Depending on how you squint at it, 2017’s Fyre Festival is either a schadenfreude-laden story about rich kids getting their comeuppance or a sweeping fable about the vast gulf between the life capitalism promises and the life it delivers. The Ja-Rule-endorsed debacle of a music festival charged as much as $12,000 a ticket for what was supposed to be an extraordinarily exclusive and luxurious weekend on a private island in the Bahamas—Coachella for people who didn’t want to be around people who could afford to go to Coachella—but on arrival, guests found a level of chaos that made Altamont look bush-league: half-finished shelters, canceled performances, “gourmet” meals that consisted of processed bread and processed cheese, and best of all, no way off the island. The festival’s founder, Billy McFarland, was sentenced to six years in prison this fall for his part in the fiasco, although it didn’t help that he set up a brand new business selling counterfeit tickets to events like the Met Gala after being arrested over the Fyre Festival. Director Chris Smith has made a documentary about the whole mess for Vice and Netflix, and on Monday, Vice tweeted out a first look at the film, which hits Netflix on Jan. 18:
You should be ashamed of yourself if that trailer gets you excited about reliving the slow-motion-train-wreck that was the Fyre Festival. Taking pleasure in the misfortune and suffering of others is shameful and wrong, no matter how comical the hubris that caused them, and the festival’s attendees were victims of economic forces in the luxury concert market they did not create and could not control.
In related news, I am very, very ashamed of myself.
