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Vacation was all they ever wanted

Last week, entertainment enthusiasts prepared themselves for the time of their lives with the debut of Fyre Festival, which was to take place on a private island in the Bahamas. Fyre’s promotional video showed light-skinned bikini-clad models, tossing their hands in the air on white sand beaches and diving into cerulean seas. A montage of festival and Caribbean images; stages, DJs, crowds, yachts, shipwrecks and more enticed viewers while poorly written messages faded in and out. “The best in food, art, music, and adventure,” immediately followed by, “Once owned by Pablo Escobar” [referring to the island where the festival would take place] and closing with “Fyre is an experience and festival. A quest to push beyond those boundaries.” But the event, which was meant to challenge “the boundaries of the impossible,” ended up being quite literally impossible.

Listen, I’ve shared with great detail my opinion on traveling. I think that more often, travellers commit colonial actions, provided by privilege which is masked in wanderlust soul-searching  — often in exotified nations that are at the mercy of American tourists. So, what do you get when you mix wealthy culture seekers and the foreign music festivals, with their ritualistic and idealistic projections and sensational experiences? None other than the beautiful disaster that was Fyre Festival.

The story could not get crazier. Event packages started at $1,200 and went up to $12,000, says former Fyre employee Chloe Gordon in a reflection published Saturday by The Cut. But, when guests arrived on Thursday of last week, they were met with dirt fields and none of the promised amenities, according to the New York Times. Instead, there were cheese sandwiches, unfurnished tents and festivalgoers left stranded without money, since the festival was promoted as a cashless event. After evacuating guests on Thursday and Friday, Fyre released their explanation: the island did not have the proper infrastructure  — the task of building a city on a vacant island far exceeded their limits and the festival had to be cancelled, and postponed until next year.

Accounts of the story from festival goers equated the experience to that of being in a refugee camp, and compared the event to “The Hunger Games” and “Survivor.” Panic and chaos were reported to have ensued at the campsites while Twitter exploded with reactions and memes ridiculing “rich millennials.”

While Fyre made it clear that its primary concern was over the well-being of their guests, I myself am glad that rich kids got their ass*s handed back to them and faced the outcome of their ridiculous decision. The festival was the brain-fart child of Billy McFarland and Ja Rule  —  but their vision is not new or authentic  — it’s as old as imperialism. And the conditions they faced upon arriving were not only the consequences of poor organizing, but their own hubris and material desires. In the words of Twitter account @MeakB, “You paid $12k to go see Blink-182 headlined festival hosted by Ja Rule in 2017?!?!?!?!?”

The use of words like “boundaries” and “adventure” mirrors language of the conquest. Think about it, an “exclusive” music festival held on a private island  —  uncharted territory up for grabs by the world’s marginal, young elite. All of the primal excitement of the tropics with the luxuries made possible through American modernity for one boundless “quest.” Sounds to me like two weekends of postcolonial debauchery and luxury.

Despite the fact that attendees were complicit in their own misery, articles like RT’s “ ‘Living like movie stars, partying like rock stars’: Fyre festival a monument to millennial naivety,” does not account for larger forces at hand; capitalism, media industries. I do not  think it necessarily fair to target millennials, despite perhaps a penchant for new music fests. Money is money throughout generations, and as we know, rich people will exploit anything and anyone to accumulate more wealth and visibility. The conditions of egotistical millennial culture are provided by American history; colonization, capitalism, slavery, Manifest Destiny, the whole f*cking shibang, baby. And investors and entrepreneurs like Ja Rule are cashing in.

That the festival was promoted by some of the industry’s hottest faces  — Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner — and the emphasis on models at the event further sheds light on blatant sexualization and for profit exploitation of women’s bodies. Just exactly what boundaries are being pushed? Physical? Sexual? Geographical?

The most unfortunate part about this whole fiasco is that I’m sure the experience hardly offered any new perspectives for these festies. Are the festivalgoers reflecting? Or bitterly enraged over the weekend’s misgivings? Do they sincerely think their lives were in danger? They went to such lengths as comparing their experience to that of refugees, perhaps they felt the thrill of the “Third World.”

I’m thinking of Junot Diaz’ “fuku americanus,” the doom of the New World for colonizing the Americas. I’m thinking that these rich kids are cursed with their wealth and blind to the realities of the world, the manifestations of violent histories, the legacy and impact of their tourism. And above all, I’m reminded that money, as the producers of Fyre realized, can’t buy the perfect experience.

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