How often do you hear the conversation happening around you, and wish that you could think of the perfect riposte? Not spiteful or cutting, not designed to trip the other person up, but to have the words to make your point in a way that feels modest yet memorable.
Towards the end of October, the Irish-American actress Saoirse Ronan appeared on the BBC’s Graham Norton show, on the sofa alongside fellow actors Eddie Redmayne, Paul Mescal and Denzel Washington, each promoting various new projects. So far, so Friday night chat-show – some good-natured banter between colleagues and friends. Conversation turned to training for the preparation Redmayne had been taken through for his recently released remake of The Day of the Jackal, including being taught how to use his phone as a weapon if he was attacked.
The three male actors and male host enjoyed the joke of this idea immensely. Their laughter initially drowns out Ronan’s attempt to speak, but then she manages to slip in a line that has since gone viral: ‘That’s what girls have to think about all the time’. As her point lands - with her friends and the show host – the silence it brings with it seems to stretch, providing a sort of natural full stop. She addresses the audience ‘Am I right ladies?’ to applause.
The video of the clip was everywhere online for a few days. Headlines extrapolated the few lines of dialogue into something it was never meant to be. The 30-year-old actress has been described as ‘shutting down’ and ‘gagging’ those on the sofa with her. Some papers said she had stunned them into silence. Is this what we now call joining in a conversation and putting forward a different perspective?
In a world where we often seem to be told that there is, or should be, barely any difference between men and woman, here was a reminder of just how different we are - and of how even a relatively gently, jokey conversation has the power to highlight different understandings and perspectives in a way that can feel shocking. Ronan later defended the men from the resulting backlash, calling Mescal her ‘dear friend’, and urging people to watch more than just the short viral clip, noting ‘the boys weren't sort of like debunking anything that I was saying’ observing her comment was just ‘opening a conversation’.
A world full of snippets
How do we each do difficult conversations? After the silence, following the initial mic-drop moment, how can any of us best respond to something so different from our own viewpoint that it shocks us? After the applause to Ronan’s question, the guests on the Graham Norton show just moved on. Leaving the internet picking over her initial 10 words, much of the comment ignoring its context.
In a world full of snippets - whether that is a 280-character tweet, a newspaper headline, or a viral video clip - what does guarding or keeping our hearts ‘with all vigilance’ (Proverbs 4.23) look like? We know snippets aren't enough when we might be tempted to proof text. Perhaps we cannot avoid hearing the short anecdote, or feel called to join a conversation full of different perspectives that need more unpicking. But sometimes we need to choose to do the hard work to understand an issue beyond a headline or quote, to better discern quite what we are hearing. Or as Spurgeon far more eloquently put it, to ‘be careful both as to the man you hear, and the words of his on which you rest’.
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