cutting off toxic people and the fingers on your violin hand
As we reach the three-year anniversary of COVID lockdowns in the United States, a time when (if you were not an essential worker) there was little to do but watch movies and perform questionable self-psychoanalysis, I want to talk about a movie I watched recently that has sparked weeks of questionable self-psychoanalysis. And I want to talk about conflict resolution.
I want to talk about conflict resolution because no one else wants to talk about conflict resolution. Nobody wants to resolve conflicts at all. At least, not in a meaningful way where you have to (gag) be open and honest (puke) about your feelings.
Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as best friends Pádraic and Colm who throw their small island community into turmoil when the latter abruptly stops talking to the former. Colm has his reasons, and he articulates them well, but Pádraic is so confounded by the one-sided, unceremonious turn of events that he can’t accept any explanation.
You know what? Neither could I.
I’m still talking about Pádraic and Colm. I am talking about my February 2023 viewing experience of the Academy Award-nominated (better luck next time, guys!) film The Banshees of Inisherin, not about anything that may or may not have happened to me. Here are Colm’s well-articulated reasons: he’s getting old, and when he dies he wants to leave behind something tangible. He will not have enough time to devote to his art if he’s spending every afternoon at the pub chatting aimlessly with a dullard like Pádraic. Colm’s an amateur violinist, and he ostensibly dedicates his newfound free time to composing a song titled “Roll Credits Ding” “The Banshees of Inisherin.” The movie is from Pádraic’s point of view, though, so we don’t actually get to hear much of Colm’s work; at first because Pádraic keeps interrupting him, and then because Colm gives Pádraic an ultimatum. Every time Pádraic bothers him, Colm will shear a finger off his left hand (his fiddle hand) and leave it at Pádraic’s front door, thus further implicating Pádraic in the sabotage of Colm’s legacy.
Things spiral out of control pretty soon after that.
The film, smartly, (and because it’s, you know, a visual medium) doesn’t talk about conflict resolution either, but it shows. It shows, in uncomfortable detail, how through a total, deliberate avoidance of communication, you can end up with self-inflicted career-ending injuries, a burned house, and indirect responsibility for the death of an adorable miniature donkey. Or you can end up a half-insane arsonist with a destroyed reputation and no one to talk to. While Pádraic and Colm are waging war on each other, the actual Irish Civil War is visible from the mainland. The film doesn’t talk about this either, really, just letting characters remark on it like the fact of life that it is. Except, as the real war is winding down, Pádraic and Colm’s reaches a head. A bloody, attempted-murder-by-arson, involuntary-donkeyslaughter head. Colm, having survived said murder attempt, suggests a truce, but Pádraic vows to continue their rivalry. Pádraic’s beloved pet, sister, and other best friend are dead, thriving on the mainland, and also dead, respectively. Colm can’t play the violin without any fingers. It’s not like they have anything else going on.
Nobody wants to talk about conflict resolution. Everybody wants to talk about toxic people. The planet is crawling with them. Everybody, it seems, wants their very own toxic person to cut out. It’s like Hot Potato. Everybody wants this because it affords incontrovertible proof that the one doing the cutting could not possibly be the toxic one. There’s only two types of people in the world: the ones that inflict pain, and the ones that self-preserve.
Well baby, I’m a poison-the-vibe kind of girl. Don’t like middle ground, gotta be worst. I’m joking but I’m not, because I was once declared toxic. This happened on Twitter dot com, which is the place to get a definitive toxicity diagnosis. It’s like the fucking Mayo Clinic for Bad Person Disease. I am confirmed. You’re not getting details because this isn’t a gossip column, and I can’t really ask someone I haven’t spoken to in years to provide their side of the story. No informed judgment for you! I am toxic, period, because that is how I feel. For years, I have rehashed the details to third parties of varying biases, and consensus tends to be that either everyone or no one involved in this conflict was toxic, whatever that means. My mind has not changed. My mind is evidently totally incapable of changing, because somebody called me toxic on Twitter in an era when that actually meant something and was to be treated with grave seriousness. If I don’t give you details, what reason do you have not to believe me? Then again, maybe I’m obfuscating because I don’t want you to agree with me. That would be pretty toxic, wouldn’t it? Think about my wording a few paragraphs ago: these events happened to me. I have removed my past self’s agency because I was the Pádraic in the situation, i.e. I got cut off, I did not do the cutting. But who’s to say I didn’t deserve it? That Pádraic didn’t deserve it?
I’ve had a (probably unnecessarily strong) distaste for the word toxic since people other than Britney started using it to describe everything from masculinity to positivity to goddamn empathy, but here is my biggest grievance: it implies a fixed state of being. If a human person is “toxic”, what motivates them to change? To better themself? At best, this is discouraging; at worst, an opportunity to evade accountability for one’s actions. In fact, I’ve been worried for years that my fixation on the uselessness of the term “toxic person” is the most damning sign of all that I am one. It’s like that total bullshit assumption that all virulent homophobes are secretly gay. Except this one doesn’t feel like total bullshit, because it’s about me.
