You can’t stop the music
Attacks make people more aware of the risk but also makes them value freedom
In November, the Bataclan theatre in Paris reopened one day before the one-year anniversary of the massacre that left 90 people dead during an Eagles of Death Metal concert.
“We have two tasks,” Sting told a packed house that night. “To honour victims who lost their lives and to honour music and life.”
Six months later, here we are again — honouring victims, vowing not to let terrorists win — as we come to terms with another concert attack, this time in Manchester, England, where 22 people were killed and dozens were injured after an Ariana Grande show on Tuesday.
Grande took to Twitter to apologise and say she was “broken”. She cancelled the remainder of her tour.
Meanwhile, musicians from Taylor Swift to Nicki Minaj to Rihanna sent prayers and love.
After the shock and support, recent history shows that we’ll return to our usual routines — at least for those of us not directly touched by the violence. Because, even though terrorists keep succeeding at creating very real tragedies for many families, they still haven’t altered the way most of us live. Despite bombs and mass shootings that target the places we go to unwind, movie lovers still head to the multiplex and music fans still go to concerts, runners compete in marathons, the faithful gather to pray and friends get together at clubs and cafes. It’s all part of the cycle now: Mourning gives way to resilience.
At the Sting concert that reopened the Bataclan, hundreds of survivors and relatives of victims showed up, and the 1000 tickets for sale were snapped up in less than 30 minutes. A month after the attacks, ticket sales for Paris concerts were already rebounding. Recent mass shootings at movie theatres in the United States were not the work of Isis (Islamic State), which claimed responsibility for the Manchester and Paris violence. But the objective was the same — to target innocent people where they go to let loose. James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theatre in 2012. At the time, Warner Bros quickly pivoted to show sensitivity to the victims and their families. The stars of the movie suspended press interviews and the studio took trailers for Gangster Squad — which featured a movie theatre shooting — offline. After John Russell Houser killed two and injured nine during a screening of Trainwreck in Lafayette, Louisiana, in 2015, the comedy’s star Amy Schumer said she regretted ever writing the movie.
That would have deprived many people of laughs, however.
“Obviously, people are much more aware and careful when they attend these events, especially directly after it happens,” said Jeff Bock, the senior box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations.
“But people are much more vigilant about their freedom, and I don’t think people want to buy into terrorism keeping them at home because the age-old adage is, if you do that, then they win.”
It took a while, but even Paris tourism, which flagged following the horrific one-two punch of the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices followed by the November 2015 violence, has rebounded, the New York Times reported last month.
In the end, maybe it was reason that prevailed. Even with increased coverage of terrorists, they’re still much less likely to kill you than a heart attack.
“We probably think that it’s not going to happen to us and that keeps us going,” said Priscilla DassBrailsford, an associate professor of psychology at Georgetown University. “Because to think otherwise would be very depressing.”