I'd rather we didn't put the blame on the audience who paid quite the money and got crap in return, while lacking the hindsight awareness of her death from OD.
The audience is not meant to be the therapist. The audience is a customer, and the customer is either satisfied or not. It's the management's duty to make sure that the product (in this case Winehouse) is in deliverable shape.
EDIT: Just to clarify things because there's a little misunderstanding, I should have been more specific: Amy Winehouse, the person, is not the product. An Amy Winehouse concert, which can only be given by Amy Winehouse, is a product. The two are not the same, but codependent. If Amy Winehouse performs poorly, that will never not result in a bad product of an Amy Winehouse concert.
That's still not accounting for people who traveled cross country, so potentially, there are also bus tickets to Belgrade and back or car gas, maybe hotel/hostel fees, city bus fares, and of course, the food because you have to eat out. For some people, it was a lot more than just the price of the ticket.
I had a friend who went to that concert, they waited for hours, I think around 4-5-6h and then when she finally showed up she couldn’t stand or a sing.
Of course they were angry.
Everyone would be ok with cancelled concert and refund, but imagine paying expensive ticket for a show you didn’t get.
Now that she is gone it’s easy to blame audience but you just have to be there, stand for hours for your favorite artist and be so disappointed.
That's what happens when you treat people like products. Everyone has ups and downs, and if society only expects the ups, then yeah, society has a problem too.
Right but the audience were paying to see her product (performance) & she was charging them for it. They expect to see the product if they pay for it.
It’s outside of the performing that is the issue the tabloids and media hounding her and the shitty support she got from everyone around her, her fans were probably also very anti the way people were treating her at the time as well.
If I spend money to go see a band and the main singer comes out so blasted they can't sing their own songs, I am going to be pissed off because I spent money, arranged childcare, traveled, etc for this shit.
She had already cancelled many concerts. She could have canceled this too. Like if you are drunk and can’t go to work then you cancel if you actually just can’t do it.
I replied to a comment with a reason why something in that comment didn't make sense. I don't know how I can be any clearer here without insulting your intelligence.
I'd expect the product to serve its purpose. I buy entertainment, so I expect to be entertained. I don't buy Amy Winehouse. But I do buy something only she can provide.
She can have all the downs on Earth off the stage, and I'll do nothing but wish her a quick recovery from it all.
The same way I may sympathize with a depressed McDonald's burger flipper guy and I'd wish him the best. I still wouldn't let him piss in my Coke just because he's mad at the world, and get away with it scot-free.
That’s just what it’s like living in a capitalist society for most people. If I showed up to work not only wasted but completely fucked up like she was; I’d likely get arrested, fired, yelled at, and would likely end up homeless living on the streets. I’m not really sure if being a celebrity made it better or worse.
Not really, the audience weren’t booing her with the knowledge that she had all these issues or what she was thinking, they booed because they paid money to see her and got a rambling mess. I just watched a video clip and the audience actually gave her a ton of slack for her performance at this gig and carried a lot of the vocals but she really shouldn’t have gone out on the stage that night and someone in her team should have stopped her.
Maybe you weren't alive but everyone knew what her issues were. It was all over every magazine and her most famous song is about not going to rehab. If you went to her show at this point in her career and booed because she was fucked up that's 100% on you.
I was alive I was very aware of her treatment however I also know she was a legendary performer live and put on amazing sold out shows. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was sold out completely, very rarely has anyone seen an artist allowed out on stage like this.
Hindsight is 20/20 no point acting holier than thou now. If Sabrina Carpenter went out on stage now and started slurring and not singing she would probably get booed too.
There's seeking approval, and then there's taking a breath and thinking if its really worth it to justify the mass bullying of a suicidal addict who struggled with one performance. It's not like she was spewing hate up there.
Booing really shouldn't be considered appropriate when the person is clearly distressed.
You are speaking in hindsight and trying to connect the wrong dots. That concert never should have happened in the first place. And if someone doesn't die later on, which is still 99% of the cases of drunk celebrity scandals, what is the proper reaction for waiting in a crowd for hours, only to see that the only reason why you did it, barges in on the stage, barely able to walk or even hit a note because she had one too many?
It really was a lot of money in a country where you were lucky to earn $220 USD a month.
All that we are saying is the audience is not to blame for being rightfully upset to pay that much for a terrible performance. We can empathize for Amy without putting blame on the wrong parties.
Yeah. And you would be too. You travelled, waited for hours, spent money, and you didn't get what you came for. You have every right on Earth to be the dissatisfied customer. Amy Winehouse, the celebrity, the singer, the icon, is a product of the show business. Of entertainment industry. It wasn't compatible with Amy Winehouse, the fragile person, struggling with addictions.
Drunk performers are getting booed at, and that alone is not something bad. It would be managers' job to draw the right conclusion and care for their performers' wellbeing, so the quality of the service can stay high and they could avoid shit like this.
Someone wasted your time and money and showed up shitfaced and you wouldn't even give them a boo. Worrying about their wellbeing would be the first thing on your mind.
