Context. Now There is a word used often in college and not often enough after. If the context really was the savage confirmation hearings to which Justice Thomas was subjected, this movie/play is useful. If the context is the entire post modern hash we are making of our art and even of our lives, this movie/play is essential to our survival. The two characters are archetypes/avatars and that is perfectly fine. Each is a bit exaggerated and perhaps the student is too easy to despise and the professor too easy to like. As our postmodern students would say, "whatever." The point (at least as I see it) is the destruction from which absolutely nothing good will come. The professor is utterly destroyed and any enlightening epiphany will come too late and too privately to balance out the murder of his life (Kafka, anyone?) and the student is is, ironically, empowered in her ignorance and will now be forever locked in a moment of victory that closes off any possibility of her ever learning to be compassionate. Others may cheer when the professor explodes. I saw it as his death. Every hope he had died and the blood that ran from his arm was in fact his life blood and he saw it. This is a tragedy and it is our tragedy, whether or not we are teachers, students, bosses, underlings, whatever our relationships to each other, the world of Carol and John threatens us all with the loss of personal liberty until we reject it and it doesn't seem that many have the courage within our society to look at our PC truths and declare them to be errors in judgment. The barbarians outside of our society do not suffer from our PC-driven misery but also don't have our old hard won liberty. A very disturbing and illuminating look at our brave new world and our fellow creatures and, of course, ourselves.
