Goddess Takes Revenge in Vigilante-Inspired Video Katie Presley - NPR
go to original December 30, 2015

Diana the hunter exacts revenge in The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die's music video. (Epitaph Records)

According to witnesses, on the morning of Aug. 28, 2013, a woman hailed the 4A bus in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. When the male bus driver opened the doors to let her on, she shot and killed him. The following day, on the same route, she murdered another driver. That weekend, media outlets received letters from a woman calling herself "Diana, the hunter of bus drivers," claiming responsibility for the murders and declaring them acts of revenge in the face of the city's staggering rates of femicide. Her eponym is Diana (or Artemis, in the Roman tradition), the ancient Greek goddess of wilderness, childbirth, animals and the hunt.

On Jan. 10, 2014, The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die, an emo band from Connecticut, wrote a song about the incidents. Drawing its lyrics from an episode of This American Life telling the story, and from research about Dianic belief (a neopagan religion centered on Diana), "January 10th, 2014" is grandiose and dramatic — and that's not even taking into account the video.

The Diana namesake in Ciudad Juárez targeted bus drivers because many of the women killed in the city were riding buses alone when they were attacked, and it's that scenario that TWIABP uses as a starting point in their video. What follows is an epic, nearly six-minute tale of murder and revenge, amped up by crashing drums and climbing guitar. The problems of Ciudad Juárez were not solved by a lone vigilante, and they aren't solved by a music video dramatizing her. But as this band's response to a true — and truly devastating — story, and a piece of graphic, pyrotechnic, searing art, "January 10th, 2014" is breathtaking.

See the original at Public Radio East

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