Audiences Reject Ang Lee’s ‘Woodstock’
by S.T. KarnickDirector Ang Lee’s films tackle a wide variety of ostensible subjects and genres, but they’re consistent in conveying antinomian-individualist platitudes.
After his big international success with the superb martial arts saga “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Chinese-born film director Ang Lee continued in the eclectic manner indicated by his earlier films, jumping from genre to genre and style to style. Over the years he has directed the genial “Sense and Sensibility,” the thoughtful historical film “Ride with the Devil,” the gloomy family drama “The Ice Storm,” the homosexual love story “Brokeback Mountain,” and the inept superhero action film Hulk, among others.
This eclecticism and the tendency toward a rather downbeat style have kept Lee from developing a large following among U.S. moviegoers, as has the fact that he tends not to work with the top stars or in popular genres. Thus it was perhaps to be expected that his latest, the historical comedy “Taking Woodstock,” didn’t do much business at U.S. movie theaters in its opening weekend, taking in only $3.7 million and finishing ninth in the box office standings.
Released without much hoopla other than the general publicity surrounding the fortieth anniversary of the Woodstock concerts, the film simply hasn’t generated much interest among audiences. A serious comedy with a homosexual lead character plus a cross-dressing Marine and a variety of other cute, quirky types is just not any kind of an original idea these days. The movies are full of such characters, and we’ve all heard just about enough about Woodstock.
Despite the odd variety of subject matter, time periods, and geographic locations of his films, Lee has in fact been consistent in one way: conveying modern antinomian-individualist platitudes and shibboleths. For years he has functioned as the champion of the social outsider–a position guaranteed to earn plaudits from the contemporary media elite. Thus his Academy Award-winning and ecstatically praised “Brokeback Mountain” was perhaps the clearest distillation of the point of view evident in all of his films.
Although Lee’s passion for individualism to the point of antinomianism has sometimes had very interesting results–as in “Ride with the Devil,” with its open sympathy for the Confederacy–it has more often resulted in compendia of social-liberation cliches.
“Taking Woodstock” follows this template exactly. It assumes the U.S. elite’s accepted point of view of Woodstock as a critical event in the nation’s much-needed process of liberation from stifling bourgeois conformity, etc., which ushered in a new world of greater authenticity that has unfortunately been continually thwarted by forces of repression, especially business people and those vile and pesky fundamentalist Christians who still somehow infest the republic despite freely available abortions.
This cliched and indeed platitudinous notion was boring and silly when Milos Forman brought it to the big screen in “Hair” in 1979, and it is particularly obsolete today, when there is an entire genre of stoner comedies about young people living the Woodstock life while enjoying the benefits of bourgeois comfort and prosperity, plus a wider genre of zany comedies centering on the amazingly free and indeed feckless lives of American young people. If today’s young people are being oppressed by Puritan witch-hunters, there’s very little evidence of it. The public schools, run by an aggressively secular government, are in fact the real bane of their lives.
Thus the idea of Woodstock Nation as something distinct from the rest of American life and in fact quite heroic is simply absurd and fatuous in a nation populated in good part by what columnist David Brooks calls the Bohemian Bourgeois–people who are able to live as freely as hippies in their free time while still enjoying the prosperity and stability of bourgeois life.
No, the real story of the contemporary United States is not a yearning for liberation from repressive Christian theocrats. On the contrary, as the Tea Party movement and related phenomena make clear, the real concern is for liberation from the strangling hand of an elitist government and a desire for a more bourgeois–and family-friendly culture.
In such a context, there should be little wonder why audiences don’t rush out to subject themselves to a couple of hours of cute, smug, elitist cliches. They get enough of that on the nightly news.
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47 Comments
the trouble with Woodstack and the whole hippie thing is twofold…
One, it is, like the Cold War it reflected, a place in time. Not imeless- but a fixed spot. it was a phenomenon of sorts, and meant much to many. But as Ian Anderson admonished your 'Living in the past'.
Two, it is now apparent the patent fraud that it always was but that fact was ignored. Yasgur's experience might have intrigued millions for it's moment but ruined the land for years. It spawned a generation of retarded adolescents who confused bougeoise self gratification for spiritual quests.
It created millions of druggies. Some benign, others not so.
It should be remebered- but with caveats. Life isn't always 'laying in the grass'- or smoking it too.
