How Art Tames Monsters

On terrorists, gallows humour, and Godzilla.

Photo by freestocks

I was on the other side of the globe when three terrorists drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge in 2017. The men had wanted to use a 7.5 tonne lorry, but a bureaucratic hiccup involving payment for the truck prevented that additional level of carnage. The men filled their smaller van with Molotov cocktails, armed themselves with 12-inch kitchen knives, and set off to murder innocent people. Their van broke the bodies of dozens of pedestrians, killing two, before they leapt out and started hacking at anyone they could reach with their knives. By the time these cowards were shot dead, they’d killed eight people and injured forty-eight more.

News of the attack reached me across the Atlantic Ocean via social media, where reactions came as they always do – fast and unfiltered. But there was something a little different here, a twist in the usual recipe: many of the reactions from my fellow Brits, especially those who lived in London, seemed to make light of what …