The Meaning of Woodstock - Sarah Osborne
When I used to hear about Woodstock I would imagine a bunch of hippy teenagers smoking weed and getting crazy. I always thought it was just a ridiculous, mass-chaos event that was made famous because of the number of people who showed up and how out of control it got; however, I never considered the significance of this event as an anti-war movement. I guess this just shows my historical ignorance, and I was glad to learn more about what was behind Woodstock.
Anthony brought up a great point in the lecture on Wednesday. He asked us to imagine that our campus was like Vietnam, and that there were people invading who didn’t know our language, culture, history, etc. He said to consider how we would react – would you exhibit resistance or be a “puppet.� Although he was referring to the Vietnamese people, I think this also applies to American citizens at the time of the war. They were victimized in the sense that there was a draft, and all of these unwilling people were sent to Vietnam to die for something that didn’t directly involve the United States. So Americans had a choice at this time – they could be puppets and just allow the injustice to happen, or they could show resistance. That was the purpose and the significance of Woodstock. These people weren’t just going to sit back and let the war happen without peacefully having their voice heard. It may have been a dirty, over-crowded, over-drugged crowd, but their cause was above all of that.
I think the most moving part of Woodstock was Hendrix’s performance of the Star Spangled Banner. As Perone talks about in Music and the Anti-War Movement, Jimi’s version put the lyrics in a more literal context with sound effects resembling rockets and bombs, and warping the melody of our nation’s anthem. Using only his guitar and no words he managed to prove a point that people are still talking about today. It wasn’t a mockery, but it was a way of making people think of exactly what our country was standing for.