Woodstock-Kyle Anderson
The first three words that come to mind whenever one mentions Woodstock are sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. What propelled Woodstock from just a music festival to an iconic cultural event isn’t its size or impressive line-up of musicians, but rather the fact that it represented a social experiment, the likes of which the world had never witnessed before. Woodstock was the antithesis to the largely unpopular Nixon regime, a celebration liberation, expression, and free-thinking. The dramatically different viewpoint of the youth was frowned upon by many adults and helped widen the generation gap, as David Walley writes “America’s largest generation was growing up in an age-segregated universe…bound together by their own prolonged adolescence.” (43) Yet, I found it interesting that many of the adult townspeople had glowing comments about the festival-goers, one even calling them “lovely children.” I was especially surprised with Max Yusgar comments about the festival, as one would expect he would be angry at the destruction of his farmland. Many of the youth that attended Woodstock are now adults now working in the same commercialized society they stood against, so one might be tempted to write off Woodstock as a failure in achieving the utopian society it promised. One thing is for certain, and that is that Woodstock was a cultural litmus that illuminated and captured an iconic moment in American history.