Woodstock - Chimezie Ononenyi
Woodstock: 3 days of peace and music is a movie that goes well beyond comparison to other music related history documentary, but rather is one that ought to be both appealing and unappealing to the same critic. The movie was in a sense a true and unedited reality of what it’s like to have several hundred thousands of American young citizens stranded out in nowhere, with little food and not much privacy walls between each other. It also exhibited the power of music and how the majority of young adults and the older generations during the sixties viewed their society.
Through the feedbacks from people during the various interviews held in the movie, one could see that there was a clear distinction on view towards rock music. Some of the older people that were interviewed displayed anger towards the music event because of a notion that rock music was evil. The rest did not care much about the event, but rather were worried about every single negative outcomes that could take place as a result of lack of food and protection.
On the other side of viewpoints however, it seemed like the young adults cared less about their physical well beings, but were willing to withstand any inconveniences as they were continuously amazed by the fact that such event could take place. There were people smoking marijuana, sleeping on top of cars, wandering around nude, a man even publicly proposed to his girlfriend in the midst of the chaos, and basically an absolute sense of freedom in the air during the musical event.
One of the few things about the event that would probably be different if the event was held today is control. Even though it would cost a fortune to host such an event, the amount of control that the host would have on the event would be highly distinguishable: there probably would be a zero tolerance of marijuana smoking, nudity, and foul language. Apparently it would cost a fortune to control several hundred thousands of young people all at once, showing the reason why the rare music event made history.