I Am Reminded of the David Mamet Movie, "Oleanna"

[MineralMan]

My wife and I watch the CBS national news in the morning and evening as a way to see some straight news reporting.

Yesterday and today, the Cuomo story has been at the top of the news.

Probably few people reading this saw "Oleanna," a 1994 film from David Mamet, based on his play of the same name. It is definitely relevant to the Cuomo "scandal."

Different people have different opinions about that movie and of the current situation involving Cuomo. I leave it to each individual to interpret the situation for him or herself.

But, I am definitely put in mind of "Oleanna."

If you're bored some evening, you can find "Oleanna" on a number of streaming services, including VUDU and Amazon. It is sure to start a conversation if you watch it with someone else, so you'll have someone to discuss it with.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

1. Roger Ebert wrote:

"Experiencing David Mamet's play Oleanna on the stage was one of the most stimulating experiences I've had in a theater. In two acts, he succeeded in enraging all of the audience – the women with the first act, the men with the second. I recall loud arguments breaking out during the intermission and after the play, as the audience spilled out of an off-Broadway theater all worked up over its portrait of ... sexual harassment? Or was it self-righteous Political Correctness?

[SleeplessinSoCal]

2. and Act 3?

Act III
John has been denied tenure and suspended, with a possible dismissal, and is packing up his office. He has not been home to see his wife and family, staying at a hotel for two days trying to work out in his head what has happened. He has asked Carol to speak to him once more and she has obliged. Carol is even more forceful to name her instructor's flaws, finding it hypocritical that a college professor could question the very system that offers him employment and gives him an academic platform to expound his views. She also makes reference to "her group", on whose behalf she speaks and from whom she seems to be getting advice and support as she files her complaints.

In passing, John mentions that he has not been home recently. Carol reveals that if he had, he would have learned that her charges against him now amount to attempted rape. Carol offers to drop her charges if John would agree to her group's list of books to be removed from the university, which includes his own. John refuses, angrily telling her to leave his office as his phone rings again. It is his wife, whom he affectionately calls "baby". Carol tells him not to refer to his wife that way. This causes John to finally snap completely and he savagely beats her, screaming obscenities and holding a chair above her head as she cowers on the floor. As John calms down, realizing what he's just done, he quietly says, "Oh my God." The play ends with Carol saying, "Yes...that's right."

[frazzled]

3. A fictional account by a (macho) male playwright

is not a lesson for anything in the real world to be considered.

Furthermore, his 2011 book The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture dismayed his fans by trumpeting a personal shift to the right, with climate-change scepticism and attacks on feminism, progressives and liberal academia. ...

It is, however, possible to be sceptical about this shift. Mamet’s tough-guy aesthetic has always looked conservative – and provocations like Oleanna and Race (in which a top defence lawyer’s female African-American junior appears to leak information to the prosecutor in a racially charged rape case) were male-centred. His aggressive tendencies became weaponised in the war-on-terror era with his frankly absurd movies such as 2004’s Spartan, in which Val Kilmer’s special forces hombre interrogates a suspect in a back alley by threatening to cut out an eye, and Redbelt (2008), about Mamet’s infatuation with martial arts.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/nov/29/the-seven-rages-of-david-mamet-genius-or-symbol-of-toxic-masculinity

[MineralMan]

4. Please note that I did not offer my opinion about the film.

I just said that it was relevant to the Cuomo situation. That is definitely true. I also said that everyone has a different opinion about the film, and likely about the Cuomo story. Both are complicated.

[SergeStorms]

5. I've seen the movie.

It raised some questions, mostly about interpretation of one's feelings. Whether it pertains to Cuomo's situation is again, up to someone's interpretation.