I watched last night's Foreign Correspondent on the issue of illicit drug testing at European music festivals, and it was a pretty good way to get me feeling old and cranky with youff of today.
Actually, the editorial line taken by the show was more moderate and balanced than I expected, especially given that it was done by someone from JJJ who has reported on music festival drug deaths for a few years. Yes, while it generally did paint the testing services in a positive light, they did balance it with at least one guy who ran tests acknowledging that those who have concerns that it virtually endorses illicit drug use do have a point.
It was sort of funny, though, that it featured a recent English festival at which the organisation which had previously done the free on site testing pulled back their involvement this year to only giving drug counselling. (There was one fake looking scene where a couple said "yeah, we'll still go get counselling at least", and afterwards the dissolute woman said she had learnt for the first time that she should not mix alcohol with her ketamine taking - seriously? I thought. She looked a very experienced user.) Yet no one at the end of the festival had been too badly endangered by their drug use anyway. Kind of makes you wonder about the efficacy of the testing part of it, then.
But the worst thing about it was the "so this is what decadent youth of today think is having a good time? Standing in a field in the sun, drinking and using illicit drugs to dance stupidly for three days straight?" The people on screen, especially the English youth, playing up to the camera, all looked so distinctly uninspiring to my "I must be getting old" eyes. Sure, I guess most of them actually hold down jobs, but I just have trouble handling the idea that people want to be off their face for so long at these events.
I mean, at least people at Woodstock had something they felt they were legitimately rebelling against - and the free love bits were just all part and parcel of wanting the world to change to something non-violent and less materialist.
Today's music festival scene, on the other hand, just looks like so much self indulgent hedonism that has emerged from youth having too much money, spare time and no interest in changing the world at all - it's given them an ugly tattoo or ten and enough cheap drugs, as well as a free ambulance tent if they have taken too much unknown substance and have started hallucinating, after all.
In my parent's day, the response was all "they should do some national service, that would straighten them out." I'm still not at the stage of wanting that - although I am getting awfully close!
PS: I am not at all sure why, but I find (for want of a better description) young yobbo behaviour when done with an English accent particularly annoying. Is it the sense that it is a sadly fallen culture, compared to the stoicism of only (say) 80 years ago?
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