The show must (not) go on

The unfortunate events that unfolded at Astroworld recently sent shockwaves throughout the world. A stampede of fans surging toward the stage during rap star Travis Scott’s music festival in Houston killed at least eight people and injured dozens more as panic rippled through the crowd of largely young concertgoers. Videos of civilians giving CPR to people and ambulances being brought in went viral on social media. The mass casualty incident has received enormous coverage and left a large majority questioning the contentious practises of the show organisers. This, just weeks after the devastating shooting accident on the set of Alec Baldwin’s upcoming movie, Rust, fueled the debate on entertainment industry’s marred image amidst severe cases of safety negligence.

As investigations widened and lawsuits started to pour in against the performer and the event organisers, Scott’s previous instances of carelessness came to light. Evidence from another previous concert highlighted how the singer recklessly encouraged fans to breach barriers and riled them up to rush to the stage. Six years ago, Chicago’s Lollapalooza music festival shut down Travis Scott’s set and filed charges against him after he encouraged fans to get on stage. While criminal charges for the artist are still being deemed as far-fetched, Scott’s previous arrests for encouraging such behaviour ought to hold a greater liability risk.

When facing a high-density, high-energy crowd and no show-stopping procedures set in place, such cases lose credibility to be written off as accidents. They arise through a systematic dereliction of duty and should be deemed equal parts accidental and criminal offences. That is the only way to ensure something like this will never happen again. Large-scale events being organised without the proper awareness of crowd control are taking lives yearly. The concert in question had ticket prices going up to 1,000 USD, hundred thousand of which were sold out within an hour of going on sale back in May of this year. If $1,000 cannot guarantee your safety at what should be a meticulously-managed event, then what’s the point of having one?

The Astroworld accident is not the first time a show or a set has gone out of control or led to a loss of human life. Even when looking at home, one would find cases that establish a long-standing global pattern of negligence. In 2012, Atif Aslam’s concert turned into a tragedy when three girls were killed while several others critically injured in a stampede. When people tried to exit the venue after the event, “someone closed the door,” resulting in a stampede that caused three innocent and preventable deaths. In 2019, multiple people were injured in a panic during Abrar-ul-Haq’s Multan concert. All these hard-hitting cases to derive stricter protocols from and yet we still face the same tragic music every time.

Just last year, the Solis Music and Arts Festival in Islamabad turned into a nightmare when the show was overrun by people who did not have tickets. Tumultuous details of injuries, harassment and falling infrastructure flooded the internet following the incident. Accused of poor planning and careless security management, Solis Festival defended themselves by stating that they had taken the precautions they could. If VIP tickets were sold for up to 11,000 PKR, why was it that such an expensive night turned so traumatising for its attendees? Fact of the matter is, profitability and safety rarely ever cross over each other.

When the no-concert streak amidst covid was finally broken in the country this year, people were delighted to finally get their entertainment avenues back once again. However, in a post-pandemic world with a prevalent virus on its sixth world tour, bringing new mutated variants every now and then, the stakes are even higher for attendee protection. The reality, however, remains consistently grim for the same old battles along with new ones. This month alone, Atif Aslam had to cancel his concert midway due to on-site harassment concerns amidst the crowd whereas Bayaan’s concert was called off just after the group performed two songs. While the former was halted by the singer himself after witnessing overt harassment faced by female attendees, and the latter, despite being organised in a protected academic institution, faced some mob related difficulties from third party origins, which is completely on-brand for us as a nation that deems purity above everything else. The fact that Atif Aslam had to take initiative and leave the concert in protest of the organisation of the concert speaks volumes on how the show-world industry treats artists and attendees alike. Another year, another mismanaged public event.

While lumping all these incidents under a sweeping statement of all or nothing may be slightly fallacious, there is one tether that would link many of these together. These large-scale events that inevitably turn into a hunger-games-esque narrative occur solely due to minimising security risks and prioritising money above everything. When event organisers or stakeholders act negligently and cut corners for a profitable turnover, they are putting every attendee at risk. The larger, more pressing truth is that in many such cases, lives are lost. People ranging from children to entire families attend festivals and if the guarantee for their safety is even a degree less than hundred percent, then the event organisers involved have failed and should be charged. A 16 year old attendee isn’t an expert crowd control marshal or a security expert and is perfectly within his right to assume that someone else is taking care of their safety. As long as promoters, artists, security, venue, operators and city officials who approved these plans are not held criminally liable — this is going to drone on.

Accidents are not limited to the world of festivals. The media industry has quite the reputation for on-set accidents. Just this year alone, at least nine people were injured when a security guard opened fire on the set of a television drama in Karachi. The security guard stationed at the bungalow, where a drama’s shoot was taking place, open fired after an argument with the producer of the drama. Such an on-set disaster should serve as grounds enough to completely revamp the way our industry works, but the event was brushed under the carpet as a one-time mishap.

Even one is too many. Alec Baldwin referred to the fatal shooting on the set of Rust as “one in a trillion episode.” While that may be true, how many more deaths would it take for us to take safety protocols seriously? Brandon Lee’s unfortunate death in 1993 at the hands of a prop gun should’ve been a one-time happenstance that the industry could learn from, and inculcate strict protocols, or better yet, entirely ban the use of guns from sets.

One may not be entirely surprised to learn that Hollywood had a very safe and effective replacement for on-set guns long ago, it just chose not to adopt it. This alternative, called Violette, came from a Danish company that designed faux weapons which created all the sensory elements of firing a weapon that one would expect to see in movies. But a 100 percent safe substitute remained underfunded and ignored by the industry, the same industry that showered the Rust shooting victims’ families with their thoughts and prayers. No one could have foreseen such incidents, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t avoidable to begin with.

Contrary to Rihanna’s popular lyric “please don’t stop the music,” please do. This is the time for a major shift in how we operate in the entertainment world. Famed American actor, Dwayne Johnson, recently vowed to stop using real guns in film projects, stating that his production company would compensate for rubber guns and post-production effects. “We won’t worry about what it costs,” he said. On a similar note, as criticisms for festivals pour in, it’s high time to implement strict legislation that oversees the show-world in its entirety.

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