Music festivals: intriguing anthropological phenomena (or worrying displays of debauchery)

The Focus – December 10th, 2007 by Sarah

Saturday December 8 was the arrival of a highly anticipated event in my year: Homebake, a music festival of reasonably epic proportions. In my opinion, forking out a hard-earned ninety or so dollars for an entire day of great music and general frivolity is definitely worthwhile, and this year’s festival certainly lived up to my expectations. However, being a keen observer of human nature (read: slightly voyeuristic), there were a few aspects of this event that managed to get up my goat just a little.

Irritation the First: Scantily clad female youth barely old enough to be out of training bras and the drunken young men who leach onto them.

OK I get it. The weather is hot, there’s alcohol involved, it’s a long day. It makes sense to wear light clothing, and sometimes there’s nothing like an alcoholic beverage to quench the thirst brought on by some hardcore thrashing about in the mosh pit. But as time goes on, it seems less clothing more drinking becomes the order of the day, and a bit of innocent fun turns into alcohol-induced public groping sessions. Please. Do young girls have no shame these days? Not to mention respect for themselves. I’m sure Germaine Greer and all those who came before her championed the rights of women just so we can get insanely drunk in public spaces, take off our clothes and allow equally as insanely drunk men paw at our breasts and check out our arses. What is also a concern that some of these girls aren’t even under the influence of anything, they just think walking around in tiny bras and tinier shorts is, like, sexy. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we are never going to gain the respect of men if we continue to treat ourselves as sexual objects. You know what else is sexy? Dignity and a bit of class.

Irritation the Second: Litter.

Homebake was the second music festival I attended this year. The other was Live Earth. Both were equally as repulsive in terms of a common ‘let’s just leave all our rubbish all over the place because finding a bin is, like, annoying’ attitude. I found this particularly irritating because both festivals had multiple strategies in place to make rubbish disposal as easy and fuss-free as possible. Homebake had stalls where you could exchange your empty bottles and cans for ACTUAL MONEY, and the entire concept of Live Earth was about being environmentally friendly. I haven’t decided whether it’s just stupidity or laziness that prevents people from listening to all these ‘our world is DYING! It’s up to us! REALLY!’ proclamations. Either way, it’s not good.

So in summary, it appears to me that music festivals, while they’re awesomely great fun, are simply an excuse for people to behave like, well, idiots really. They sort of remind me of the parties held by Roman emperors in ancient times (a lot of things seem to…I wonder what this says about the state of humanity?), but instead of orgiastic gluttony occurring behind closed doors in fancy palatial mansions, it’s out in the open for everyone to see. There’s no need to hide this sort of behaviour because everyone condones and practically expects it.

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alcohol, Germaine Greer, Homebake, Live Earth, music, music festivals

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