Holy Shit. I just watched Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99.
That shit was out of control.
The young people were insane, and the old people tried to pin it on them, but there was some very good points about how this was the era of the misogynistic frat bro movies, with American Pie at Number 1, and all the heavy metal music. All the dudes there was watching all these films about slutty girls and getting laid, and thinking they were entitled to any piece of ass that they wanted. Music was about anarchy.
But who was making those movies? Who was writing those scripts, and funding those films? Who were the producers of the record labels signing these bands who were all about anger and violence?
It wasn’t Gen X. It wasn’t the kids at the festival. It was those old dudes who decided to cash in on the fame of the Original Woodstock, but make a bunch more money out of it.
I get it. You’ve got to make money. No one is putting on a concert of that size out of the goodness of their hearts, to spread peace and love, and not want to make some cash from it. But it appears they got super greedy, trying to make up for their mistakes from ’98, and just gave zero fucks, or were too high to realize what they were doing.
Younger people looked at the lineup, and tried to warn them that this was going to become a frenzy of hopped up idiots, but the old people, who didn’t even know who some of the bands they were signing were, didn’t care. The Boomers were just in their own little bubble, and just fucked it all up.
Then there was the bands. Some of them totally understood the situation, and put their own egos aside, and tried to calm the crowd. There are others who gave zero fucks, and just whipped them up into an even bigger frenzy. Looking at you Limp Bizkit and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Also, why was Flea completely naked? Not even a cock sock?
You know we’ve changed as a society because he’d be arrested if he did that on stage today.
I imagine every single one of the women at that concert are the reason we now have over protective parents, shielding their daughters from predatory men. Why we’re teaching our sons to be better people. Why we’ve moved towards demanding respect. Society swings like a pendulum, and the late 90’s were such a shit time for women. Our mothers had tried so hard for feminism and equality, and then it was like powerful men could smell it, and feared it, and pushed back through popular culture, to make women feel like they were being free and equal, but they were really undermining us by making us into objects again.
There’s always a struggle. Each time women get a vote, men try to push us back. Men went off to war, women stepped up to take care of literally everything. Farming, building, infrastructure. Then the men came home, and women were expected to just go back into the kitchen. Like they hadn’t just been out there, quietly getting it done. Now they had to not only step back, quietly and humbly, but they had to take care of those men who were all both physically and mentally injured.
This documentary while disturbing on so many levels, with vision of women being assaulted, Rome literally burning, reminds me of just how far we’ve come this cycle.
We’ve had #MeToo and TimesUp. We’ve had women’s marches. Women in Pussy Hats. We’re coming so far. Now the old white men are trying to push back, trying to change laws, and our rights. Trying to regulate our bodies again. Taking away access to abortion, while not providing health care, or funding. Trying to push us back into the kitchen again.
It’s important that women keep fighting. That they keep standing up. That they don’t let a bunch of dudes get wild and out of control and burn it all to the ground again. We need to be better than the generation who served us this nonsense.