Grow up, people…
Of course audiences rejected this movie as well they should. After just the first couple of reviews, it became evident this was yet another one of many of the current crop of movies that not only could, but should be missed. I am hungry for good movies right now and the cupboard is bare.
It seems the Purple Haze has lifted on Woodstock and all that's left is a big So What. LoL. I could have told you that 40 yrs ago. Bummer man.
Woodstock – tired of hearing about it. The thing is, I was too young and my dad was too old. It means nothing to me. It's wobbly old movie footage and a bunch of geezers insisting that they changed the world by wallowing in a muddy field, smoking dope and listening to some music. Well, ok – if that's how they want to be remembered, good. Just don't expect me to buy it – or Lee's movie, either.
Woodstock belongs with the Beatles in that box of old things that you couldn't care less about, but some of your oddball friends think are seminal moments in history on par with the birth of Christ.
You went to a music festival and got high in the mud. Yippee. You're a real hero.
Woodstock was 40 freakin' years ago.
Did people in 1969 flock to movies about Al Jolson?
BTW, those kids in the photo from the movie look nothing like the filthy smelly hippies I remember.
[...] Go here to see the original: Audiences Reject Ang Lee’s ‘Woodstock’ [...]
[...] Go here to see the original: Audiences Reject Ang Lee’s ‘Woodstock’ [...]
Woodstock was merely a larger, much dirtier version of what kids of done for decades: crammed themselves into phone booths, swallowed goldfish, did the Charleston, said 23 Skidoo…now they tat themselves and pierce themselves so, like their hippie fore-persons, they can not longer get decent jobs.
Dude…me too. It's BAD! The only movie that I am remotely interested in is "Adam" with Hugh Dancy playing an adult male with Aspergers syndrome (a form of autism) but even then it's not a *great* film. The only other one I'm somewhat interested in is Dorian Grey but that may not come to the states for a few years.
I caught a small clip of a Woodstock special running on The History (the way liberals see it) Channel and I now know why Washington is all screwed up with environmental crap and "free love" bunk…I need hippie repellent ya'll.
The "movement" is dead. Move along now, nothing to see…..
"people who are able to live as freely as hippies in their free time while still enjoying the prosperity and stability of bourgeois life"
The Bohemian Bourgeois that I know are usually enjoying someone else's prosperity and stability , and not anything they've created themselves.
Disclaimer: I don't remember seeing this movie, so, I must not have been there (apologies to Robin Williams).
I wish I could give you more than one +1.
Hey I was Hippie. It was fun got good and stoned. And then I grew up. Woodstock was just a big stoner party with damn good music. Nothing else. Problem is many in the MSM still live in the Woodstock and Anti Vietnam war era in there heads. It was the defining moments of there lives. No wonder the press SUCKS.
Well said, Ace. That just about says all there is to be said. Thanks.
That's the problem.
The hippies from Woodstock never grew up and now they run the government.
And they run it like the little Democrat children they are.
Thanks. Whittle is the best.
instead of discovering higher conciousness they stopped at getting high. All of the positive aspects of the flower culture- Jesus, Buddha, Siddhartha- and the positive spirit it embodied were thrown away to be replaced with casual sex and drug use, all of which debilitates the spirit. And yes, they are continuing the fiction- at our expense…
That movie had a 30 million dollar budget and it pulled in 1/10th of its cost, if that isn't a resounding denouncement of the director and the subject by the American cinema goers I really don't know what is.
Well said, Mr. Karnick!
"Superb martial arts saga 'crouching tiger, hidden dragon'"!!!???
Went to see this "Le bad cinema" at the multiplex due to all of the self-proclaimed film experts bowing before its awesomeness. Minutes into it the audience was laughing at it, had figured out the secret plot, and started a stampede for the exits. I used to divide the critics' "star rating" by two to get a more accurate review. After that movie I divide by four.
Please recant your review of CTHD or I won't be able to take anything you write seriously.
Maybe now the MSM will look at Woodstock the way most Americans do. A teenage tantrum. Todays youth would find Woodstock boring. 2/3 of the country thought Woodstock was a joke when it happened. Today most of those who were part of the Woodstock culture are pissed off about their 401k's being in the toilet. Woodstock maybe worthy of a made for tv movie but a 30 million dollar production? Hollywood is certainly clueless.
