Did He Or Didn't He? The Theatrics of Harassment: Mamet's Oleanna at BFT by Jerry Brown Black & White Magazine, April, 1995 You say you're confused about what's what in the mid-nineties, all turned around about the do's and don't's of interpersonal relationships, what you can say to whom, how often and where, and, in fact, how to say or do anything to anybody and not end up with your wrists slapped, a gag order or an extended respite in the slammer? You say you don't quite understand this thing called harassment, how a glance at a coworker is grounds for dismissal, or how a compliment, given with the greatest sincerity, can suddenly turn into a criminal action? Or, perhaps more to the point, how Lenora Babbit can take such an achetypically acute whack at the sexual plexis and get away with it, or how a sports star can---allegedly, of course---blow off on crystal meth, brutally murder his ex-wife and her friend and expect us to honor his indignation at being tried? You say you just don't get it? Join the crowd. We have now been in the nineties long enough to know what our particular madness is. It's victimization, of course, but what seems to be getting worse is the astonishing degree of self-aggrandizing that's coming along with it. As the generation that created the concept of a 'personal space,' we should have anticipated its antithesis, the criminalization of interfering with it on any and all, including the verbal level, but we didn't, and what we have opened, in the current parlance, is a window for lifetimes of buried anger and resentment at having to bend at the knee to the powers that be. Not that any of this is new, of course. History is full of people raging around with personal vendettas and pitchforks, pulling down equestrian statues and other emblems of the status quo. In fact, most of history has been made by people like that, but what is new about this latest incarnation of anger is its politicization into the hybrid of political correctness. Dress it however you will, and whatever good the underlying thrust of it brings into an open society, it still hangs on the same smug and destructive line of moral superiority. Aryans are better than Jews. Muslims are superior to Infidels. The poor are more deserving than the rich, and whites are more evolved than blacks. Except that now, of course, everyone is more evolved than white, Anglo-Saxon males. Who, it would seem, are to blame for everything. The scary point is, of course, that somebody else, rarely nameless or faceless or even architypical, is to blame for virtually everything these days. Turn on any talk show at any time of day and you hear it. "Because I have suffered, because my people have suffered, because my gender has suffered, because my particular socio-economic niche has suffered, I have the right---no, the obligation---to make you suffer to pay for it." And they do. Guns fire. Knives flail. People fall in the street. Babies, barely past their first breaths, are suddenly stilled. Or drown with their siblings in a back seat. And all we ever hear is the justification for it. The appalling self-righteousness. The astonishing irresponsibility. Pick up any newspaper or magazine and within the first few pages, it becomes abundantly clear that the great, earnest race for equality and justice has turned in on itself, trivialized itself into sound bytes. Cynicism, violence and cash are the replacements. So, why, in the face of all this, would anyone in their right mind ever extend themselves, or make an openly friendly or---god forbid---helpful gesture to anybody else? Well, because now and then, with your butt out on the line and a hell of a lot of effort invested in keeping it there, you can, on occasion, actually get through to somebody and make a small dent in the abyss. I can only speak as a writer, actor and teacher, but I know it's possible to conjure up a thought, a notion about who we are as human beings and why we're here, and make it felt. It's not easy, by any means, but it's doable. A little effort and you can help gather up millions of shards and scraps of isolated feelings and longings and toss them into a great, warm, human stew. Reaching out, showing compassion, expressing yourself honestly and with meaning, even at the risk of perceived abuse, these are the things that enrich not just an artist's or teacher's life, but everyone's. But after experiencing Oleanna, playwright David Mamet's terrifying paean to the misunderstanding of an open gesture, I wonder. And I worry. Once you get beyond the usual Mamet gavotte of imperceptibility, here's the thrust. You are a college professor, up for tenure. A student comes to you for help. She's falling behind and says she doesn't understand what is required of her. You have some urgencies of your own at the moment---like losing a house you've made an offer on, along with your deposit---but you put them aside. You try to talk the student through her problem. You even tell her that you have shared in the same problem. You say that maybe, in fact, it isn't the student's problem at all, that maybe, just maybe, it's a problem with the educational system itself. You tell the student you will help her in any way you can. She can even come back anytime she likes for a private meeting, a rare privilege for an undergraduate. She seems shaken. You put your hand on her shoulder and tell her not to worry, everything will be all right. She can stay in school. She's not going to fail. Thinking you've put her fears to rest, you rush off to meet your real estate agent. The next thing you know, you're hauled before the tenure board for sexual harassment. In the student's mind, you have not helped her at all. Quite the contrary. You have used your position to take advantage of her weakness and abused her with it. You have demeaned her with your patriarchal posturing. She sees herself as the victim of an attempted rape. She and her 'group' petition to have your books removed from the university library. She even demands that you stop calling your wife "baby" on the telephone. The tenure board, to your astonishment, finds for the plaintiff. You are discharged. Your wife and family start to believe if the charges are true. You did spend time with this young woman when you should have been taking care of the house. Which, of course, you lose, along with virtually everything else that is important to you. But you are not the victim. You are the criminal in a whole new landscape. Loud as you try to speak in your defense, you garner sympathy from no one. No one wants to hear from you. You are what's wrong with western civilization, the rot at the core of elitism, the reason we exist is such a sorry state of moral corruption. The question here, of course, is who is the one being abused? Mamet has taken sexism and political correctness head on with this one and written a play that is endemic of our society. It's not what we do anymore that counts, it's how we do it in the eyes of the people we're doing it to. It's the 20th century's victory of manner and presentation over content and meaning. It's not what you say that will hang you anymore, but how you inflect the second syllable of the third word in the fourth line. It is how you are perceived that will destroy you. In other words, your life, your thoughts, your motivations and goals and reasons for being are now determined not by you, but by the interpretation of others. You, frankly, no longer matter. Nor, in today's system, does the concept of meaning, which drives even further into the core. Forget it as a tool for insight. Now it is a weapon. No longer the possession of the speaker, meaning is in the sole possession of the listener. Perception is all. The speaker is merely the conduit. Person A says and means one thing. Person B hears and interprets another. Person A might as well not even be present. Person B is calling all the shots. Perception is reality. That is, of course, the formula for every marital squabble that has ever taken place -- A: "Would you like some cottage cheese?" B: "Are you calling me fat!" -- and now, suddenly, it seems to have taken over everything. The real question that should be troubling us, of course, once we get the volume down, is why we let B keep winning? Or, having cracked the mystery of transactional analysis and having created all the enterprises to support it, why aren't we putting it to better use? It's interesting that the source of most of this pointed misunderstanding -- and Mamet's play---is the reality-free world of academia, the foaming petri dish where deconstructivism was cultivated. This theory holds -- where it holds -- that the author's meaning, let's say, Homer's or Melville's, or even Danielle Steele's, for t hat matter, is unimportant. It is merely redolent of the evil influence of male dominated classical elitism. It is only the reader's experience that truly counts, and whatever the reader gets out of the text -- no longer referred to as poetry or literature, thank you very much -- is all that matters. If the reader says that the passage means X, then it damn well means X. Screw the scholars and full steam ahead. Mamet hits it square on the head with this one, and in the real irony of this story, die-hard Mamet fans say this play is not real Mamet at all, but an "uncharacteristic side trip into social drama." I wonder how Mr. Mamet feels about that. Not, of course, that it matters. Oleanna, written by David Mamet, directed by Robyn Allers, with Roger Casey and Erin Underwood, opens April 27 at Birmingham Festival Theatre. ‹back to top›‹close window›