Jacob Tremblay stars in Unabomber as Ted Kaczynski, whose past did not resurface in the modern sense of the word.Photo Illustration by The Globe and Mail
Welcome to Parlance of our Times, a new biweekly pop-culture etymology column that unpacks a word or phrase that is suddenly everywhere. This week: “Resurface”
Resurface, v.
To appear again after being lost, forgotten or, in the case of a social-media post, deleted.
Everything was going so well for Ted Kaczynski. At least until the events portrayed in the new Netflix biopic Unabomber, when, per the synopsis, “Kaczynski’s troubled past resurfaces.” Once that happened, authorities tracked the murderous mathematician to his remote Montana cabin and locked him up for the rest of his life.
Resurfacing is the word we use to describe how modern plots twist, in both art and life. Our hero seems perfect (or our villain evades detection) until something sinister bobs to the surface. It’s how the drama happens – and also how The Drama happened. That film, starring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya, follows a perfect couple whose impending nuptials are derailed when a horrible event from the past is revealed.
As long as there’s been water on our planet, things have resurfaced. But now that we live in the eternal digital present, resurfacing has an ominous resonance. We’ve all been leaving our fingerprints across the internet for years, even the young adults who came of age in the time of finstas, those fake Instagram accounts designed to evade the prying eyes of university admissions officers and future employers. (Positive artifacts, like the fact that you were valedictorian of your kindergarten class, are never described as resurfacing. Congrats anyway!)
As New York magazine asks in a recent cover story, “What If It All Came Out?” The thesis: “We’re each attached to years of texts, searches, and photos, an archive of humiliation that could detonate at any time.”
Detonation requires someone to light the fuse, and that’s where the malevolent side of resurfacing comes in. In U.S. politics especially, past statements by new candidates are constantly resurfacing.
These revelations are usually the handiwork of opposition research, where the other team digs deep into social-media timelines to find the most outrageous content they can. So when we hear that fresh-faced U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico once said God was non-binary, it’s rarely with any context for that tidbit of theological speculation.
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It’s a political cousin of the classic “mistakes were made” phrasing, followed by a sotto voce “but not by me.” That construction was memorably dubbed the “exonerative past tense” by political scientist William Schneider, because it carefully avoids naming the person who caused the problem. So too does resurfacing, describing a distasteful piece of history that has come to light through unspecified means.
In The Drama, the resurfacing occurs during a drinking game, when the characters offer up the worst things they’ve ever done. (Pro tip: Just say, “Playing this game.”) When the movie was released earlier this year, news broke of a creepy 2012 essay by its director Kristoffer Borgli, in which he described dating a 16-year-old when he was 27 (technically legal in his native Norway). The essay, replete with Woody Allen references, resurfaced on Reddit, helpfully translated from the original Norwegian.
All of which makes the Unabomber’s story distinctly old-fashioned. Kaczynski’s past didn’t mysteriously bubble up; his brother recognized his writing and turned him in. There was a name attached, and a cost. Today’s resurfacings come with neither.
Benjamin Errett writes with and about words at GetWitQuick.com