But it will win an Oscar. I can bet money on it.
Excellent, Ace, excellent!
Woodstock, smchoodstock.
Didn't make Woodstock but did make it to the Texas International Pop Festival two weeks later. It was wonderful. Great music, genial crowd, the free stage and did I mention great music? Led Zepplin played right before they were at their peak. I paid $6.50 a day to get in. It was great. I WAS a hippie. Now, I am all grown up and a conservative Republican. See??? No harm, no foul!
It seems the Purple Haze has finally lifted on Woodstock and all that's left is a Big So What. LoL. I could have told you that 40 yrs ago. Bummer man bummer.
Oh hippie repellent is easy to find. It's commonly known as soap. I keep a bar around my neck because hippies react to it like vampires to a cross.
I was on my way there, But I decided I needed a shower instead. I've always thought of it as more a curiosity rather than a movement. But, I agree it was a moment in time – everything was fresh, the music, the times and will never be replicated. C'est la vie
the trouble with Woodstack and the whole hippie thing is twofold…
One, it is, like the Cold War it reflected, a place in time. Not timeless- but a fixed spot. it was a phenomenon of sorts, and meant much to many. But as Ian Anderson admonished you're 'Living in the past'.
Two, it is now apparent the patent fraud that it always was but that fact was ignored. Yasgur's experience might have intrigued millions for it's moment but ruined the land for years. It spawned a generation of retarded adolescents who confused bougeoise self gratification for spiritual quests.
It created millions of druggies. Some benign, others not so.
It should be remebered- but with caveats. Life isn't always 'laying in the grass'- or smoking it too.
Grow up, people…
I was wondering about "Adam." My son has a few traits of Asperger's (luckily very mild and likely to be outgrown) and I was wondering how they would handle it. The line I saw in the preview about "not being Forrest Gump" made me laugh.
This year was a huge disappointment. "Wolverine" and the new "Terminator" movies should have been so much better than they were. The only good thing I've seen this year worth mentioning was "Taken," though "Star Trek" was at least entertaining. When is the next Dark Knight movie coming? That's what I want to know.
This is off topic but Bill Whittle is so good here I cannot resist……
<a href=”http://www.pjtv.com/v/2378” target=”_blank”>http://www.pjtv.com/v/2378
The best line is "Bill Maher, you smoke too much Pot"
Then again maybe it fits in with Woodstock quite nicely.
I think Whittle doesn't begin to get the attention he deserves. Those videos should be required viewing for everyone. Love him.
So what happened to the ageing hippies I had to sit next to in the town hall meeting I went to tonight? They seem like they haven't progressed in the last 40 years the way you have. What's your secret? And if you're sharing, I know of some people you need to meet.
The point of Woodstock in my eyes and it's glorification in film is something never discussed by those glorifying that movement. They chose a war at home rather a war to free people thousands of miles away who were literally going into communistic slavery. They knew those people in Cambodia and Vietnam were being enslaved and butchered by the communist left, and they knew while they partied and declared morality and Christians and other good guys as their enemies, they ignored the slaughter on the other side of the camera shot.
No. I change that statement. They willingly chose to forget that slaughter.
The hypocrisy of the hippie / Woodstock movement is so rife with vile that it's like three hundred Thee Mile Islands mixed with a hundred Chernobyls. They didn't believe in war, but they declared war on the very freedom and morals that gave them the ability to not be enslaved by a left wing power like the poor people of Cambodia and Vietnam. Who the hell would want to watch a movie based on that vileness?
You hit it on the head. Teens and twenty-somethings comprise the mass of movie-goers. Woodstock is just not in their cultural lingo, it is a distant relic of their grandparent's time.
Hell, 1969…Barrack Obama wasn't even a communist yet, he was still in a madrassa, chanting the Koran trying to figure out how to fake an Hawaiin birth certificate.
http://www.lysergia.com/FeedYourHead/PoliceGaz196...
For 'hippie haters; from the world-renowned POLICE GAZETTE from 1967 – lotza photos
Extra added attraction! Cary Grant explains LSD usage!
http://www.lysergia.com/FeedYourHead/PoliceGaz196...
http://www.lysergia.com/FeedYourHead/PoliceGaz196...
For 'hippie haters; from the world-renowned POLICE GAZETTE from 1967 – lotza photos
The Al Jolson story was a pretty good movie. Mammy! I'm your little baby!
