photo credit: Ceasar Sebastian
Since 1997, the event production company Insomniac has held its annual Electric Daisy Carnival during late June in Southern California. The Electric Daisy Carnival is an electronic music festival featuring many of the world’s top disc jockeys (commonly known as DJs) which draws over 100,000 people making it the largest electronic music festival outside Europe. The event, which has been held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, has become very successful and has made lots of money, but with the festival’s growing popularity has come some problems. In 2010, a 15 year-old girl who attended the event died and newspapers and news broadcasters alike in Los Angeles responded by criticizing the event unfairly with one-sided reporting. After months of suffering through bad press, Insomniac ultimately decided to move the event to Las Vegas for 2011. By focusing on a few unfortunate incidents and largely neglecting to present the bright side of the event, journalists reporting about the Electric Daisy Carnival failed to serve the public and acted irrationally causing its relocation.
While some may call the event a “rave,” the Electric Daisy Carnival is not exactly that. Traditionally a rave is an illegal underground dance party in a remote location hosting fans of electronic music where drug use is not regulated at all. The Electric Daisy Carnival (like similar events in Los Angeles) is a commercial outdoor music festival similar to a concert held at a large venue complete with security, food vendors, first aid, etc. L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks agrees that these events are different from traditional raves. “These things are common and a part of society, so we should put forth efforts to make them safe,” Parks said. “It's unfortunate that we have tagged the label rave onto these events. These are legitimate, revenue-producing events that are mainstream.” The word “rave” is an inappropriate one that holds a negative connotation and the media’s decision to use the word only fuels the public’s outcry against the events. Insomniac realizes this and refers to its event as a “massive” to avoid any confusion that the production company supports drug use at its events. In Targeting Ecstasy Use at Raves by Michael H. Dore, Dore explains that rather than prevent events like Insomniac’s from continuing in Los Angeles, local government and law enforcement should instead focus on removing drugs from the event.
Targeting all raves will not stop ecstasy use because the drug will continue to be used at concerts, in bars, and on college campuses. The primary achievement of such an approach would be only to create a high-profile “victory” in the war on drugs by forcing a distinctive and unorthodox youth culture out of most people’s sight. The government should work to eliminate drugs at raves while doing its best to leave any innocent, if unconventional, activity alone. If items like glow sticks and pacifiers really do have the symbolic meaning that rave proponents claim they do, raves will continue without the drugs. If raves are only drug havens, eliminating the drugs will snuff out the raves and reveal this “culture” as a sham. Targeted law enforcement will provide the answer (Dore, 1623).
Seeing as these events are popular amongst the younger crowd of Los Angeles, it is doubtful that those in the news had ever attended the event or knew anything about it other than the common complaints. The way that journalists portray the Electric Daisy Carnival, you might assume that the event is an unruly gathering where all who attend openly do copious amounts of drugs and couldn’t care less about the quality of the music played or the excellent sound and light production not to mention the quality of entertainers that parade around Exposition Park.
While negative feelings towards these events have existed for quite some time, the unfortunate death of 15 year-old Sasha Rodriguez in 2010 was the final straw for some. The young girl (who was under the age limit for the event) was first thought to have died from a drug overdose, but it was later announced that she passed away from hyponatremia, which an electrolyte disturbance in the body caused by drinking large amounts of water in a short amount of time. This incident caused the Coliseum Commission to place a moratorium on festivals like the Electric Daisy Carnival. The moratorium was eventually dropped for the remainder of 2010 with the intent of revisiting the topic at the end of the year. Insomniac, eager to keep the show going and improve their image, released this statement
“We look forward to working with the task force examining electronic music event safety in the County of Los Angeles. I have reviewed the County’s proposed resolution and I am pleased that the Board of Supervisors will be including representatives from the music event promotion industry as part of the task force. Industry representatives can work with the task force to better understand the realities of the electronic music event industry and help the task force with outreach to the industry as a whole. We hope that the task force, with input from a broad range of the community and stakeholders, including representatives from the musical events industry will create responsible and reasonable recommendations which can be implemented for all musical events in the County.”
