Jackie Chen
Professor Cambridge
English 2100T
7 November 2018
Critical Analysis of Music Festival Article
Summary: According to the article “Behind the Music: How Music Festival Organizers Manage the Risks of Burning Man, Lollapalooza, Coachella, and More” by Emily Holbrook festivals are full of excitement but can also bring chaos and cause many accidents. People participate in dangerous and illegal substances during music festivals. The author mentions the other risks the come with organizing high risk events like music festivals. Some event organizers paid security with alcohol which made the guards drunk. One incident discusses is about an 18-year-old who ran up to the stage with a gun making threats as she was high on methamphetamines. There would be underage drinking, drug abuse, violence, and sexual abuse during the music festival. One person was stabbed multiple times, stomped on, and left to die. Some music festivals would be held for multiple days. Attendees would drink for 10-12 hours getting intoxicated going back to their tents. As no one can see them they would overdose on drugs and sexual abuse. People in tents would get run over by the intoxicated people. The number of hospitalization was on records. The next event would be the involving 50,000 people and it’s called the Burning Man. Tens of thousands of people gather together and have a week-long celebration in Nevada’s the Black Rock Desert. The people would build a giant statue that is flammable and burn it to the ground. People would celebrate by eating and dancing around the flames. But when there’s fire, there’s going to be trouble. During the summer of the festival, people would get pushed into the fire due to the poor crowd control. The attendee tried to bring this matter to the court but got rejected. The court has stated that ” it’s your own fault not protecting yourself for an event calling Burning Man.” The festival brings chaos and violence than peace and love. The lack of security guards and immense heat quickly turn the crowd into a riot mode. People will break into ATMs, loot merchandise, abandoned their vendor booths and start countless fights. There would be instanced rapes and the property damage would cost up to $1million. There are a lot of challenges with opening up Burning Man and music festival. It is a multiple day festival and people go there to lay back and have fun. But the security of the festival is very important as well. They don’t want to take the fun out of the festival by providing so many guards that make the crowd feel threatened. The guards should dress up in plain clothes so they can blend in with the others. Another challenge of this festival is the volunteer when the volunteers get hurt the festival have to pay them for their injuries. When there is a festival there are risks involved and keep them under control makes up a great festival.
Critical Analysis: According to the article, the Hell Angels are being used as security for a number of music festivals. However, the author does not mention who the Hells Angels are and does not go in depth on why they are so controversial. The author mentions that music festivals and events like Burning Man are peaceful. However, Holbrook does not state how these events are peaceful, instead describes negative aspects such as violence and drug usage. Furthermore, the author refers to music festivals with rock and roll music to be part of that so called peaceful environment, however, rock and roll can be argued as being a type of music that causes lots of excitement. Additionally, events like Burning Man are full of attendees that are naked who are burning down giant statues. Therefore, it can be argued that Burning Man is not so peaceful.
At the beginning of the article, Holbrook discusses the Alamont event but does not state if the Hells Angels are part of the chaos caused at that festival. Also, using Ben Stern to give advice to other risk managers and audience is not the best idea for the author’s argument.
The article states “Ben Stern as vice president of the California-based Heffernan Insurance Brokers, he insures the Electric Daisy Carnival, a three-day, West Coast rave notorious for illicit drug use, underage drinking and a record number of attendee hospitalizations” (Holbrook). Ben Stern was the vice president in a Electric Daisy Carnival which has multiple incidents and high levels of drug usage, accidents, and drinking.
The author also using points such as the artists and the weather being factors of high risks at events such as music festivals. However, these arguments are not relevant to the topic of the article. Artists tours and music festivals can be argued to be different. For example, if an artists cancelled their tour shows, their fans can get their money back. For music festivals there are usually multiple artists performing so attendees can enjoy the rest of the event. If the author had mentioned that artists cancelling at music festivals caused violence then it would have supported her argument. Lastly, the author does not mention the role law enforcement plays in the security of these events. It would have been interesting to know how police affects the outcomes of these types of events.
Review: The article was not successful of achieving its rhetorical goal as it doesn’t convince the reader to agree with the security options. Although the author makes good point about the danger of the lack of security, she should also consider the side of having good security. It stated that the music festival and burning festival was chaotic because of the lack of security. However, the security is not the only reason that the festival is having chaos but because people go to the festival just to get high and drunk. Extra security might not be the best option for the festival because people would stop going. In the article, it states that “Many festivals, instead of having third-party security personnel walk the grounds in uniform, will request these individuals patrol the area wearing plain clothes and blending in with the crowd” (Holbrook). This could help the security option but if you stop people doing drugs and stop people drinking people wouldn’t go to the festival and events.
Burning man and the music festivals are held for multiple days so they have to camp outside. What people do in the tents can’t be controlled by the security as it is their own privacy. Burning Man festival is a free festival and people go there to burn stuff down. If you want to protect the people the people should put fences around the fire and don’t let people go near. People in burning man is naked so how can that stop people getting rapped. The security should ban people from getting naked so there would less rape. Burning let people join for free so they can’t afford great security. It is held in a big dessert where people can enter anywhere so people can just bring in drugs and alcohol easily. The main reason people go to burning man and music festival to get drunk and get high as they are freer. If you take this privilege away from the people they would stop coming. The festivals would lose money.
Work Cited
Holbrook, Emily. “Behind the music: how music festival organizers manage the risks of burning
man, lollapalooza, coachella and more.” Risk Management, June 2011, p. 18+. Academic
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A259155186/AONE?u=cuny_baruch&sid=AONE&xid=c8a42ce2. Accessed 18 Dec. 2018.