Oleanna
I wanted to extend the conversation about Oleanna from class today. I have one question that has been plaguing me: what is Mamet saying? The whole thing is so ambiguous. I get the feeling that he wants the reader (or viewer) to contemplate John's hypocrisy and elitism and eventually feel that Carol was justified in finding a way to exert power over him. I get that feeling, and yet I don't buy it. Why does he make Carol so abrasive and dislikeable if he wants us to sympathize with her? Why doesn't he make John's actions more clearly harassment? Why include the allegation of rape which I feel totally ruins Carol's credibility? Does anyone have any idea what he's trying to say or why he chose to be so ambiguous about it? I understand subtle writing, but I think this goes beyond that.
posted by Sara at
7:35 PM
1 Comments:
I don't think that Mamet wanted us to sympathize either way with a certain character because both characters had flaws. I think that overall his writing was about the idea of sexual harrassment. I agree that Carol had little credibility but I think Mamet's point may have been that that didn't matter - that simply allegations of sexual harrassment could affect someone's life in very tangible ways. It is interesting when I think about it though that he showed the effects completely one-sided - in the entire play we only know about John's outside life and we only see how the allegations affected his life, never Carol's. It seems interesting that Mamet would leave out the effect that the allegations had on Carol's life - anybody think of any reason why he might do this?
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