Didn't Ang Lee direct 'Brokeback Mountain'? Weirdo!
"Antinomianism: The view that Christians are released by grace from the obligation of observing the moral law."
Thanks for that, as I'd never encountered that term before, but is this really the sense in which you are using the word? Just wondering.
OK, on to the funny related story. Last night – last night! – at my gig an older guy (Early 60's, fat, stringy long gray hair, shabby clothing, with a matching "old lady"), walked up to the stage and engaged me in a conversation about music. I don't know why audience members think it's OK to do this with a solo performer, but it happens to me all the time. Anyway, he went on and on about the 60's, free love, good music, and how ideal of a time it was, while simultaneously lamenting our present problems with bad music, drug violence and dangerous STD's. I kid you not (I play some solo guitar arrangements of 60's and 70's classics, so that's what precipitated this).
What struck me is that he had absolutely no awareness that the social trends that started in the 60's lead to all of these current problems.
At least he tipped me.
As a guy who always considered himself born 10 years too late, (1956). I was only on the edge of the whole hippie movement. Not that there was a huge hippie contingent in square old minneapolis anyway. I did however, identify with the idea of something different, a different direction being needed. Oddly enough, i ended up being more enamored with Lee Marvin's role in "The Wild One" than the hippies anyway. I rode for years and years, and found the way of life harsh, but honest, and the brothers more reliable than the "citizens" that were born out of the hippie movement. When I ran my string of drinking and drugging out in the late 80's, I was introduced to Rush Limbaugh and found that the things that the brothers and myself held dear were the same things. We just had a different way of going about it. Independence, freedom, lack of governmental control were shared values, and provided me the way to integrate myself into the conservative movement.
I am seeing more and more old school bikers coming into the fold at the tea parties because while we resisted being labeled as part of the "citizenry" it has become apparent that without participation we all stand to lose the freedom we love.
As far as hippies go, past or present, I will not stand for the smelly dweebs screwing with me or mine. the young lads and lasses who come to the door of my house with their clipboards, petitions and earnest looks to beg me for money to advance their social causes, have to defend their beliefs to me, and I counter their arguments with facts, not feelings, and send them on their way. And god help the unfortunate ACORN worker who shows up on my doorstep. That one won't be pretty.
As a guy who always considered himself born 10 years too late, (1956). I was only on the edge of the whole hippie movement. Not that there was a huge hippie contingent in square old Minneapolis anyway. I did however, identify with the idea of something different, a different direction being needed. Oddly enough, I ended up being more enamored with Lee Marvin's role in "The Wild One" than the hippies anyway. I rode for years and years, and found the way of life harsh, but honest, and the brothers more reliable than the "citizens" that were born out of the hippie movement. When I ran my string of drinking and drugging out in the late 80's, I was introduced to Rush Limbaugh and found that the things that the brothers and myself held dear were the same things. We just had a different way of going about it. Independence, freedom, lack of governmental control were shared values, and provided me the way to integrate myself into the conservative movement.
I am seeing more and more old school bikers coming into the fold at the tea parties because while we resisted being labeled as part of the "citizenry" it has become apparent that without participation we all stand to lose the freedom we love.
As far as hippies go, past or present, I will not stand for the smelly dweebs screwing with me or mine. the young lads and lasses who come to the door of my house with their clipboards, petitions and earnest looks to beg me for money to advance their social causes, have to defend their beliefs to me, and I counter their arguments with facts, not feelings, and send them on their way. And god help the unfortunate ACORN worker who shows up on my doorstep. That one won't be pretty.
Are aging hippies anyting like Illinois Nazis? I hate Illinois Nazis…
“Woodstock was a bullsheet gig, a piece of sheet. We played [expletive] awful. No one was into the music.”
Neil Young
“The people at Woodstock really were a bunch of hypocrites claiming a cosmic revolution simply because they took over a field, broke down some fences, imbibed bad acid, and then tried to run out without paying the bands.”
Pete Townsend
The hippies at Woodstock were anything but heroic.
I prefer the following interpretation:
"During those famous four days in 1968, while 400,00 spoiled young people were getting high, fornicating, and running around naked, 109 American patriots serving in Vietnam made the ultimate sacrifice for their country…"
Continued here:
http://allhands-ondeck.blogspot.com/2009/08/woods...
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