Postmodernism and Violence in Mamet's Oleanna

Abstract

Among the many surprises in David Mamet's controversial play Oleanna, the most shocking is perhaps the professor's violent attack on his student. This sudden eruption is certainly climactic; the problems it raises, however, seem to leave the audience to "draw its own conclusions," to take sides with either the professor or the student. Either option turns the play into melodrama, with the professor as hero/victim and the student as villain or the student as feminist heroine and the professor as villain/oppressor. Critical opinion is divided, with a majority of critics and reviewers, even those with feminist credentials, seeing the student as "bitch/witch," representative of a radical and punitive feminist ideology run rampant. Following Mamet's lead, other critics have suggested that sexual harassment is a vehicle for a broader issue: that Oleanna is a play about "power," or a "tutorial" play with a genre affinity to Ibsen's social-problem dramas. Most recently, Thomas Goggans attempts to exculpate the Carol persona by pointing to textual suggestions of child abuse in her past. Then, in passing, he attaches blame for her actions to manipulation by her feminist support "Group." This effort to redeem her effectively nominates this shadowy collective as the "real" villain. A final option, suggested by John Simon, is to finger the playwright — according to him, the play is simply a jumble, seriously flawed in concept and/or execution.