In a world of bad news, the heist provides some levity for once
It is strange to admit this, but when the news broke that the Louvre had been robbed, something inside of me just lit up. An honest to God art theft feels like something out of a cinematic heist film and not something we see amid the daily scroll of climate anxiety, political despair and overall world chaos. So, the idea of stolen jewels is weirdly refreshing.Â
Not because theft is good (it isn’t), or because the museum deserved it, but because for the first time in a while, the world handed us a story that felt completely human. Human, because this crime wasn’t glowing from a screen but instead, a hands-on crime committed in only seven minutes with a ladder and motorbikes.Â
I mean, heists are an ancient kind of story and there’s choreography to it. There’s the quiet sneaking, the unassuming sleepy guard with a donut, the laser grids, the timing and the getaway vehicle that quickly vanishes. When it’s real, like how the Louvre’s security team confirmed, it still feels a little fictional. It reminds us of the thrill and strange beauty that risk is. Dare I say that it feels noble that these robbers believed they could successfully outwit a security system and succeed with angle grinders and an old-fashioned nerve?Â
Compare this to the flat dread of our usual problems of a government shutdown, climate change or the withholding of SNAP benefits. I mean, just pick one because they are all awful. But a heist? A heist isn’t as unpredictable and at least has some structure with a beginning, middle and end. There’s the robbery, the mystery and then there’s the hope. Hope that we’ll find the missing jewels before they are destroyed, hope that the thieves were clumsy and left behind a clue or hope that the Louvre will do something to improve its security.Â
The target matters too. This isn’t any jewelry store or a digital wallet in an online void; it is the most visited museum in the world. We’re talking about the museum that contains the “Mona Lisa” and is a global showcase of art and human history. The fact that anyone even tried to breach and rob such a place is an exciting, defiant act of our imagination alone. We just don’t see that anymore because we spend so much time talking about what can’t be done anymore. You can’t beat the algorithm, you can’t hide from surveillance and you can’t pull off a mysterious heist. Yet they did.Â
There’s something so heartening about that. Not because we root for criminals, but because we respond to their sheer audacity. To care about something beautiful, even if it’s a crime, is to care about its meaning. A group that plans an art heist down to the minute and to the specific window believes in the symbolic. They’re not stealing an NFT or cryptocurrency — they’re stealing 19th-century jewels that were once worn by Empress Marie Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife — and that’s beautiful.Â
If the loneliness of the 2020s has taught us anything, it’s that we crave these stories that are alive and daring. The Louvre heist contained that pulse no matter its outcome. No one died and it’s not apocalyptic, it’s just human drama and maybe that’s why the collective fascination feels like a sigh of relief.Â
Again, it is strange to view the robbery of priceless historic jewels in this way, but it’s also comforting to know that even in a hyperconnected and hyper-surveilled world, old stories still find a way to break free, even if it’s through a window on the second floor of the Louvre.