In the academic world, a toxic person is… undefined. There are no official, universally agreed upon diagnostic criteria for toxic personhood. Essentially, a toxic person is just an asshole under a (seemingly) more sophisticated term, affording witnesses to such toxicity actual credibility. Like, this has been shockingly effective in recent years. Actual mental health professionals are using this one. You don’t have to go to Twitter anymore; you can just test yourself or others on fucking WebMD. One of my biggest fears is opening the eventual DSM-VI and seeing a new illness called Toxic Personality Disorder among the Cluster Bs. I mean, it would fit perfectly, wouldn’t it? Searching Goodreads for Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder already brings up self-help guides not for those afflicted with such disorders, but for those afflicted with… having to be around them. Some of these titles come right out and say it — sufferers of NPD and BPD are toxic. Again, it’s intrinsic. What choice do good, normal people have but to exile them?
Let’s go back to The Banshees of Inisherin. It is not lost on me that when Colm is unsuccessful in cutting off communication with Pádraic, he resorts to physically cutting off parts of his body. Yes, the point is that it prohibits him from playing the violin, but Martin McDonagh could’ve had Colm mutilate his fingers another way. Colm does not ghost Pádraic because he’s “toxic”, but because he’s dull. Colm admits this to Pádraic’s sister Siobhán with the kind of grim finality usually reserved for doctors imparting news of terminal illness. Like toxicity, Pádraic’s dullness is inherent, and therefore incurable. To paraphrase a Facebook page I became a fan of in middle school, “No. You’re dull. So just sit there in your dullness and be dull.” There’s no moral failing in being dull, though, so it’s not until Pádraic sinks to petty revenge tactics that viewers are actually justified in siding with Colm, and consequently this is when I began to feel like I was allowed to relate to Pádraic. Pádraic must be pretty toxic then, right? Colm is just following protocol. It’s 1923; he’s arguably inventing it. Perhaps toxic people are made, not born? Or are some people born with the potential to be toxic, which can be permanently unlocked under specific circumstances? Maybe if Pádraic didn’t have toxicity in his DNA, he would’ve been mature enough to handle the turn of events. How dominant is this genetic curse? Does Siobhán have it too, or is it just a side effect of Pádraic’s dullness?
Do you see what this concept has done to me? It’s nothing. “Toxic person” is a nonsense term with no meaning that I have allowed to haunt me for years because I don’t know if I deserve its application. And I can’t ever know, because it doesn’t have a concrete definition!
Look, I relate to Pádraic, okay? He’s the one whose role in the conflict most closely mirrors my own from so long ago. So let’s check Twitter to determine, once and for all, whether Pádraic or Colm is the toxic one. Surely that’ll give me a definitive answer; they don’t have nuance over there! I’m going to search “banshees inisherin toxic” and see who I need to cancel. And if it’s Pádraic, then I fucking told you so.
Without further ado, here are all the things about the 2022 Martin McDonagh film The Banshees of Inisherin that are toxic:
Pádraic
Colm
Pádraic and Colm’s relationship
Masculinity
Friendship
Friendship specifically between men
The Irish Civil War
Martin McDonagh himself
Well, FUCK!
I am just like Pádraic. Not because we’re both toxic, but because neither of us can stop agonizing over what we did or didn’t do to warrant being cut off, and whether we deserved it. As Pádraic tried uselessly to determine what he did to Colm, I tried uselessly to determine if and when I could justify relating to him. And if it was toxic of me to want to do so in the first place.
What’s the point of any of this?
Who does this ceaseless rumination help? My ancient conflict is long dead and buried. Swooping in with some irrefutable scientific proof that I am not a toxic person, or that someone else is, would not retroactively erase the hurt suffered by all involved parties, nor would it dole out any kind of overdue retribution. It would just be uncomfortable for everyone. The conflict has resolved with the passage of time, but because relationships were permanently severed, not repaired.
“Simply don’t be toxic,” advises an otherwise good tweet from the scavenger hunt, as though we have not established that toxicity is fixed. It’s almost insulting.
My advice: Except in the most extreme cases, open discussion should be prerequisite to drastic action. If you bypass step one, it’s difficult to return, because not only do you still have to unpack the inciting feelings of discontent, you also have to address any new pain. And that’s an even thornier conversation. It’s better if everyone communicates feelings of dissatisfaction in the relationship from the beginning. But I’m toxic, so what do I know?
The thing about being ghosted is that you cannot ask why. You can ask everyone else around you what they think — and Pádraic does, and I did — but you can’t ask the person doing the ghosting without adding fuel to the fire. You just have to let them own their decision.
All I’m saying is, if Pádraic had listened to Colm, Jenny the donkey might still be alive.
All I’m saying is, if Colm had talked to Pádraic, Jenny the donkey might still be alive.