I was listening to CBC radio. The mother of Amanda Todd talked about the extradition to Canada of her daughter’s internet stalker/ troll/ bully, and she said each day she had a new word to describe how she felt. The interviewer asked what is today’s word? And she replied “victorious,” and then added, yesterday was “sad” and before that “surreal.”
When I heard surreal, I was immediately struck by how a word that’s barely a hundred years old could resonate so strongly with people around the world. The comment, “It’s surreal” is not uncommon — nor easily misunderstood despite its contradictory nature. A word for the concept of common things in uncommon juxtapositions seems tailor-made to describe the state of the modern world. Which, of course, surreal is — although medical-made might be a better description. 
Aragon and Breton, the founders of the Surrealist Movement, were both medical students conscripted to perform as doctors during the First World War. Both suffered emotional/ mental breakdowns as a result of their war experiences. They met in a veteran’s hospital and it was there they conceived the Surrealism Movement. Significantly, they conceived of Surrealism as a Poetry Movement. A vanguard of poets who understood the world order was forever ended, and a new state-imposed madness was in process of replacing all forms of authority that preceded it. Not that the previous world replaced was any less mad — only, now the madness was transparent and hidden in plain view. The only appropriate response was to completely subvert any idea of continuing the façade of normalcy, and by so doing, express a new concept of art and imagination.
Victorious comes from the Latin and barely requires definition — it means to win, to be successful in many battles — an interesting contrast to surrealism, which is born from the futility of battle and the defeat of all that is human. If victory belongs to the big guns, victorious is the barrage of artillery that precedes an irresistible wave.
Sad comes from the Germanic and Old English, and replaces the old English “unrot” where “rot” is good. Is this a reverberation of Orwell and 1984? Because if it is, it couldn’t be better. English has long left behind ‘unrot’. Sadness has its own meaning, quite separate from the modern meaning of ‘rot’. But ‘unrot’ seems to suit the moment almost better than the word ‘sadness’. Is that a surreal coincidence? Consider how unrot suits the very concept of surrealism better than the word “sad”.
Perhaps it’s a coincidence of etymology that’s been waiting to happen — an unconscious message from the past to the future. Or can an uncovered coincidence be another manipulated event, that which feeds social media’s imagination, serendipitous discoveries simply part of our modern aesthetic/psyche/gestalt—unrot because it sounds like it means something entirely different from what it meant. Am I inviting you to be surreal? What is the difference between surreal and thought crime. What and where is justice?
The other reason surreal works so well within the context of online bullying is the crime did not occur physically although it led to a very real result — a young girl/ woman driven to take her life. A crime that occurred within an abstract realm that played out on the physical plane. Is this the reification of thought crime? Is Amanda Todd’s suicide a reflection of a world neither real nor not, or more appropriately, a world reflection that is our doppelganger? The physical manifestation of this terrible reverberation that makes so much sense within our right now world totally entwined within our imagination. Are we talking about Orwell’s 1984?  Was Orwell A) surreal, B) victorious, C) unrot?
That’s not a question, it’s a challenge: can we take the word “surrealism” and mine deep within it to find the very black heart that beats at this modern world’s core? Are we prepared to once again find a mirror that reflects us most truthfully, the battle that occurs daily within each of us? Maybe this is surrealism in action, as we embrace what we reject, consume what poisons us, and duel with our deadly self in an act of suicide that makes no sense, yet shouts wordlessly to us every minute of every day.
Maybe it’s possible to understand Amanda Todd’s mother’s usage of surreal. She’s seen it, lived it, understood it, and to add to it, she defeated her enemy. Victorious, sad, surreal.
A syllogism recently rediscovered in ancient papyrus scrolls, or perhaps a haiku burned into the bone of an ancient deer.
<Aydin Coban, the Dutch man who extorted and harassed Amanda Todd, was convicted by a Canadian jury on August 6, 2022. >