Anti-realism, Language, and the Dominant in Oleanna

David Mamet’s Oleanna (1992) is the most controversial play among his plays, including Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1971) and American Buffalo (1975), which both came as something like a shock. With Oleanna, the shock was completed; the play provoked many debates on political correctness and the sexual harassment. Many feminist critics attacked it for the seemingly misogynic theme supported by the play. After this first wave deflated, critics focused on other themes: power, language, and gender; now the play was interpreted as a clash between two sexes over power. One of the most Influential approaches has been McLeod’s suggestion that the narrow critical preoccupation with sexual harassment, political correctness and beleaguered masculinity in Oleanna had obscured what was in fact a far wider and more challenging dramatic engagement with issues of power, hierarchy and the control of language. This essay sees Oleanna from this viewpoint and tries to focus on the dramatic structure of the play itself, which is unique among the contemporary American plays. Structure of Oleanna, while seemingly related to American realism, reveals anti-realistic dimensions which is similar to Pinter’s work and the European dramatists. Mamet’s linguistic model in Oleanna through pauses, repetitions, and cuts is the instrument of retardation. In Oleanna, structure is in one sense Aristotelian, but Mamet through this language obscure Aristotelian model. Form and content, are inseparable: language is the subject of play; its uses and misuses. But language means dominance too. Also, gender becomes important during the play: Carol uses sexual politics to change her position in the hierarchy of power. Also I suggest that Oleanna, as Mamet said, is a tragedy on power. John and Carol’s battle is over more power; both of them are blind, and their recognition is when both fall; John beats his student and Carol ruins John’s wishes