Olela-la la

What Am I Talking About? – a monologue response to Oleanna

The scene takes place at the tree described by C. Nelson and S. Watt’s in Academic Keywords: A Devil’s Dictionary for Higher Education (1999) where “the roots and branches are severed, cut off from each other and torn out of the ground. The webs are broken, the connections lost. The liquids that once flowed peacefully from branch to branch now drip on the ground and decompose.” Scattered upon the debris of the dead tree are the words for Ditmar Meidell’s “Oleana” – the sardonic Norwegian emigrant song. The words are magnified on poster-size strips in fonts large enough for the audience to see (a copy of the song is attached):

Enter Bryan: He’s a 35 year old, aging man who has spent his life running, dieting and fighting the genetics inherited from his mother and father. He has the weight genes from his mom and a manic brain like his dad. The strabismus he’s cursed with doesn’t come from either parent, though. It is the result of once making fun of Ms. Clapsaddle, a photography teacher in 8th grade, for her wandering eye. Now he has one, too. Bryan’s in graduate school, again, pursuing answers to the questions he’s been asking since he was born. The actor looks at the tree, its parts, and pulls several lines, sheets of strung lyrics, from the debris and reads them out loud. He surveys the stage and takes the bag from his shoulder and places it on the ground near the tree stump where he sits. Out of his bag he pulls a pad and a few pens. He begins to draw the scene while talking to himself:

The Sky is Falling! The sky is falling! (He says smarmy and sarcastic – very much perceived in the stereotypical academic pose) Call me Chicken Little! The sky is Falling!
(He looks out and notices the audience who should be watching him, “Pay attention to me! Pay attention to me!” he thinks, and then begins to speak).

I just watched David Mamet’s Oleanna for the first time. Pretty dramatic, eh? Intense. Very intense – a verbal ping pong table, in fact, that seems perplexed by its patriarchal paranoia. Hey, that’s alliteration (he cracks himself up). The peculiar purple pie man of porcupine peak! Strawberry Shortcake. That’s alliteration, too.

The movie is from 1994, an adaptation of the 1992 play performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The movie premiered in my last year as an undergraduate where I was learning, for the first time, about post-modernism, a response to modernism, and how much of the world’s reality is socio-culturally created. Leslie Heywood, a feminist body builder and college track star, taught me T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with lessons on the body, Foucault, Simone Di Beauvoir and a concept of anorexic logic. She was teaching us about the backlash of changing demographics and the white man’s reaction to such alternative discourses -- The horror! The horror! The white man’s burden.
After being mentored by her, I moved to Louisville, Kentucky and volunteered for the Humana Plays at Actors Theater. There, I saw a play called Middle Class White Men where several overweight, middle-aged, Euro-centered fellows were asked by God, a woman, to strip naked and expose their true nature to a live audience. This birthday suit bonanza occurred at a garbage dump very much like this one, except the apocalypse was the trash of mankind and not a metaphorical tree: Armageddon? Chicken Little’s fallen sky? The Wasteland? The horror? The horror? Does every civilization bear the seeds of its own destruction like Aristotle says?

I feel lucky to be enrolled again, in 2007, where the assumptions about who is being schooled aren’t readily available. No one can predict what the millennial generation has read or knows – Hirsch didn’t succeed with weaving a canonized fabric across the nation, although he tried. I like the multiple discourse approach and the arguments modern day Universities have to contend with, and I prefer to be in a place that asks questions, rather than dictates mantras of absolute truth. Carol, in Mamet’s movie and script, demands to be educated, yet becomes the very creature she despises once she receives education. My father taught me to be careful of what I hate, because in the process of hating something, you usually become it. I wouldn’t want to end up like Carol, nor her professor. I’ll ask questions, thank you, but will try to abstain from being an expert at anything.

And I have to admit, Mamet’s dramatic script, as a movie, navigated agitation upon my spine in new ways. I commented that the lack of Hollywood dazzle allowed me to concentrate on the dialogue. It was heavy. I was disturbed. I grew frustrated by the positions and roles the characters played, replayed and counter-played. More importantly, I began over-intellectualizing what David Mamet was trying to say… speculating at how Oleanna, the script, would be received by traditionalists, feminists, post-colonialists, postmodernists, queer specialists, philosophers, politicians, Dis/abiliticians, late capitalists, pan-African specialists, and Foucault worshipers.

What would Kal Alston and Mark Stern want me to get out of this viewing experience?

“To make me mad is your job.” (Bryan stands up and robotically repeats himself) To make me mad is their job.

It’s maddening, and thinking about it too much has made crazy. I’ve gone crazy.

But is the sky falling? (He picks up more lines from “Oleanna” and reads them to the audience).

I don’t think so. Instead, I think the sky grows more broad and beautiful everyday. There’s so much more room for interpretation of its clouds, colors, stars, moons, optical illusions and the possibilities of what actually exists out there. In 2007, although knowledge comes at great costs to the capitalizing of ideologies, it seems more education is being made available to more people than ever before, and with this, new views of what is “real” and “not real” are being understood. I look forward to learning the global skies of tomorrow as new horizons give way to the voices yet to be heard. I hope to hear them one day.

