An Incomplete Textual Analysis of “A Lonely Realization”

Theatrical Representation of Bystanders and Their Response to Sexual Violence in the Academic Institution: An Incomplete Textual Analysis of A Lonely Realization

by Rebecca O’Neil, director, A Lonely Realization

Tree

...We have to wait until the official bodies say what we want.

Because I want them to say that he raped you

Of course I want him to have raped you

But we have to prioritize his humanity until they do.

A Lonely Realization, p. 38.

The opening line of Nicole Bedera’s article published in the Journal of Higher Education (entitled I Can Protect His Future, but She Can’t Be Helped: Himpathy and Hysteria in Administrator Rationalizations of Institutional Betrayal) states “It is well-established fact that sexual assault survivors who report the violence they endured are retraumatized by the reporting process.” 

This is particularly noticeable in the institutional construct called a university. Universities deny that sexual assault is a problem on their campus, while at the same time their female students who are survivors of sexual assault are subtly and overtly discouraged by the individuals representing the institution from reporting through the established and federally required mechanisms defined by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Popular books like Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer, for example, outline the negative public reaction not only of students and employees at universities like Montana State but of townspeople when women accuse football players of sexual assault. The women are blamed. The university does as little as possible.

While officials running programs such as Title IX are nominally striving to create an environment where discrimination on the basis of sex is eliminated, the primary experience of students who have experienced sexual assault is one of uncertainty and fear created by the institution’s insistence on protecting everyone until all the evidence has been parsed out. Since the survivors are (statistically) mostly women and/or LGBTQIA+, mostly BIPOC, and mostly low-income, they are more likely than not to drop out of college to avoid their assailant, who is often still in the classroom with them; to avoid being re-traumatized.

In the context of A Lonely Realization, our survivor Legs is dealing with the insistence by the bureaucracy of her university and the individuals representing the university on a specious form of fairness. The character Tree (a university professor and the director of the plays Legs has written) tells Legs in no uncertain terms: 

I am interested in believing survivors.

Especially when they can prove what’s happened

Because I’m not interested in pointing the finger at people just because they’re accused.

A Lonely Realization, p. 38.

We exist in an interesting time in Seattle (and Portland and possibly the Cascadia portion of the Pacific NW), where we frequently make statements agreeing with Tree’s comment about believing survivors of sexual assault. However our society especially in Seattle just as frequently engages in protest or political combat with the criminal justice system about how people accused of many different types of crimes ought to be treated. The system is wrong, the system is evil, the system should treat the defendant with kid gloves. And this attitude does not disagree with our Constitutional rights where the accused is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. 

What this equates to, very often, in the experience of the victim of a crime is that their rights are in abeyance until “proven guilty” is pronounced. The experience of most survivors of sexual assault is in absolute opposition to the concept of “innocent until proven guilty.” They are treated as if they are guilty of having been assaulted. Their assailants are allowed to be in all the spaces which their victim would ordinarily be occupying: the same classes, the same dorms and dining halls, the same social spaces. 

This is exactly what happens to Legs: her friends talk about her in front of her face; her professor is oblivious to her upfront declaration that the assailant is dangerous; her assailant is even cast in the play that she wrote. She is told by the professor, a representative of the university-as-institution, that the plays she writes and the words she uses to try and explain what has happened to her, is what is actually dangerous. Legs, who has been traumatized to the point of losing her voice and the rest of her body, is identified as the problem, and she is consequently silenced and traumatized again.

With her friends, we see the response that often individuals have when people they know either commit a harmful act or are subjected to a harmful attack. Our natural reaction to seeing someone else in pain is to cringe or turn away; to deny it exists or to resist being a part of that harm. We, as individuals, often do that by demanding to know why we also have to suffer. Frog and Mushroom have an extremely difficult time understanding Legs’s frequent changes of narrative (in the form of her different play scripts) because they are experiencing a common form of bystander syndrome known as “what’s in it for me?”

Plays are a form of storytelling which emphasizes the experiences of individuals, so aside from the occasional presence of Tree, the institution is mostly in the background of this part of the story. The experience of our friends Frog and Mushroom, the actor’s-nightmare afflicted EveryHumans of our play, are pretty revealing and pretty funny: they are self-centered, mono focused on the number of lines they get in the play, fully willing to gossip and complain about their friend Legs, and equally willing to show off for the first-year college students in their theatre program. They giggle at the cute assailant in their midst. They don’t understand why the script keeps changing on them - why should they suffer because the playwright is trying to make a point?

Mr. Baum

He didn’t get fired because of what he did, he got fired because he got caught.

Be smart and you can get away with anything.

A Lonely Realization, p. 51

We get a better look at the institution and the way people operate within institutional structures in the other part of the metadramatic storyline followed by A Lonely Realization. Hopping out of the rehearsal room and into an idealized 1950s world, we meet Hattie (a June Cleaver-esque housewife) and her husband Mort (Edsel driving breadwinner, attorney, and university flunky). They have a rotting corpse on their table - SOMEONE must know what to do about it! What? They don’t want you to do anything about it? Oh well, cover it with a tablecloth!

The faith Mort and Hattie have in the system becomes more and more degraded as they seek help to remove the corpse (played by Legs-the-puppet). Hattie struggles to maintain her perfect positivity, but when Mort is sucked back into the institution by promises of promotion from his boss Mr. Baum, Hattie comes to realize that Mort will not only abuse the corpse but her as well to fulfill his dreams of rising in the patriarchal hierarchy. Even though Mort’s abuse is verbal, emotional abuse is a strong leading indicator of future physical and sexual violence. When they entertain Mr. Baum for dinner at their house, the conversation between Baum and Mort clearly shows Hattie that her husband is not to be trusted, as Mort laughs at Baum’s misogynistic comments and his jokes about philosophy being right and wrong, but law being what you can get away with. A revelation that Mort is having an affair is the final blow that sends Hattie out of June Cleaver Land. She visibly abandons her stereotyped gender roles and goes in search of a new life independent of the chains of the system she has always believed in.

References

Nicole Bedera (2023): I Can Protect His Future, but She Can’t Be Helped: Himpathy and Hysteria in Administrator Rationalizations of Institutional Betrayal, The Journal of Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/00221546.2023.2195771