When David Mamet's Oleanna opened in London in 1992 at London's Royal Court Theatre, the violence of audiences' response to the play made headlines. Couples almost came to blows in the foyer, women were close to tears as they argued indignantly over whether the accusation of sexual harassment levelled by college student Carol against her professor -- which undoes his successful tenure application, loses him his new house and ruins his career -- was really his fault, or merely malicious fantasizing on her part. Notoriously, when their onstage struggle degenerates into violence, and the cornered professor lashes out against his adversary, men in the audience cheered. The play seemed to capture something visceral about the struggle around political correctness in the classroom.
There were no cheers at the end of Lindsay Posner's new production of Oleanna at the Garrick Theatre in London this week. In fact, the night I was there, there was an audible intake of breath from near where I was sitting when John, the professor, raised a chair above his head as if to bring it down on Carol's cowering form.
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
Neither the production nor the quality of Julia Stiles and Aaron Eckhart's acting can account for this striking lowering of temperature in this year's audience's response. Mamet's representation of an insecure young woman out for revenge against a professor who humiliates her remains as powerful and as infuriatingly partisan as ever. Eckhart's John is disturbingly well-judged. Stiles' performance is luminous. In the opening act she captures perfectly Carol's vulnerable stillness as she sits tensely, legs awkwardly angled, while John argues interminably with his wife on the telephone. Her increasing assertiveness retains an anxious, edgy quality which makes her metamorphosis plausible, deftly counterpointing John's clumsy, blustering incredulity.
It would appear that what has changed in the 12 years since Mamet wrote this lastingly intriguing play is the attitude of the audience.
A group of young women told me at the end of the show that they thought the reason the play was no longer disturbing was that it had become dated. Perhaps in the 1990s sexual harassment had been a fraught issue. Today, universities have explicit sexual misconduct codes that protect students and faculty from one another. By implication, Carol and John's mutual misunderstanding could no longer arise.
When I spoke to Julia Stiles, herself a student at Columbia University, she concurred that the rules of engagement between students and faculty are now clearly set out. That clarity is apparent in the rule that when a student meets her teacher for a tutorial in his private office the door must always stand open.
And yet my own experience is that the play's central dilemma remains potent. Two years ago a bright young woman from an British inner-city state school with which I have an association gained a place to read English at a leading UK university. A week after the start of her first term she telephoned to say she had packed her bags and left.
At her first meeting with her personal tutor -- alone and with the office door firmly shut -- he had harangued her, aggressively and inappropriately, implying that she might not have gained her university place on merit. He had "talked dirty" and launched into a long, self-absorbed exposition of the sexual dynamic that would be bound to govern relations between himself and a good-looking female student like herself.
She left his office in a state of distress, lodged a formal complaint with the authorities and decided that university was not for her.
Horrified, I tried to raise the matter with the university. I was told the complaint was being investigated, but heard no more. Some months later I tried unsuccessfully to raise it again and discovered that the incident had not even been raised with the professor concerned. Instead, a note had been made on the file to avoid giving him "pretty young women" as tutorial students in future.
He is still in post, oblivious, as far as I know, of the disastrous effect his introductory encounter had on at least one student. I gather the incident was not considered "serious enough" to pursue: After all, the student concerned had gone. Yet its impact on one individual's life was cataclysmic and lasting.
Of course, times do change, and with them the nature of the recurrent difficulties in relations between the sexes in the university classroom. The Times Higher Educational Supplement last week carried an expose of the serious problem of harassment of female faculty members by male students in some universities: disruptive behavior in class, explicit sexual remarks passed inappropriately and stalking. What women academics find troubling is university administrations' apparent inability to take such charges seriously.
Their attitude, as characterized by several women who tried to complain about inappropriate behavior toward them, has been to diminish the incidents' importance, and to suggest that they ought to be able to show more understanding toward the student concerned.
Last February Naomi Wolf, notable feminist and author of The Beauty Myth, described in a magazine article an incident of inappropriate sexual behavior toward her while she was an undergraduate at Yale University, studying with the distinguished literary critic Harold Bloom.
The response in the press was as extreme and dramatic as that evidenced at those early performances of Oleanna. An extraordinary range of people expressed outrage against Wolf: How dare a woman who had "always traded on her seductive appearance" blame Bloom for putting his hand on her inner thigh? How disgraceful of her to raise the matter after 20 years, and when Bloom was ailing and old. Wolf was accused of showing "a lack of proportion and a basic sense of fair play."
Responses like these supported Wolf's view that the conditions still existed in the student-teacher relationship at Yale and elsewhere for such incidents to continue to occur. Her contention that the Yale administration was still "not accountable" when it came to complaints of this kind matches what I discovered when pursuing the incident described above.
"The goal [of the institution] seemed to be not to provide a balanced forum, but damage control," Wolf wrote.
Wolf described her harasser as "a vortex of power and intellectual charisma." Power and charisma are what gives John his unequal advantage over Carol in Oleanna, as she puts herself at his mercy -- physically and intellectually -- in a desperate attempt to understand why she is failing at college. That is why the gesture which he claims was "devoid of sexual content" is coercive to her, and therefore an act of harassment.
"It's not fair," Julia Stiles said to me after the show, explaining that Mamet's text deliberately made John's offending gesture obviously compassionate, rather than sexual in intent.
"So the audience know she tells lies," Stiles said.
But in the power game which is the classroom, gestures are less susceptible to simple interpretation than that. Today, the audience at the Garrick understands that.
They are no longer so quick to take sides.
Lisa Jardine is director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, Queen Mary, University of London.
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
The past few months have seen tremendous strides in India’s journey to develop a vibrant semiconductor and electronics ecosystem. The nation’s established prowess in information technology (IT) has earned it much-needed revenue and prestige across the globe. Now, through the convergence of engineering talent, supportive government policies, an expanding market and technologically adaptive entrepreneurship, India is striving to become part of global electronics and semiconductor supply chains. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision of “Make in India” and “Design in India” has been the guiding force behind the government’s incentive schemes that span skilling, design, fabrication, assembly, testing and packaging, and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry