Oleanna

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Abraham W Jul 31, 2018 Cinematically, what appears on screen is stilted, confused, and lackluster, a visually indolent experience in a single monotonous setting filled with contrived dialogue expressed colorlessly and unconvincingly. That's unfortunate, too, because the text of the drama itself is extremely provocative, intellectually stimulating, frustrating in its ambiguity and angry in its urgency. It's as little wonder that the play caused such an uproar when it premiered as it is that this film adaptation-ripe for a remake in the current political climate-came and went without stirring the same level of controversy. If the film is any indication whatsoever, the original play must really have been an event to see, something that roused extreme emotions, vastly opposed opinions, and addressed an increasingly important and relevant and necessary topic. It's truly a shame that whatever dialogues and debates the play spurred at the time had ultimately so little material impact-but then again, part of that problem lies with the ambivalence of the text, which takes no side, presents two opposed positions in the extreme, taken to points of absurdity, making its two characters into straw(o)men to heighten the stakes and idealize their differences. In a sense, these are mythical characters, utterly inhuman and unreal, like figures from a Jacobean morality play or classical parable, which works to isolate and emphasize the underlying differend that puts them at such violent odds. Hence the tagline of the movie: "Whatever side you take, you're wrong"-the movie doesn't necessarily seek to answer the problem so much as it hopes to stoke a much needed debate. Both of these characters are reactionary and invested in maintaining, to different degrees and different ends, the institutional structures that Mamet no doubt hopes to ultimately criticize: On the one hand, the professor seeks the power of tenure; on the other hand, the student seeks the protection of the institution-neither really seeks to dismantle or deconstruct (in the Derridean sense) the networks of pedagogical power, but instead to mold the educational structure to their own ends, to replicate or reverse (without upending) preexisting power dynamics. The point that Mamet seems then to be making-to quote another part of the tagline from the film: "Teacher and student or man and woman, how do you draw the line?"-is a call not for understanding or reconciliation, but for reimagining power dynamics beyond the traditional good and evil, right and wrong, powerful and prey dichotomies of power. In the impossible extremity of their positions-the paradigmatically chauvinist pedant versus the stereotypically misandric feminist-it is precisely the vehemence of their polarity, the vastness of their divergence, the false and mythical purity of their dichotomy that illustrates why such binaries are absurd and function finally to strengthen institutional power rather than upset it. In their (often righteous and sometimes merited) anger, the dogmatist and radical don't just reify the standard binary line that undergirds basic power structures, but ultimately (and I think what matters most) cross moral lines themselves, turning vengefully violent and repressive. It is these latter lines that I think matter the most, such that the point is not to draw dividing lines but to not cross them, to not assert power or reproduce its dynamics. See more

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Oleanna

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