With the event becoming a two-day festival, the event drew in over 185,000 during the weekend and out of those people 200 were sent to the hospital. With such a large amount of people, it is inevitable that there are going to be accidents and this event, similar to crowded concerts, sporting events, fairs, parades, clubs, bars, etc., is no exception. For example, Kelly Alanbay of examiner.com makes a reference to another unfortunate incident caused by an overcrowded event.
200 attendees in 2010 were sent to the hospital, with problems ranging from drugs, alcohol, exhaustion and injuries. That’s a total of .018% of the attendees. 100 people were sent to the hospital with injuries during a stampede at a Justin Bieber mall appearance. That’s 2.5% of attendees, which event is safer?
Also, to put things into perspective for those who feel that the event’s heavy drug presence is the main problem causing attendees to go to the hospital (which may be what the media attempts to make people believe), one must take into consideration that of the 200 people sent to the hospital, many of them were sent for injuries that were unrelated to drugs such as injuries suffered when attendees attempted to jump over a fence and force themselves onto the Coliseum floor in front of the stage. Also, as far as arrests go, more people were arrested at last year’s Dodgers home opener tailgate than at last year’s Electric Daisy Carnival and unlike a scene after a championship clinching Laker game, attendees of the event do not cap off their night by flipping cars and setting things on fire. If these statistics seem shocking it’s probably because few people in the mainstream media including producers of television news and newspaper editors are willing to stand up and acknowledge the full story and give members of this new culture a voice. In The Rave: Spiritual Healing in Modern Western Subcultures, Scott R. Hutson explores this idea.
Reynolds, an authoritative rave journalist, summarizes the postmodern interpretation elegantly. Rave culture is “geared towards fascination rather than meaning, sensation rather than sensibility; creating an appetite for impossible states of hypersimulation.” I find the postmodern approach deficient precisely because it fails to acknowledge meaning… The studies above do not consider the complex ways in which symbols and surfaces connect, intersect and/or conflict with the praxis of the real human beings who construct and consume them. Their lives are certainly not meaningless, yet those who write about the rave rarely soicit the voices and experiences of people who actually go to raves (Hutson, 38).”
While some young online bloggers stand up for their generation’s great music festival, older and more established news outlets simply refuse to offer their followers the full story.
What happened to Sasha Rodriguez is very unfortunate, but it is unfair for the media to blame Insomniac and the Coliseum and dismiss the fact that she was underage and took illegal substances that Insomniac’s website states a zero tolerance policy for at all its events. In journalism, news sells and a 15 year-olds death is definitely news, but at what cost will the media sensationalize the incident? In News Media Discourse and the State of Public Opinion on Risk by Iain Wilkinson, Wilkinson discusses the news media’s tendency to shape public perception through its reporting of unfortunate events.
News media coverage of risk almost always appears within the context of “bad news”. Indeed, although news media may be important for shaping public perception of risk, for the most part they do not dwell in much detail upon the topic of risk itself. Risk rarely appears as the explicit theme of news; rather, it is raised implicitly in reports of disaster and human tragedy. News media largely focus upon the catastrophic consequences of assumed risks. In the words of Eleanor Singer and Phyllis Endreny: ‘media do not report on risks, they report on harms (Wilkinson, 22).
The media reported the news of Rodriguez’s death as a harm caused by the event, not as an incident resulting from an assumed risk with the support of statistics showing that she was one of 100,000 people at the event who made a few unfortunate choices that produced grim results. They presented Rodriguez as a young and innocent girl who attended this sinful event and was forced to take harmful drugs until she died from an overdose. The truth is, she did not die from an overdose. While her taking drugs may have caused her to drink too much water, the media’s decision to rush to call it an overdose prematurely goes against journalistic standards and affected the event promoters greatly. The underage girl decided to attend the event against her parent’s orders and broke numerous event rules which led to her unfortunate passing at an event she should have never attended.
