Oleanna, don't you cry for me... or: Meet you all the way, Oleanna, yeah
Click to viewHard to believe, but I was almost completely unfamiliar with David Mamet's Oleanna until less than a month ago.
I've seen two live productions of it in the past four weeks (one in Hamilton, the other being the excellent recent Soulpepper production), and I can't stop thinking about it. Oleanna is, of course, either the most misogynistic play ever written or the most militantly feminist play ever written -- depending on how the individual production chooses to depict the opposing characters and which one of them you're siding with. It's interesting that both of the ones I saw chose to portray the professor as completely innocent of sexual harassment (and sincere in his good intentions to help Carol) and Carol as more of a monster, especially considering that one of them was directed by a woman. I understand that it's just as legitimate to depict the professor as a scheming perv and Carol as completely justified in her actions, and that there have been productions that have done this.
From my limited exposure to the play, I'm still finding it hard to see the professor as guilty. Oh -- he's guilty of pomposity, egotism, self-righteousness and some very bad judgement as to how he behaves around students. But not of anything that deserves to have his livelihood, reputation and possibly freedom taken away. (Until the end, obviously, when he beats Carol up. Of course this action is not at all to be commended, no matter whose side you're on. But it's kind of hard to say that he wasn't provoked...) From this point of view, Carol comes off as Rush Limbaugh's worst nightmare, a one-dimensional Feminazi who lives only to victimize men.
And yet... as much as I want to view Carol as an unrealistic caricature... the trouble is, I've known Carol in real life. I've known several of them. I've known them in university, in the poetry scene, on LiveJournal and more. There are many people out there who seem to have nothing better to do than to twist everything you say into some kind of racist or misogynistic offense, for no other reason than to give themselves an easy short cut to the moral high ground. That's one of the reasons the play strikes a chord with me: Any one of us could fuck up like the professor at any time, with the wrong person, and find everything we take for granted being snatched away.
Most critics seem to agree that the major flaw in the play is Carol's character itself -- how she pulls such a total 180 between Acts 1 and 2, from a meek, whiny, submissive student to a suit-wearing, confident go-getter who must have swallowed a legal dictionary. But as implausible as it appears, isn't it obvious that Mamet's doing this transformation on purpose? My interpretation is that Carol's personality in the first act is all pretense. She's putting on an act in order to trap the professor, who may have already offended (or even harassed) her in class. Hence the note-taking at selected moments and the pointed questions that make more sense when you already know what's coming. And the shadowy "group" she mentions later in the play must have a hand in it. Some coaching and encouragement on the side. It can happen.
An interesting idea would be if Mamet (or somebody else) wrote a new sequel to Oleanna, set twenty years later, when we get to see the long-term consequences of Carol's actions. Perhaps the (former) professor is now a homeless, abandoned old fart with nothing left to live for, and the older, wiser and matured Carol is grappling with her conscience in the way some people who had false memory syndrome now struggle with the guilt over having sent innocent people to jail over molestation that never happened. Or maybe the professor learned an Important Life Lesson about demeaning women, Carol gained her self-assurance through her prosecution, and everything's all peachy now.
Whatever your interpretation, it's a play that stays with you.