(Bryan goes back to the tree stump and draws in his journal, again. He looks around at the stage and sketches some more)

But the professor’s rage? Barbaric. Uncivilized. Out of control.

And what does “cunt” actually mean, anyways? Why would Mamet choose to end the story with that word at the same time he pans his camera to a couple of male undergrads tossing a football in front of the institution from which knowledge is taught? Was he trying to hang himself with that choice? What was he thinking? And how have the departmentalized, traditionalized, and highly specialized disciplines found meaning and publications out of criticizing such a terrible choice? And which of us will be right in the end? Is it wrong to ask such questions? Am I privileged and would you like me to undress, too? I’m far from middle class.

(a musician walks on stage and begins to play his guitar. Bryan focuses on his journal once more. He is oblivious of the musician who begins to play the Norwegian ballad. Three young children enter the stage. They are from three different races, and one of the children is in a wheel chair. They enter singing and begin sifting through the fallen tree, trying to put the pieces back together. A man in a suit enters. He sings, too. He has duct tape to help the children. A woman, in beautiful African robes, enters. She’s singing as well. She’s there to help the process of rebuilding the tree. Two more women, holding hands, arrive. They smile at the half-built semblance of a tree. They join the others. Bryan closes his journal and places it in his bag. He walks off the stage wondering if hope is a mirage. The lights go out. He can be heard saying the following:) “Seriously, am I wrong to ask such questions? “I love/to believe/in hope.” (Kennelly, 1995) To believe in hope, I love. In hope, I love to believe.


(Lights out).

References:

Kennelly, B (1995). Poetry my arse. Bloodaxe Books. Great Britain.

Mamet, D. (1994). Olenna. Bay Kinescope, 1994.

Meidell, D. (1852). “Oleana.” Translated by Blegen, T.C.;
http://www.stolaf.edu/naha/pubs/nas/volume14/vol14_5.htm

Nelson. C. & Watt, S. (1999). Academic Keywords; A devil’s dictionary to higher
education. Routledge Publishing. New York.



The Ballad of Oleana: A Verse Translation
By Theodore C. Blegen

OLEANA
I'm off to Oleana, I'm turning from my doorway,
No chains for me, I'll say good-by to slavery in Norway.
Ole---Ole---Ole---oh! Oleana!
Ole---Ole---Ole---oh! Oleana!
II
They give you land for nothing in jolly Oleana,
And grain comes leaping from the ground in floods of golden manna.
III
The grain it does the threshing, it pours into the sack, Sir,
You make a quart of whisky from each one without expense, Sir
IV
The crops they are gigantic, potatoes are immense, Sir,
You make a quart of whisky from each one without expense, Sir.
V
And ale as strong and sweet as the best you've ever tasted,
It's running in the foamy creek, where most of it is wasted.
VI
The salmon they are playing, and leaping in the brook, Sir,
They hop into your kettle, put the cover on, and cook, Sir.
VII
And little roasted piggies, with manners quite demure, Sir,
They ask you, Will you have some ham? And then you say, Why, sure, Sir.
VIII
The cows are most obliging, their milk they put in pails, Sir,
They make your cheese and butter with a skill that never fails, Sir.
IX
The bull he is the master, his calves he likes to boss, Sir,
He beats them when they loaf about, he's never at a loss, Sir.
X
The calves are very helpful, themselves they skin and kill, Sir,
They turn into a tasty roast before you drink your fill, Sir.
XI
The hens lay eggs colossal, so big and round and fine, Sir,
The roosters act like eight-day clocks, they always tell the time, Sir.
XII
And cakes come raining down, Sir, with chocolate frosting {1} coated,
They're nice and rich and sweet, good Lord, you eat them till you're bloated.
XIII
And all night long the sun shines, it always keeps a-glowing,
It gives you eyes just like a cat's, to see where you are going.

XIV
The moon is also beaming, it's always full, I vow, Sir,
A bottle for a telescope, I'm looking at it now, Sir.
XV
Two dollars for carousing they give each day, and more, Sir,
For if you're good and lazy, they will even give you four, Sir.
XVI
Support your wife and kids? Why, the county pays for that, Sir,
you'd slap officials down and out if they should leave you flat, Sir.
XVII
And if you've any bastards, you're freed of their support, Sir,
As you can guess since I am spinning verses for your sport, Sir.
XVIII
You walk about in velvet, with silver buttons bright, Sir,
You puff away at meerschaum pipes, your women pack them right, Sir.
XIX
The dear old ladies struggle, and sweat for us, and labor,
and if they're cross, they spank themselves, they do it as a favor.
XX
And so we play the fiddle, and all of us are glad, Sir,
We dance a merry polka, boys, and that is not so bad, Sir.
XXI
I'm off to Oleana, to lead a life of pleasure,
A beggar here, a count out there, with riches in full measure.
XXII
I'm coming, Oleana, I've left my native doorway,
I've made my choice, I've said good-by to slavery in Norway.
Ole---Ole---Ole---oh! Oleana!
Ole---Ole---Ole---oh! Oleana!