#jour201

Erna Smith

Journalism 201

14 December 2015

588 Words

WoodChella: A Tale of Two Festivals

Upon evaluating the video content available for each festival, it became very clear that Woodstock was covered to document shock value while Coachella is being covered to emphasize spectacle. Everything about Woodstock embodied shock value and counter culture, while it seems that Coachella conforms to the mainstream by playing into the celebrity culture and advertisement world. Woodstock was more of a movement that was about the people attending and what they did, as opposed to the artists performing and what took place on stage. While the performances of Woodstock 1969 are certainly legendary (Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” Cover, Country Joe and the Fish’s anti-war songs, etc.) the festival was the first time our nation had seen such a large mass of people acting in such an expressive way at a concert and established the foundation for future music festivals to come.  

Coachella on the other hand, while a host of many interesting outfits and occasional nudity, doesn’t seem to hold as much social traction within the press given that we’ve become accustomed to these behaviors when thinking of music festivals. In fact, after watching video after video of Coachella, I began to notice how trivial every matter being covered was. For example, many YouTube channels are built around merely documenting the celebrity fashion trends taking place at the festival in addition to festival goers not even knowing which bands were real or fake (according to Jimmy Kimmel’s Lie Witness News). At Woodstock, everyone there was united around at least the fact that they were anti-Vietnam War and sought change. Additionally, there weren’t as many pretty lights to look at, the festival simply didn’t have the technology (according to Evolve Money) This energy allowed festival goers to push the boundaries for what was considered socially acceptable, and in the process angered many older people of the generation. Seeing as it was viewed as abhorrent and crude by people such as my grandparents while also running under the headline “Bethel Pilgrims Smoke ‘Grass’ and Some Take LSD to ‘Groove’”, I find it fascinating that it was such a popular movement. Furthermore, I could very well envision an anti-War rally music festival held in Northern California, or just a festival held to protest something in general happening today. While I understand that Woodstock was motivated by Vietnam and Vietnam was a very turbulent time in our nation’s history, it doesn’t necessarily need to be something as heavy as that topic. For example, I’m surprised there hasn’t been an anti-Trump rally or demonstration surrounding music yet; if there was, I’m sure the media would be all over it not because of how his hair looked or what he was wearing, but because people genuinely hate trump and can unite behind that common belief.

I believe that it’s only a matter of time until there comes another peace advocating music festival, and when it arrives, the media certainly won’t be concerned about whether or not Kanye dissed someone, but rather if he said something constructive and relevant to the political situation at hand. It’s frustrating to watch as one of the largest music festivals in the United States has gone from at least an artistic, expressive environment to a conformist, mainstream spectacle trap, designed to entice and attract young people to attend and spend all their money away. According to the owner of the farm where Woodstock 69 took place, it was about the music and the young people - nowadays, the media only wants to see the celebrity drama.

Works Cited:

http://www.evolvemoney.com/2015/03/31/from-woodstock-69-coachella-2015-whats-changed-music-festivals/

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/woodstock-in-newsprint/?_r=0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_IzYUJANfk

Acceptance and Anger: An Interview

by Maiya Clark

“One of the things that was always taught to us as young kids was an expression called ‘shikata ga nai’. ‘Shikata ga nai’ means, ‘it can’t be helped’.”

 Tim Yuge said this during our interview with him and Kyozo Mori. Both are Japanese Americans. Yuge’s parents were interned; Mori was born in an internment camp.  

 After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, military officials feared Japan was planning a mainland invasion of the United States and that Japanese Americans on the West Coast were conspiring with Japan to assist the invasion. To quell public hysteria, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing the forced removal and incarceration of all Japanese Americans. This internment of Japanese Americans is now considered to have been a racist, unnecessary, and embarrassing incident in U.S. history.

 “Shikata ga nai” takes on a new significance in the discussion of WWII Japanese internment. It captures the conflicting emotions of anger and acceptance Japanese Americans felt as they tried to forgive an America that didn’t ask for forgiveness.

