For most Americans, the stadium tour “experience” is already something of a nightmare/competitive sport. And yes, concert-going in general has become more competitive in the last decade. Chalk it up to the worst aspects of capitalism (not to mention “doing it for the social media post”) infecting it to the point of no return. And perhaps the biggest symptom of that is Live Nation Entertainment’s monopoly over ticket sales via Ticketmaster. A glaring spotlight was put on the company’s market control, relentless promotion of would-be elitism and overall inefficacy by none other than Taylor Swift herself when, in 2022, the singer crashed the website due to the overwhelming demand to see a tour so basic and lacking in any political statements (particularly when compared to Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour and Madonna’s The Celebration Tour). But it wasn’t just in the U.S. that “Swiftmania” took hold. Throughout the globe, various Swifties were determined to see their idol in concert. And that’s why Swift kept adding more dates on the map of her The Eras Tour journey (if you express the demand, she will supply). Among the latest round being Rio de Janeiro. A city not always known for being “inviting” or “appealing” to Americans. At least in terms of providing the many “creature comforts” they’ve grown accustomed to back in the “US and A” (to use a Borat parlance). As for Brazilians themselves, the cutthroat, “jank” nature of existence is par for their course. Especially when it comes to the concert-going experience.
And yet, despite all that grit compared to Americans who actually expect to have an assigned seat and access to water whenever they want (whatever the cost!), even Brazilians were having a hard time enduring the conditions of The Eras Tour in Rio de Janeiro. For it was bad enough that the heat index on November 17th—the first night of The Eras Tour in Rio—was a hellacious 138.74 degrees Fahrenheit, but, to compound that issue, T4F (the Brazilian edition of Ticketmaster that ironically stands for “Time 4 Fun”) refused to let concertgoers bring water bottles into the venue, citing “security concerns.” Maybe for the very reason that airlines banned liquids on planes starting in 2006: they were afraid someone might try to turn those liquids into explosives. Rio does have a reputation (no Taylor reference intended), after all. Particularly in the eyes of dainty American residents who see the country as lawless and crime-ridden. And yet, there’s no doubt that certain American Swifties might have traveled to Brazil just for The Eras Tour. Heat and bodily harm risks be damned! And that’s saying a lot for the largely white female demographic that worships Swift enough to make the most dangerous trek of their lives (aside from venturing out of any part of New York that isn’t Times Square). Indeed, the U.S. Department of State currently describes Brazil as follows: “Violent crime, such as murder, armed robbery and carjacking, is common in urban areas, day and night. Gang activity and organized crime is widespread. Assaults, including with sedatives and drugs placed in drinks, are common. U.S. government personnel are discouraged from using municipal buses in all parts of Brazil due to an elevated risk of robbery and assault at any time of day, and especially at night.” Already painting a nightmarish picture without adding to that image the hordes of dehydrated and demoralized crowds waiting all day for Swift to take the stage, what you’ve got on your hands is nothing short of a Boschian tableau.
But those who live in Rio, they should just accept these conditions, right? For the errant American foolish enough to travel to Brazil and actually pay to endure this horror show, well, they can just go right back to the U.S. and cleanse themselves with a more “civilized” concert-going experience next time. Ah, but that’s the self-delusion of American thinking. The whole “it can’t happen here” idea. It applies just as much to shitty concert accommodations as it does to fascism. But, as the U.S. and its so-called “Cadillac of concert-going” options have seen during instances like Altamont, Woodstock 99 (complete with multiple sexual assaults, including a gang rape during Korn’s set) and, most recently, Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival, it happens there all the time.
It was, oddly enough, at Woodstock 99 where the forbidding of water was most intense among the three aforementioned examples of nightmare concert experiences. As Kurt Loder, reporting on the event for MTV News at the time, said, “To get in, you get frisked to make sure you’re not bringing in any water or food that would prevent you from buying from their outrageously priced booths. You wallow around in garbage and human waste. There was a palpable mood of anger.” An anger that can’t be quelled in concert scenarios like these, no matter how much “love” the fans have for the performer. In point of fact, it’s quite easy for the greatest fan love to turn to hate and contempt in conditions such as these, where one looks to cast blame on someone, anyone for the hellscape they had to not only bear witness to, but also escape from.
