Movie Review : Woodstock 99 - Peace, Love, and Rage (2021)
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Although it is customary in our society to make fun of the past, but no one’s ever figured a way to laugh about the nineties yet. Nothing really happened for ten years. It was a time of geopolitical stability and the most important cultural event to happen was probably the death of Kurt Cobain, which ushered an era of corporate cynicism. The documentary Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage claims this era peaked with three days of darkness in Rome, NY.
The thesis of Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage is that popular culture shifted radically in the middle of the nineties. While it discussed the death of Kurt Cobain and the progressive ideals of grunge music (Cobain was woke before it was cool to be woke), it frames that shift as a corporate takeover. That is probably an accurate understanding of what happened, but whether it was responsible for creating the apocalyptic climate of Woodstock 99, I’m not so sure.
Outrage Porn
So yeah, this documentary is a little outrage porn-y. Before you start throwing feces and calling me a right-wing zealot, hear me out. I don’t want to normalize anything that happened at Woodstock 99. The rapes, sexual violence, literal violence and outright chaos should’ve never happened and definitely shouldn’t be normalized or celebrated. But the point of Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage kind of is to get upset at this even if it’s already well-documented.
I’m not going to blame executive producer Bill Simmons and Garret Price for buying into the zeitgeist and going full 2021 on events that happened in 1999, but their intentions were blatant up to a point where they get borderline comedic. They interview Woodstock 99 organizer John Scher in the movie and each time they uncover something terrible that happened over the weekend, he inevitably tries to downplay it. He is framed to be cartoonishly villainous.
At some point, the movie discussed the numerous fires set by audience and Scher goes like: “it was just a couple knuckleheads” while the camera shows an apocalyptic scene during a Red Hot Chili Peppers show. Scher keeps saying that it wasn’t all that bad and that MTV gave him bad press while Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage goes over heat strokes, rapes, looting, stuff like that. Perhaps Scher is villainous, but the goal of the exercise is to hate him.
The ecstasy and the agony of saying something
Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage is kind of telling of our era as much as it is of the nineties. We live in a climate of intellectual obsession, where reappropriating event from the past and forming a new understanding of it through deconstruction is understood to as a valuable thing to do. But what exactly are we trying to say here? That corporate America and geopolitical stability fostered toxic masculinity to up a point of no return? It seems a little easy, doesn’t it?
There was another Woodstock that happened five years prior to 99 and it is barely discussed in the documentary. It basically tells: well, everything went fine and five years later, MTV, nu metal and Bill Clinton’s penis turned it all to shit. I just think shitty, tragic festivals happen. What made Woodstock 99 stand out is that it turned violent. Whether that violence was caused by a cultural climate, I think it’s kind of an easy explanation to give.
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Should you watch Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage? It’s a little on-the-nose, but it’s a pretty detailed account of what actually happened there. If you’re looking for a sweeping cultural statement to be made like I did, you’re going to be disappointed, but if you’re looking for footage of people bathing in feces you’re going to find what you want. Not exactly a paradigm shifting documentary, but the exercise is not without value. It’s just not that convincing.