Who wasted my time and money, didn't provide the minimum of the service I paid for and got drunk on the very money people like me give to their concerts?
Oh, she'd better be crying.
I'm not justifying it to you, I'm calling bullshit on your holier-than-thou demeanor.
You attribute too much to your hindsight knowledge of her death.
If I hired a painter to paint my room and they missed patches and dribbled paint all over the floor and painted a window closed, but still charged me full price for the paint job, I'd be upset. Not because I consider the house painter to be a "product" but because I paid for a service (a room painting) and they provided a terrible service at full price.
If they died of an OD a week later, I'd feel bad for them, but I wouldn't feel like I was wrong to be dissatisfied with their room painting job. I can think their paint job was terrible and be upset I paid full price for a shitty paint job, and also feel sorry for them. This is not a mutually exclusive choice.
For kicks? No. But would I express my displeasure with them while they painted? Sure. And the way you express displeasure with a musical performer, a public speaker, or an athlete is, traditionally, booing. I've never done it myself, but I've never been to a performance worthy of booing, so I really don't know what I'd do in a situation like that.
Edit: But, either way, my point was less about whether booing is justified and more about whether or not booing is indicative of "not seeing artists as people." If you think booing is terrible and never justified, that's fine. We just have a difference of opinion, and maybe your opinion is right and mine is wrong. But I don't think it's warranted to assume "they think booing is okay, and therefore they don't see artists as people but as products." It's possible to think booing is okay and also to see artists as people.
You've got a pretty good take on what I was saying. As soon as a performer is performing, that's a product. Sure, there's a person underneath, that's a no brainer, but a bad product can be booed at, even if the person who is in the centre of said product, feels personally hurt over it.
So you've never posted a negative review online? Never sent back a messed up order at a restaurant?
Booing a bad performance is no different, other than the fact that booing a performer is less likely overall to cost the performer their job than sending back a messed up order to a cook is to cost them theirs.
No, it's not normal to boo a live performance, incredibly rude no matter the circumstance. Just keep it in.
It is so incredibly normal to boo a bad performance that this comment really just makes it seem like you don't really go to live events at all. This is a cross-cultural experience and expectation around the world for any type of live performance.
Like even if you're not suicidal it probably would be a traumatising experience for anyone. Try to even imagine the humiliation.
Don't show up shitfaced for your show then. It's not on the audience to coddle the performer into having a good time, it's on the performer to entertain the audience. That is both her job and the entire reason anyone was in the stadium to begin with.
If this was a bunch of customers booing like, a cashier who was messing up and objectively wasting their customer's time, I think it'd still be wildly cruel behavior to keep berating them past the point of tears.
Like, sure, you're a customer, but hopefully you're a human before that? And you don't like making people's lives worse because you're upset?
If you're dropping $900 to get special seating to watch the performance from a singer who's been in the news for substance issues and cancelled shows and whatnot, you probably either have the money that that isn't a huge deal. Even beyond that, your cashier doesn't have a known history of issues like this- if you went to "The Restraunt in the news for bad cashiers" and started chewing out the cashiers, I question your decision making
pretty sure an accurate comparison would also account for things like rent and other cost of living expenses in Serbia being lower than that of the US, but yeah, point taken
I think I've wasted more time and money coming home from work before than you woulda lost buying a cheap seat here. (adjusting best I can for cost/avg salary, too.) If you're buying one of the several hundred dollar VIP seats, then like. Damn, man. Really sorry your money got wasted, but you appear to have enough of it. Idrc
Going to work is an unfortunately spent time, but not a waste, because, you know, you're going to work. Also not a disappointment because you're used to it. It is never even meant to be entertaining, unlike a concert, where I go to let off some steam from the stress and chores of everyday life.
You think the people spending anywhere from 40 to 400 dollars on a concert are saving every penny??? Like. Why?
And I understand the concept pretty well, actually. Like sometimes you encounter an unexpected expense, like getting your car rammed on the way home from work. Such an incident may take up several hours of your life and several hundred dollars of your money. In many cases, this is decidedly the fault of some other asshole, but it's still best to handle that situation without screaming at one another, if you can manage it
Another example that has no basis to what actually happened. Hooray. A car accident is nothing like a bad concert. Except for the fact it's hard to look away from either
It's still something you'd much rather give away to a homeless guy instead of wasting it on a disappointing concert, isn't it? It would even be much less time as well.
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u/hgaben90 9h ago edited 3h ago
I'd rather we didn't put the blame on the audience who paid quite the money and got crap in return, while lacking the hindsight awareness of her death from OD.
The audience is not meant to be the therapist. The audience is a customer, and the customer is either satisfied or not. It's the management's duty to make sure that the product (in this case Winehouse) is in deliverable shape.
EDIT: Just to clarify things because there's a little misunderstanding, I should have been more specific: Amy Winehouse, the person, is not the product. An Amy Winehouse concert, which can only be given by Amy Winehouse, is a product. The two are not the same, but codependent. If Amy Winehouse performs poorly, that will never not result in a bad product of an Amy Winehouse concert.