Some fans, however, would not be so lucky as to make that escape. In the case of the November 19th date of The Eras Tour, one of those fans included twenty-five-year-old Gabriel Mongenot Santana Milhomem Santos, who was stabbed after the show in the small hours of Monday morning on a Copacabana beach (located roughly one hour from the venue). While some would say that’s no fault of Swift’s, it still relates to the lack of safety involved in concert-going in general and in Brazil in particular.
Two days earlier, on November 17th, twenty-three-year-old Ana Clara Benevides Machado died of cardiac arrest spurred by the intense heat and lack of water. The universe’s sadistic sense of humor seemed to be in full effect in terms of how Benevides passed out during Swift’s performance of “Cruel Summer.” Of all the songs she could have expired to, this was probably the most uncanny and taunting.
The outrage following her death included the demand for free water to be made available to those in attendance at Swift’s shows, and any show for that matter. Underscoring that, for all the money that fans pay to see a performer, they’re treated little better than cattle shoved into a boxcar. Effectively “paying to be treated like shit.” And while Swift does her best to fortify the parasocial dynamic that has made her a billionaire, there’s only so much a fan can take. This much was obvious when, the following day, when the temperature had spiked even higher, Swift opted to cancel the show just hours before it was slated to go on. By that time, thousands upon thousands of fans had already queued in line/converged upon Estádio Olímpico Nilton Santos to wait for her to take the stage again. And they didn’t come unprepared to suffer, with one fan calling out the fact that she wore a diaper so as to avoid leaving the line to go to the bathroom. The fan posted a video documenting her rage over the fact that Swift didn’t make her intentions known sooner, fully aware at this juncture of the treks involved for people to get to the venue, with many taking plane and bus rides to arrive there. So it was that the fan derided, “Can you see how much I’m sweating, how all the pores in my body are dilated from the sweat? I’m wearing a diaper, a geriatric diaper. Come on stage, I want to see you!” This strange mix of disdain and devotion is at the heart of the saying, “There’s a fine love between love and hate.” As well as a fine line between love and obsession; hate and obsession.
In any event, Swift, from her aristocratic perch, likely thought she was playing by the book by postponing the show instead of subjecting her audience to more scorching suffocation and dehydration. And yet, if she had given true thought to any of this, it might have occurred to her not to schedule the tour dates at the apex of Brazil’s summer.
Nonetheless, Swift has still emerged from the fiasco (to use an understatement) with a halo around her head. Somehow managing to set off yet another political movement despite being mostly apolitical herself, as the drama surrounding the concert from the outset prompted Brazilian lawmakers to propose the “Taylor Swift Law,” a piece of legislation designed to penalize scalpers for reselling tickets with four years of jail time and up to one hundred times the valued amount of the ticket in fines. This after scalpers used violence and terrorization to cut the lines at the box office in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo so they could resell at muggers’ prices. Ah, and speaking of muggings, a rash of them occurred after Swift decided not to go forward with the planned show on the 18th, giving rise to making her crushed, overheated fans targets for pickpocketing as they grudgingly left from the venue. While some took refuge from the danger inside a nearby Burger King, it turned out to be little safer than the outside world as the police proceeded to raid the establishment. Those able to make it inside of a taxi to leave were, of course, heavily overcharged for the price of their flight from Swiftian hell.
The night before, amid chants of “water, water, water,” Swift “assured” the fans they didn’t need to chant—water was coming (side note: it wasn’t, as only a handful of lucky ones were able to secure bottles from Swift’s team). During another portion of the show, she can be seen launching a bottle of water into the crowd like Trump launching paper towels at Puerto Ricans. Because, evidently, it’s okay for the performer to hurtle heavy objects into the audience (for a “good cause”), but that sentiment doesn’t cut both ways, as Swift made clear to her Argentinian fans a week before setting up in Rio. Instead, Swift has been painted as a beneficent soul just trying to make the best of a ghetto situation. And yeah, that’s how Americans would view it: ghetto as fuck. Whereas Brazilians are forced to withstand these conditions if they want a chance at seeing their favorite pop star perform live. And so, in another unwitting political move on Swift’s part, she’s managed to put pressure on an organization like T4F to improve the concert-going experience for Brazilian patrons. Alas, if even the U.S. hasn’t done shit to change things with Ticketmaster, the likelihood of real change with T4F seems even more remote.
Thus, the aristocrat-peon relationship will probably persist in any concert situation (that is, when it isn’t inversely employer-employee). With the beloved idol in question looking down at the peon-fans from on high just trying to “do their job” while ignoring the many-layered affronts happening from within the trenches of the crowd.
