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This paper critically analyses purposively chosen case studies from media coverage of the lootings in South Africa in July 2021. Our goals are to help make sense of a collectively traumatic event and to move beyond theories of looting as “deviant” consumption. We explain the context of the lootings, offering a long-view of crises building up to an intense eruption of social unrest during the pandemic. Then, we analyse four selected looting stories that captured significant, even spectacular, public attention. We present each story and explicate its meaning in relation to the South African polity and show how each allows for a departure from the concept of deviant consumption. We conclude by arguing that spectacularised mediated moments of looting from this event require theories of the carnivalesque and aspiration rather than those of deviant consumption. These have specific resonance in contexts of inequality.

“A LOOT-a continua”? Inequality, humour, and broken aspirations in South African consumer culture