed to end, and most of the crowd had already left. They had no no bathrooms, limited water, lots of rain, and 800 drug overdoses.
Was it less violent than the 99 version? .. maybe? The music at least was less angry. And there's less evidence of violence. But my suspicion is that there was actually a ton of sexual assault at the original event, it just didn't get recorded because there were a lot fewer cameras back then and everyone was high. Those 60s hippies were nasty, and there's lots of other disturbing accounts of their bad behavior.
More options
Context Copy link
I remember hearing in another documentary that later about 20 million Americans claimed to have been there...LOL. There was also a running joke among hippies: if you say you remember being there, you're lying.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It’s worth noting that in my bubble, Woodstock is just some people doing drugs in a desert, including among the elderly.
Edit: it shows how much importance we put on it to not know it was held at a different location from burning man. I don't understand why 'some losers did drugs at a concert' is famous.
As @VoxelVexillologist notes, Upstate NY isn't a desert; it was famously a mudpit in the original and 1994 and 1999.
More options
Context Copy link
Not a word I associate with upstate New York, usually, although I'll admit I've never been to Woodstock.
Comparisons with modern Burning Man in Nevada probably aren't that far out of line, though.
It actually took place on the area of a dairy farm.
Yep. Gemini AI amusingly positively compares the "mud" from the original Woodstock with the "mud" from Woodstock '99, claiming the latter was contaminated with port-a-potty overflow. Well, I'm sure it was, but not only did the original Woodstock have the same problem, even without that the "mud" was probably 40% cowshit.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not sure that three people dying is unusual for a supposed attendance of 400,000 people over the course of three days.
The annual death rate for 25-29 year olds in the United States in 2023 was 1.24 per 1000. Source.
((1.24 expected deaths / 1000 people) / 365 days) * 400000 people * 3 days = 4.07671232877 expected deaths.
The actual attendance might have been smaller than 400,000, the average age different, etc. And the math might be simplistic. But this gives an idea of the math, at least.
As for the vaunted stature in the American imagination...
I'm a big fan of the music of that time period and I find that other people who are interested in that time period usually don't put much emphasis on Woodstock. It was just one of many famous music events from back then. Woodstock is more commonly made central by narratives that try to capture the 1960s in a really quick synopsis. It has become an easy stand-in for the 1960s, so if you want to refer to that time period you can just show a couple seconds of Woodstock footage, same as how if you want to really quickly refer to the early 1940s you can just show a couple of seconds of footage of Hitler giving a speech.
I think many of us have seen such history synopses on television. It goes something like this: couple of seconds of Elvis dancing, then JFK assassination footage, then the Beatles landing in the US clip, then a couple of seconds of Woodstock, then some footage of Nixon, then the Sex Pistols doing "Anarchy in the U.K.".
Some of the music performed at Woodstock is really good but I think that most of the musicians who performed at Woodstock played better on other occasions. I think that Hendrix's Woodstock performance is overall not very good. From that show, I like Woodstock Improvisation more than Star Spangled Banner, although it is sloppy.
I think Hendrix was best in the studio. I like his studio Star Spangled Banner much more than the Woodstock one. 1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) is fantastic.
I would imagine those 1.24/1000 deaths are dominated by traffic accidents and, secondarily, fatal overdoses. It’s not like 1.24/1000 25-29 year olds are just dropping dead at random.
I think traffic accidents and fatal overdoses are pretty common causes of death at music festivals.
Fair point.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This reminds me of something I forgot to mention: one attendee did die during Woodstock '99. Interestingly this is not even mentioned once throughout the 3-part series.
More options
Context Copy link
But that only invites further questions. 400k people attended Woodstock, with three deaths (and between 4-8 miscarriages) in three days: it's universally remembered as a festival built on free love, hope and optimism. 300k people attended the Altamont Free Concert, with four deaths in one day (including one killing in self-defense): it's universally remembered as a uniquely horrific event, the decisive end to the hope and optimism of the 60s hippie movement. When people talk about how awful Altamont was, are they really claiming that it was (going by your maths) four times more lethal than expected, and one-third more lethal than Woodstock? From the way people talk about these two events, that's not remotely the impression I get.
Another metric: Woodstock '69 had a fatality rate of 0.75/100k, while Altamont's was 1.33/100k. I just have a hard time reconciling the disparate reputations these two events hold in the popular imagination.
