When it comes to romantic break-ups, the “clean break” is something of a unicorn — admired and sought after but seldom if ever attained. It might be even rarer than the “amicable split.” At least when it comes to genuine love affairs.
There are any number of reasons why clean breaks are so hard to come by. Maybe we’re holding on to some lingering hope of reconciliation, maybe we don’t want to accept responsibility for the hurt we’ve inflicted on someone, maybe we find the drama exhilarating. Social media certainly hasn’t made them easier to pull off.
Whatever the case, “clean breaks” almost never happen. Advocating for one with a friend who’s truly heartbroken is an exercise in futility. They know full well how continued interaction brings pain, how it only tends to make things worse. But in these situations, knowledge and agency tend to be just as separated as the couple in question.
In his column “Controlling the Narrative” Tim Kreider puts his finger on another reason why clean breaks are so uncommon:
One reason so many exes cannot seem to stop talking to each other during their breakups — making furious, ill-advised late-night phone calls and crafting exquisitely damning emails even as they’re vowing never to speak to each other again — is that they’re struggling to wrest control of the narrative. They’re like antagonists at the climax of a melodrama grappling for the last weapon, telling each other No, this is what happened, here’s what went wrong, I’ll tell you why it’s over. Some of this motive informs almost all writing — you are finally having your say, getting the last word in, telling them all How It Is.
Certainly some of my own essays have been efforts to better articulate my side of a continuing dialogue or argument I’d been too slow-witted or timid to formulate in real time. Writing is an artificial arena in which to exercise control, where we can mash the world into a shape we can stand to look at. And control is inherently aggressive. It is, if you think about it, absurdly hubristic to presume that your version of events is the Truth, that you of all people are entitled to tell us what happened, let alone why.
We’ve heard before how we are born storytellers, creatures who cannot but imbue our life stories with morality. We do this on a national level via news media and history books, and we do it on a personal level in things like testimonies and resumes. Kreider takes that diagnosis further, suggesting that we are born polemicists as well, sending our post-breakup emails out into the world with increasing frequency and boldness. These days they’re just called “hot takes.”
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Rhetorical outrage has a long and proud tradition, and serves a number of worthy purposes (“calling a thing what it is,” for example) — dialogue just isn’t one of them. Kreider even lists a few of the form’s greatest masters, e.g., Twain, Mencken, etc. No doubt we could add our favorite theological practitioners (both Martin Luther and St. Paul jump out), writers whose diatribes have had a profound and clarifying effect. Inspiring even.
Yet it’s hard to imagine those great polemicists ever wanting the form to become the dominant mode of communication, as some would argue it has in the age of the Internet. Like all forms of violence, there’s a cost, not just to those at whom the words are aimed, but to the one wielding the sword. Speaking from experience, the internal toll it takes may be too high. Non-stop defensiveness and reactivity — whatever the subject — is simply a terrible place to live.
Plus, it’s a lot harder to rant well than we tend to think. These days most polemics don’t really deserve that word — intellectual sensationalism is more apt.
Some might say that when “clicks” equal revenue, the triumph of polemic is a foregone conclusion. But the allure isn’t primarily economic. Leaving a comment doesn’t cost anything, after all. Methinks it has more to do with sin. Control freaks that we all are, post-Eden, that’s where our “discourse” naturally gravitates when it has the room to do so.
This all hits pretty close to home. The posts we write that have a polemical edge invariably get more traffic than the ones that are merely out of interest, however heartfelt. The hot takes are probably more exciting, certainly more visceral. Laying aside the inherent contradiction involved in talking about “grace” in an ungracious or overbearing way, it is very tempting to write more of them.
So I sympathize with why more and more websites on all sides of the aisle are following the lead of places like Slate, abandoning all pretense of fairness with headlines that fit the “No, That Thing You Think Is Right Isn’t” template. They are writers, they want people to read what they are writing, and control — which is what headlines like those offer to both those who are pro and con — is a lot more appealing than open-endedness or dispassionate curiosity. That goes double during the banner year of uncertainty and helplessness known as 2020.
What makes Kreider’s column so special, though, is where it ends. Instead of standing in judgment over the scores of trolls and ideological wonks whose unfiltered rage is being worked out 24/7 online, Kreider sees himself:
It may be that art, like drugs, is a way of dulling or controlling pain. Eloquently articulating a feeling is one way to avoid actually experiencing it. Words are only symbols, noises or marks on paper, and turning the messy, ugly stuff of life into language renders it inert and manageable for the author, even as it intensifies it for the reader. It’s a nerdy, sensitive kid’s way of turning suffering into something safely abstract, an object of contemplation.
I suspect most of the people who write all that furious invective on the Internet, professional polemicists and semiliterate commenters alike, are lashing out because they’ve been hurt — their sense of fairness or decency has been outraged, or they feel personally wounded or threatened. Writing may ultimately be less an offensive weapon, like the proverbial rapier, than a shield.
Amen. I may be writing myself into a corner here, but a focus on the Why over the What strikes me as our best hope for survival in a media-saturated context that repaints reality in increasingly strident and conflicting colors. And the Why almost always, at its root, has to do with pain (or fear, which is a type of pain, I suppose).
We are all controlling the narrative. That’s just what we do. It’s what Rachel Maddow does and what Sean Hannity does. Men do it and so do women. It’s what I’m doing right now. It doesn’t mean that some narratives don’t contain more truth than others. But it’s also what makes the narrative about the God who gave up control for the sake of an embittered world so extraordinary.
The God who stayed silent when he could have defended himself, who, by his death and resurrection, made a definitive break with the cycle of wound and threat, granting his children — in an ultimate sense, at least — the assurance to experience their pain head-on.
In a world of self-justifying polemicists, it may be the one story that truly bears repeating.
COMMENTS
4 responses to “Breaking Up with the Hot Take”
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Yes! “hysterical criticism” is another term that comes to mind. In Intimations, Zadie noted that Creative Writing Departments “should properly be called the Controlling Experience Department.”
Your line about the Why reminded of a quote from Watchmen that I loved. The characters are talking about anger, and the old man says, “It wasn’t anger. It was fear, and hurt.” 😮 Think that applies pretty broadly
For what it’s worth, one of the things I’ve always loved about y’all are the more open-ended, less polemical pieces. They may not garner as much attention in an environment of constant amygdala stimulation, but I think there’s an emerging collective exhaustion with the hot take hustle, both in regard to reading and writing. It’s some consolation to know I’m not the only one feeling it.
Thank you for saying that Robbie!
Instructive article and great comments.