Blog #5

Travis Tyler #5

I started reading Marc Silverstein's commentary on Oleanna and found it to be something that I easily agreed with. He states that "Mamet's sense that theatre stages the contents of America's collective unconscious and through that staging, translates those contents into consciousness suggests" The main interaction between male and female in Oleanna seems on the surface to be a normal conversation that is following the established cultural norms. WHat Silverstein does a good job at pointing out is that the collective consciousness of Americans can overlook the oppressive overtones of a man to a woman just because we view it as the normal. Even when I was watching it I had just viewed it as a teacher talking to his student when in reality it should have been viewed as the way a man talked down to a woman. At first I saw nothing wrong but as I watched more I realized that he almost talked to her as if she had no understanding of what he was saying. 

Silverstein also points out that "John defines the ability to engage in and reach agreement through such interpersonal speech acts as "the gist of education" (56)". This to me is a great way to look at eductation because that's exactly how I feel. You cannot cram knowledge into someone and then expect them to be able to recite it back to you. Learning occurs when the exchange of words leads to extrapolated ideas in ones own mind.

The story can also be viewed from a Marxist point of view being that John is the bushwahzee and Carol is the working class or the poor class. she came to him to try to get ahead, which can be viewed as a progression of wealth that John, the bushwahzee, is standing in the way of. As Carol tries to reason with him, John has his own ideas and a certain need to retain the standing and material wealth that he has. this wealth is taken from him by Carol, the working/ poor class. This story can almost be viewed from the perspective of Robin Hood, where the poor, Carol, take from the rich, John, and give back to the poor, which in this case would encompass the rest of Carol's "group" which she seems to be associated with.