I think it’s obvious. Of the three recorded deaths at Woodstock, one was a simple accident (you shouldn’t fall asleep on a hayfield where tractors move around) and two were drug overdoses. Compared to this, there were 742 recorded nonlethal overdoses according to Wikipedia. I imagine any jurisdiction in the US affected by the opioid epidemic (more or less all of them?) would be rather happy to produce such a ratio in their police reports. There was not one recorded murder or rape. Compared to this, hired security stabbed a man to death in Altamont, which is a significant difference. (The other three recorded cases of death were due to mundane accidents.)
More options
Context Copy link
I can’t imagine that they score the same on overall level of violence.
More importantly for public perception, though, none of the Woodstock deaths happened in the front row. On camera.
Also, not one recorded case of either murder or rape in Woodstock.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Altamont didn't have a tremendously large number of deaths for such a large event, but it was violent in a way that Woodstock, from what I've read at least (I like the music of the time period but am not an expert on these festivals), was not.
It was alleged, though disputed, that some bands and/or managers arranged for the Hells Angels to provide security for the performers. It true, it was a very bad idea. The Hells Angels were unpredictable and violent, which should have been known at the time. Hunter Thompson's book about them, which described them as being close to dangerous wild animals despite the author's heavy counterculture sympathies, had already been out for 2 years at that point.
There were multiple reports of Hells Angels getting into violent melees with the crowd even before the murder of Meredith Hunter. A Hells Angel even punched a musician, Marty Balin.
In another incident, Mick Jagger, singer for the Rolling Stones, was punched by an unknown assailant when he arrived at the venue.
To add to the narrative, Rolling Stone magazine, which back then was actually influential among the youth, wrote a story soon after the festival that described it as a disaster.
It's also possible that the fact that the race of Meredith Hunter played a role, given the racial tensions of the time period and the fact that the youth counterculture was generally looked to with hope that it would help to resolve these tensions.
I think that the actual violence of the event combined with the journalistic coverage and the desire for simplistic, broad-brush-stroke narratives ("end of an era!", "counterculture dream turns dark!") to give the event its narrative resonance.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Boomer Lore, basically.
They had some great music, that much is true.
Woodstock was a last big hurrah before reality set in. The Altamont free concert where some Hells Angels killed a concertgoer (and a bunch of other stuff) happened a mere 4 months later.
So they go from genuinely believing that free love, free drugs, and free music had the power to change and fix the world, to eventually facing down the fact that all of those things had some major downsides.
I don't know what I expected, "black man stabbed to death at 60's music festeval," to look like, but this didn't dissapoint.
It's like a Family Guy sketch.
More options
Context Copy link
I understand that the Altamont free concert is widely understood to have served as the death knell of the optimism of the 1960s hippie movement. But I genuinely don't understand why Woodstock hadn't already accomplished that. Three people died. I appreciate that three people dying from negligence is less dramatic than one person being stabbed to death: but still, what kind of exchange rate is this?
Huh: in addition to the lone stabbing at Altamont, there were also three accidental deaths I hadn't heard about. The hope was that Altamont would be the "Woodstock of the West". I guess they got what they wanted, and then some.
Woodstock was planned for 50,000 people and ten times that number showed up. There were a couple accidental deaths, but no violence, despite the fact that security was woefully inadequate on paper. The myth was that a half million well-meaning people could overcome hardships like bad weather and traffic nightmares and still have a good time. Altamont was completely different from the beginning, with fights breaking out throughout the show. One of the biggest problems was that the stage was only about 3 feet off the ground, and there was a crush of people trying to climb on it throughout the show. The Hell's Angels they hired (for $500 in beer) to protect the stage area were drunk and unqualified, so there were constant scuffles in front of the stage. Even before Meredith Hunter was killed, the atmosphere was so bad that the Grateful Dead noped out. That this only happened a few months after Woodstock meant that the juxtaposition was fresh in people's minds, and it was easy to paint Altamont as the end of an era. It didn't help that across the pond, the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was beset with similar problems.
More options
Context Copy link
Well the original Woodstock had the benefit of there being a Documentary crew on site and, in the final cut, basically valorized the entire thing rather than focusing on the controversies or failings.
And I'm sure most people formed good memories of it in retrospect.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link