 Yuge and Mori discussed how, contrary to white Americans’ fears, Japanese Americans were loyal to the U.S. Yuge said that many first generation citizens “told their sons that, ‘you’re in America, you were born in America, you’re an American citizen, so you need to go out and fight for your country and for the freedom, the opportunity you have here’.” Similarly, Mori said, “Culturally we grew up with the mores of the Japanese, but as far as our loyalties were concerned we were American”. They were ready and willing to fight for the U.S. against Japan.

 Japanese Americans were therefore surprised to be objects of such suspicion and hatred. Japanese Americans eager to serve the American cause were instead forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast and sent to camps in places such as Tule Lake, California; Gila River, Arizona; and even as far as Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Yuge’s parents were detained in Gila River; Mori was born in Heart Mountain.

 Their time in camp was one thing; their return to daily life after camp was a very different struggle. Mori shared his childhood memories of near-homelessness after his family’s release from camp, staying in different hotels and even a converted hospital in downtown Los Angeles. They eventually settled in a housing project in East Los Angeles, where he and his family endured racist taunts daily.

 Mori describes how the attitude of “shikata ga nai” allowed his family to ignore this racism: “People of my generation and earlier did not take [it] as a cause. They just said, ‘that’s the way it is; eat it, and keep going’”. The same attitude let them disregard the racist media bias of the war years. Mori told us, “It’s a terrible thing for media to be so biased, but in that society, in that environment, at the time, as a person of Japanese heritage, we don’t blame them for that. But the results of that directly affected us as Japanese Americans”.

 Yet this acceptance can only go so far in the face of such injustice. Mori choked up as he remembered his parents’ struggle to provide for his family after being released from camp. He pointed out, “the ages of 24 to 39 are your most productive years… and they took that away from my dad and my mom”.

 The U.S. only issued a formal apology for the internment in 1988 – an apology over 40 years late for irreparable harm done to loyal citizens. Culturally taught to accept suffering, Japanese Americans today still feel the effects of internment.

The documentary, “The Princess and The Press” broadcasted by Frontline on PBS, demonstrated the late Princess Diana’s life and death, showing how the press had a bigger part to do with her than we know. I never knew much about Diana’s life, so seeing this documentary helped me to understand more about who she was as a person. Watching how the press treated Diana from the moment they first saw her with Prince Charles was quite appalling, actually. From the second they saw her, they started making assumptions and accusations about her. She was considered the “love of Charles life” and was immediately treated as his bride-to-be, before the prince himself even knew if he wanted to be with her. Diana was whatever the media wanted her to be. They painted her up into this make believe person, and then brought her down just as easily, which I personally found disgusting.

           After reading Stephens 7 in the week 3 reading titled, “More Valuable Lives?”, I couldn’t help but ponder to myself, would people have cared as much about Diana if she weren’t royalty or rather, if the press hadn’t built her up to be the most famous woman in the world that she truly was. Did she or the royal family really deserve as much attention as they got? I do not believe Diana’s death was deserved whatsoever, but I don’t think anyone would have blinked twice had it not been the almighty Queen of Hearts who had died that day. Whether she wanted it or not, she was England’s golden girl, and her death was one of the biggest shocks world had ever faced. The media fell in love with her so naturally, Prince Charles had to too.

           To many people, the press killed Princess Diana in the end. They drove her to depression, to hate herself and to hate the royal family, but they were also the ammo she used whenever she needed to make a statement and she knew this. Dubbed, “the Queen of Hearts”, she truly lived up to her name, knowing how to manipulate the media just as much as they knew how to get her. I almost feel that looking into Diana’s life gave everybody else with problems of their own a break from reality. Normal people like you and me got to live vicariously and sometimes miserably, through the princess’s life, much like we do right now with, say, the Kardashians. In the end Diana was not royalty, but just another celebrity that we put up on a pedestal, worshipped, and ended up tearing down.

This video was made for my J201 Editing I class at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It depicts a male reporter who displays sexism and whose initials happen to be PIG. This stereotype was only depicted for educational purposes and does not represent the company's views of either gender.