More to Think About

As you begin your “Mamet” journey, think about the importance of the text. How do John and Carol transform throughout the various Acts? The text tends to dictate how power is shifted back-and-forth between the two characters. What I am interested in bring out in this production is the contrast of power and the meaning of higher education. It is a given that Sexual Harassment will be touched upon, but don’t be fooled—the play isn’t all about this subject.

This dialogue is from another blog, and helps to explain a bit more about power, relationships, and about higher education:
Although we would expect John's extensive education to make him a better reader, the most educated character falls into trouble early on in Oleanna when he stumbles over a definition of "term of art." But it is in his misreading of Carol, when she first appears in his office that really initiates John's downfall. Since one essential ingredient of effective teaching is the capacity to read students-especially through their written and oral comments-to see what they need in their academic pursuits, John's inability to understand Carol from the start and failure to interpret the signals she sends suggest that the only possible result of their exchange is confusion and misunderstanding. Likewise, since John repeatedly interrupts Carol in the middle of her sentences, he is trying to read a text without having completed it. He might as well read half of a novel and then endeavor to explain its meaning.

After Carol confesses she thinks of herself as stupid, John tries to alleviate her anxiety; but he ends up only exaggerating it by denying Carol's feelings and rhetorically extinguishing her identity: since "no one" thinks she is stupid, Carol, who sees herself as stupid, must not count in the small, contained world of the professor's office. Carol's response, "No? What am I, . . ." can thus be read two ways: if I am not stupid then what am I or if "no one" thinks I am stupid, where exactly do I fit in? Both meanings apply. Each character then tries to gain control of the text in question by asserting the primacy of the "I," with John trying to rewrite the text by re-identifying Carol as angry and not stupid. Carol then engages in her own reading-a reading far more credible than John's-of what has just happened: the professor thinks of her as insignificant. No other explanation suffices, especially since later in the scene John abandons Carol as she is about to reveal a secret she has told no one through her entire life, a quintessential Mametesque moment when characters "desperately wish to connect. They have simply forgotten how to do so.

One of the many ironies of Oleanna is that, unlike her professor, Carol is a careful reader who gets better at that vocation as the play progresses. Carol offers some astute readings, for example, of her professor. When John begins to wander off the point by talking about his tenure, his house and wife, and being "entitled to [his] job, Carol steers him back to the issue at hand by trying to ground the conversation once again in specifics: "I want to know about my grade". Likewise, her repeated questions highlight a number of glaring contradictions in John's own theories about education. She not only challenges his denunciations of higher education by asking, "if education is so bad, why do you do it?", but also exposes the inconsistencies in his earlier reading of her own situation: "you tell me I'm intelligent, and then you tell me I should not be here, what do you want with me?" Like most sensitive readers, Carol prefers clarity to language that obscures meaning. John, on the other hand, repeatedly employs an artificially-heightened vocabulary that draws attention to his academic status, favoring words like "obeisance" or "paradigm," instead of their simpler synonyms. When John explains that "paradigm" means model, Carol rightly asks, "then why can't you use that word?" Characteristically, although he gives in to her demand, John never answers her queries, once again missing an opportunity to teach and, more importantly, interrogate his own motivations. Instead of helping students learn, this vocabulary ends up reinforcing hierarchies, for it flaunts-instead of bridging-the distance between the authoritative teacher and less-experienced student. Not only does John misread texts, but his use of an intentionally heightened vocabulary creates other texts which invite like misreadings, hardly a ringing endorsement of higher education. As Carol notes, about another one of John's synonyms, Then say it. For Christ's sake. Who the hell do you think that you are? You want a post. You want unlimited power. To do and to say what you want. As it pleases you-Testing, Questioning, Flirting.... But I came to explain something to you. You Are Not God. You ask me why I came? I came here to instruct you.