The Dr. Phil Show aired a segment about “raves” after the 2010 Electric Daisy Carnival right before another electronic music festival took place at the Los Angeles Sports Arena in which the mother of the 15 year-old Sasha Rodriguez was a guest. While Dr. Phil did acknowledge that some people do go to these events for the great music and a fun atmosphere, he bashed the events calling them “out of control as far as dangers are involved.” The worst, however, was the false information that the mother offered viewers. First of all, the mother stated that the average age of people at the event was 12-15 years old. While the event staff failed to properly check identification and there were inevitably some underage kids present, the idea that the majority of kids could be as young as 12 years-old without staff checking tickets at the front entrance knowing is absurd.
Second, a professional on the show stated that on the night of Sasha Rodriguez’s death, there were 185,000 people at the event. The truth is that 85,000 people were present on Friday night and Saturday night saw 100,000 people enter Exposition Park for the event totaling 185,000 for the weekend, not Saturday night. While 100,000 people is still a lot of people (even for a venue as big as the Coliseum) and the large crowd surely caused complications when trying to take Rodriguez to the hospital, this error shows that the professional offering his opinion on the event on the Dr. Phil Show who complained about the degree of danger at the annual event did not take the proper time to educate himself about the event and was only quick to point out the event’s flaws.
The most important part of the segment was the part where Sasha’s mother, with a less than honest face, stated on television that “from her understanding” the drug ecstasy was slipped to her daughter without her daughter knowing it and disregarded the fact that her daughter chose to do it on her own. Is it completely farfetched to think that maybe a young girl who disobeyed both parents and went to an event that she was not supposed to go to would also make another poor decision by doing a dangerous drug? Her mother also stated that Sasha’s friends and family were aware that she was not allowed to go to the event and yet she still attended (assuredly with some of those same people who knew how her parents felt about the event). Rather than ponder her parenting skills and think about what she could have done differently (maybe have her daughter stay in on a night she knew there was an event her daughter might try to sneak into), she simply blamed the event’s promoters and rather than think about her daughter’s decision to attend the event against her will and do a drug she instead claimed that her daughter was given the drug against her will and dismissed her decision to attend the 16 and over event as a “typical teenage move.” While it may be impossible to tell whether or not Sasha Rodriguez took drugs by choice or by accident, her mother’s refusal to accept that there might be a chance her daughter made a mistake is striking and this kind of biased representation of the event on a popular television show was extremely harmful to the future of the event in Los Angeles.
The truth is, while the event may be dangerous for some who do not fully understand what the purpose of the event is, the Electric Daisy Carnival is also beneficial to the city in major ways. It brings a swarm of people to Los Angeles creating revenue for businesses such as hotels, restaurants, airports, taxi cabs, etc. An Insomniac-commissioned study revealed that the event brought in $30 million in economic activity to the region which is invaluable in today’s economy. According to Latimes.com, the event also made $800,000 last year for the Coliseum Commission. Additionally, Neontommy.com notes that the Coliseum makes nearly a third of its revenue from just four electronic music events which is a big deal for the stadium that was made a National Historic Landmark in 1984.
While it is safe to say that what happened at last year’s Electric Daisy Carnival was extremely unfortunate, the news media had a responsibility to report on the event and present it for what it was: a freak incident involving one girl who made ill-advised decisions. They failed on this level and did not serve the public correctly. While it was appropriate for the media to suggest that Insomniac should make changes to their event to make sure that this will not happen again including a higher age requirement, a more thorough inspection of identification, a decrease in capacity for the event, increased police presence, a more active campaign against illegal drugs, and more on-site medical services, it was irrational to use sensationalism to intentionally or unintentionally make others believe that the event itself along with its promoters are responsible for Rodriguez’s death causing a public outcry and resulting in the relocation of the event from its primary venue in the heart of the scene itself.
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