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September 30, 2007

I Hate Oleanna

I saw a really strong production of the play last night, but I have to say, from almost the first moment, I found myself wishing he would just pick up the chair and clock her already so I could go home. That had nothing to do with the production, which, as I said was really strong. The set was gorgeous. The costumes were lovely. The actors were solid.

My issues are completely and entirely with the script.

I wish Mamet could have made it more even. But the odds are stacked against Carol almost from the first moment. Why? Because a shadowy "group" that smacks of fascism can never compete sympathetically with the image of a needy wife and child. Because she never has a good solid foundation to stand on, and so I end up siding with him. Which is what I am sure Mamet intended, but it leaves me feeling manipulated, just like Nicholas Sparks' books do. Which is why I no longer read Nicholas Sparks' books. Or watch his movies. Because I feel that the sole aim and purpose of his work is to make me cry. Just like I feel the sole aim and purpose of Oleanna is to make me side with the professor.

The thing is, Carol has some good arguments, good reasons for being upset. She has some validity. She has some meritorious concerns. But she's never really more than a sketch, never fully realized, and I think that's the script's fault. We can't hear what she's saying, as important as some of it is, because we've already sided with him. (I keep saying "him" because I don't remember the professor's name, and all seventeen of our copies seem to be elsewhere. At least now you know who I mean.) So we, as an audience, never let her have her voice. She's never really heard. And that pisses me off.

I came home seething. Not even for the reasons the playwright intended, I don't think. I came home mad because I felt manipulated. You know what? If you want to raise an important issue in a theatrical manner, you go right ahead. But TELL THE FUCKING STORY and let me figure out what I think for myself. Don't pretend objectivity as you stack the deck in your favor. I think the thing that angered me the most is that she's clearly the weaker person of the two all along, and yet I find myself rooting for him to beat the shit out of her. And that's wrong.

There's also the unrealistic suggestion that one person's claims could ruin a professor's tenure hearing despite a 20-year history of issue-free teaching. I mean, if there had been other situations like this, he wouldn't be on the verge of receiving tenure. Certainly, the man has his weaknesses, but--Gaaaah. It's really not worth my time to be angry about this play still.

I'm going to go plant something. Bring some beauty to the world.

Posted by sally at September 30, 2007 10:48 AM

Comments

THANK YOU.

I hated that damn play so much that I shredded the playbook, one page at a time, after being forced to read it in class. I agree with you whole-heartedly; the author tries to act like he is being unbiased but in reality he is manipulating the situation. Hate.

Plant something for me too please.

Posted by: Eris [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 30, 2007 03:15 PM

YES!! I hated it too! Not because of the production , it was VERY well done, every aspect of it. But Mamet is so misogynistic he doesn't know how to write a woman's perspective and written Carol just seemed like a flake (now, if Kristen happens to see this, I am not talking about the ACTRESS! You were fab, dear. It's the writer who sucks).

And tell me, seriously, why can't either of the characters speak one complete sentence! Just one whole sentence.

Thank you for letting me hate Mamet's play with you. Actually, I don't even like Mamet. But that's a story for another day.

Posted by: Maaike [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 30, 2007 06:04 PM

I don't like him either. I have tried, because it seems like that is what I *ought* to do, but I canna'. I just want to slap him. For so many reasons. So that now it's at the point where, like Carol, even if he does have things to say, I'm not able to listen. He's already forced me to choose a side, and it's not his.

Posted by: Sallyacious [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 1, 2007 08:07 AM

I read Oleanna for the first time in undergrad, and for some reason I read act 1 several, SEVERAL days before I read the rest of the play (with no knowledge whatsoever of anything else in the show), and that caused me to side with her. Act 1 in a vacuum, she is kind of sad but you feel her pain and you kind of think he is at least a tool if not an asshole.

Then we discussed it in class, and everyone else was completey manipulated into seeing only his side of the story (the end being where you remember the details of a play you just read to discuss for class). I spent the hour arguing against my classmates that she was not *just* a manipulative bitch, that the professor was by no means *practically perfect* and that the play was more interesting and deep if you went for what I was digging for in it.

No one went with me. I wouldn't have gone with me, if it wasn't for the like three days or something that passed between my reading the whole play. However, I did write one heck of a paper on it that got published in a campus journal and earned me $50--even better in that all the other papers in the journal were like term papers 15, 20, 80 pages long and mine had to be less than three for Play Analysis since we wrote smallish papers on everything and large papers on just a few things.

Yeah, Oleanna makes me crazy. It also made one of my professors very unsettled by 19 year old me because I (of course) argued with him when I thought he was wrong and this was unusual and frightening for him (well, you know how I get when I am really on an arguing roll and he just thought I was a flighty teenage girl--it probably was overwhelming at the very least).

Posted by: fire4hairlady [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 1, 2007 08:23 AM

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