Y2K nostalgia is everywhere right now. Olivia Rodrigo and Willow Smith are making retro pop-punk, Limp Bizkit are enjoying a resurgence, and Travis Barker is pretty much everywhere. It all seems very cute and quaint, but Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage is a horrifying reminder of the misogyny and homophobia that thrived at the turn of the millennium.
Much like the recent Fyre Fest docs, this film from Garret Price chronicles a festival that was destined to be a disaster from the get-go. Water cost $4, temperatures were over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the festival took place on the blazing hot tarmac of an air force base, the security were barely trained, inadequate bathroom facilities meant that the fields were covered in shit and piss, and candles intended for a vigil provided the kindling for attendees to literally burn the festival to the ground.
But the most troubling part of Woodstock 99 isn't the grim conditions but the rampant toxic masculinity. As practically every person interviewed in the film points out, the festival was marketed squarely towards angry, young, white men. The lineup prominently featured macho nu-metal, with only three female-fronted acts performing on the main stages the entire weekend. And those artists stoked the anger of the extremely aggro audience; a scene in which Limp Bizkit performs "Break Stuff" is particularly alarming, as frontman Fred Durst encourages the audience to be as violent as possible.
Peace, Love, and Rage's most disturbing moments all concern the treatment of women. Many shots show women being groped, harassed and assaulted, and there are accounts of numerous rapes (most of them unreported to the police). Price convincingly compares the event to a Girls Gone Wild film, as attendees (and on-stage performers) are belligerently told to "show your tits." A couple of people come off okay — Dexter Holland of the Offspring calls out the guys groping female crowd-surfers, and Jamiroquai's Jay Kay criticizes a cameraman for filming a woman's breasts — but Dave Matthews makes an icky comment about the "abundance of titties." Kid Rock is perhaps the worst of the bunch, as he shames Monica Lewinsky and calls Bill Clinton a "pimp."
In hammering home the point about how women were exploited, Peace, Love, and Rage probably ought to have shown fewer topless women — or, at least, censored some of the nudity. Watching the documentary and its non-stop parade of bodies, there's a nagging sense that some of these women are getting exploited all over again.
Peace, Love, and Rage finds its perfect villain in show promoter John Scher. Both in archival footage and in newly recorded interviews, he belligerently refuses to accept any responsibility for how badly the event went. He blames the violence on "knuckleheads," the sexual assaults on the women themselves, and the media for the festival's negative reputation. Every time he opens his mouth, he puts his foot squarely into it. Various attendees share their first-hand accounts, and artists like Moby, Jewel, the Offspring, Creed's Scott Stapp and Korn's Jonathan Davis tell their own stories of the festival's bad vibes and scary atmosphere.
The question that remains hanging over everything is: why exactly were the '90s such an angry, aggressive time in American culture? The film proposes a few answers, some of them convincing (feeling disenfranchised by capitalism, an unchecked sense of white male privilege) and some of them less so (Y2K anxiety, ire towards boybands and MTV in the aftermath of Kurt Cobain's death). The film can't seem to quite decide whether the bands are perpetrators or bystanders in the whole mess, leaving Peace, Love, and Rage as a film without a perspective. It's more about gawking at the chaos rather than trying to understand it.
But even if the film doesn't have quite enough insight into the depravity it depicts, it's still a grim reminder of the ugly behaviour that was condoned — and even celebrated — around the turn of the millennium.
(Crave)Much like the recent Fyre Fest docs, this film from Garret Price chronicles a festival that was destined to be a disaster from the get-go. Water cost $4, temperatures were over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the festival took place on the blazing hot tarmac of an air force base, the security were barely trained, inadequate bathroom facilities meant that the fields were covered in shit and piss, and candles intended for a vigil provided the kindling for attendees to literally burn the festival to the ground.
But the most troubling part of Woodstock 99 isn't the grim conditions but the rampant toxic masculinity. As practically every person interviewed in the film points out, the festival was marketed squarely towards angry, young, white men. The lineup prominently featured macho nu-metal, with only three female-fronted acts performing on the main stages the entire weekend. And those artists stoked the anger of the extremely aggro audience; a scene in which Limp Bizkit performs "Break Stuff" is particularly alarming, as frontman Fred Durst encourages the audience to be as violent as possible.
Peace, Love, and Rage's most disturbing moments all concern the treatment of women. Many shots show women being groped, harassed and assaulted, and there are accounts of numerous rapes (most of them unreported to the police). Price convincingly compares the event to a Girls Gone Wild film, as attendees (and on-stage performers) are belligerently told to "show your tits." A couple of people come off okay — Dexter Holland of the Offspring calls out the guys groping female crowd-surfers, and Jamiroquai's Jay Kay criticizes a cameraman for filming a woman's breasts — but Dave Matthews makes an icky comment about the "abundance of titties." Kid Rock is perhaps the worst of the bunch, as he shames Monica Lewinsky and calls Bill Clinton a "pimp."
In hammering home the point about how women were exploited, Peace, Love, and Rage probably ought to have shown fewer topless women — or, at least, censored some of the nudity. Watching the documentary and its non-stop parade of bodies, there's a nagging sense that some of these women are getting exploited all over again.
Peace, Love, and Rage finds its perfect villain in show promoter John Scher. Both in archival footage and in newly recorded interviews, he belligerently refuses to accept any responsibility for how badly the event went. He blames the violence on "knuckleheads," the sexual assaults on the women themselves, and the media for the festival's negative reputation. Every time he opens his mouth, he puts his foot squarely into it. Various attendees share their first-hand accounts, and artists like Moby, Jewel, the Offspring, Creed's Scott Stapp and Korn's Jonathan Davis tell their own stories of the festival's bad vibes and scary atmosphere.
The question that remains hanging over everything is: why exactly were the '90s such an angry, aggressive time in American culture? The film proposes a few answers, some of them convincing (feeling disenfranchised by capitalism, an unchecked sense of white male privilege) and some of them less so (Y2K anxiety, ire towards boybands and MTV in the aftermath of Kurt Cobain's death). The film can't seem to quite decide whether the bands are perpetrators or bystanders in the whole mess, leaving Peace, Love, and Rage as a film without a perspective. It's more about gawking at the chaos rather than trying to understand it.
But even if the film doesn't have quite enough insight into the depravity it depicts, it's still a grim reminder of the ugly behaviour that was condoned — and even celebrated — around the turn of the millennium.
