So, what's the story about?

 

 Jennie and I watched a documentary on Netflix (Trainwreck: Woodstock 99) over the weekend about Woodstock 99.  It was a familiar type of documentary where good intentions and ideas are corrupted and things go Really Bad: looting, arson, gang banging, trench mouth, drunkenness, rape, massive property.  The movie makers found a wide range of people: concert goers, journalists who reported the event, a large number of people from the promotional team, security.

Throughout the documentary, you get visual and reported evidence that trash was building up massively, bathrooms were massively unsanitary, mosh pits were extremely violent, etc.  Some promoters, predictably, downplayed the squalor.   (You see them do the same spinning/ story control, minimizing and reframing during press conferences recorded at the time: a few bad apples, weather was cooperating, I hadn't heard about...). 

Eventually, the concert ends with a riot.  It looked like a war zone.  Particants agreed that it was out-of-control and terrifying.  The national guard is called in to return order.  The day-after photos look like a refugee camp that had been bombed.

Throughout the film you see many people denying blame.  Limp Bizkit  frontman flatly telling a reporter, unasked, "It wasn't our fault" that the crowd got violent.  The promoters admiting that bad things happened, but what could they have done? If it happened again, they couldn't do it differently.  Rioters saying "I was swept up in the crowd of looters.  Who wouldn't?"

What really struck me was the historical reframing of the participants.  The last 10 minutes of the documentary feature various participants answering the question of "what happened?" (in the sense of why did things break down?). (It wasn't exactly: how should we apportion blame; more like: "so, what's the story about?"). (What's the story about is kind of like: why is this story important? what important lessons are there? how should we frame the disaster?)

Different people said:

• I guess the kids were not interested in the "social movement aspect "of the event, they were just there for the music (Michael Lang, one of the promoters, who had tried to veneer the event with an "anti-gun" theme and ordered candles passed out to everyone at the end of the event, which directly caused bonfires, explosions, destruction...)
• It was (white) frat boy entitlement that made it culturally ok for sexism and sexual assault and property damage (but that was the 90s and now things are different!). (There was reference to sexism, racism, classism by a MTV "journalist".... but it was a pretty white and middle-class event.)
• The promoters were greedy; their cost-savings efforts (particularly selling food vending rights and sanitation and security) led to unsanitary conditions. which led to kids becoming frustrated with how they were treated
• The promoters were dumb, out of touch: they booked acts that incited violence - Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock
• When a riot starts, everyone (even good people) acts out of control
• It was "a mistake. Kids did not intend for this to happen."  (and it was kids "letting off steam.")

So, in this very-well documented event with many eye witnesses and tons of video footage from a huge variety of perspectives, there is a hazy agreement on what actually happened (two great days that turned bad on that last night because of a few bad apples or something that started to go bad from the planning stages that progressively got worse, was violent and terrible throughout, then exploded into group violence at the end) and almost no agreement about why telling this story is important.  What's the story ABOUT?

This story is fascinating to me. I am reminded of Errol Morris' book "Believing is Seeing," and with Roshomon and multi-narrative texts and psychological concepts like cognitive distortions like minimizing and reframing.