Professors label Joyce Carol Oates play 'racist'

Last Thursday's performance of "Here She Is," a set of nine one-act plays by Joyce Carol Oates provoked many passionate, conflicting reactions from the audience. The performance was followed by a panel discussion by four female University professors and the play's director, Carol Rocamora. It was designed to encourage further thought and deliberation about the controversial production. "The play is racist, sexist and elitist," Assistant Professor of Communications Roberta Pearson said. "Were it not written by Oates I'm not sure it would have been produced." Pearson said she felt the play was "extremely problematic" because it was "formal, abstract and removed." "It failed to deal with issues of women of color or gender oppression," she said. Another panelist, Assistant English Professor Ines Salazar, reacted similarly. Her criticism was centered on her conviction that Oates was attempting universalize womanhood, an "impossible" feat, in her view. "There's something about the representations [of women] that wants to be universal but really can't be," she said. "You have to be white to be able to identify with these oppressed women," Pearson said. "It really excludes a lot of people. It's profoundly offensive that the play assumes that the audience has to be white." Salazar agreed, adding that she, personally, felt excluded. Co-director of Women's Studies Demie Kurz had more positive comments about the play. However, she agreed that "the play's treatment of race is not very satisfactory," noting that "Oates moves so quickly from the surface to emotion." "Oates had a real pulse on the anger in society and the power relation between men and women," she said. The final panelist, Anthropology Professor Peggy Sanday, said the play was "very profound." She claimed she "saw the very real, down-home representations [of women] stereotypical of the narrowness of the female role in [her] generation." "I realized that that's what I'm escaping from -- that's why I'm a professor," she added. "I can get away from all of that." Both Salazar and Pearson addressed the violent actions to which the women in the play repeatedly resorted. "The problem is the isolation of the women," Pearson said. "The only recourse they had in their miserable lives was through violence." Sanday concluded that because the play was written "from the heart," it has significance for Oates and possibly other women.