{"id":12753,"date":"2019-09-14T12:26:38","date_gmt":"2019-09-14T16:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=12753"},"modified":"2019-09-14T12:26:38","modified_gmt":"2019-09-14T16:26:38","slug":"just-because-youre-paranoid-i-watch-doubt-at-studio-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2019\/09\/just-because-youre-paranoid-i-watch-doubt-at-studio-theatre.html","title":{"rendered":"Just Because You’re Paranoid: I watch “Doubt” at Studio Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

One of the central points of Gavin de Becker\u2019s terrific book The Gift of Fear<\/em> is how often we (especially we women) talk ourselves out of listening to our fears. Something seems off<\/em>\u2013about this person, this relationship, this joke, this dark alley\u2013and yet we tell ourselves not to be so suspicious, not to be hysterical, it\u2019s only a joke, surely I\u2019m imagining things. And de Becker points out that our instinctive sense of something wrong in a situation, something not quite true, exists to protect us and is right more often than we\u2019d like. We carefully train ourselves to walk unprotected through a world which, as Stephen King put it, is full of teeth.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t seen Doubt<\/em>, the movie, though I knew the basic premise: An old-school religious sister who runs a Catholic school in the early \u201960s begins to suspect that the hip new priest is molesting a student. The play, by John Patrick Shanley (at Studio through October 6<\/a>), opens with a homily\/monologue on the experience of doubt, delivered by Fr. Suspect, which suggests that the play will be a meditation on the pain but also the protective nature of doubt. Perhaps doubt is a source of human solidarity, our common lot; perhaps, a riskier proposition, it protects us from fanaticism. In the end I didn\u2019t think the play had so much to say about doubt, nor is it quite the \u201960s Catholic culture-clash it appears to be.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sharp and painful portrayal not so much of doubt as of responsibility<\/em> (my old nemesis!), its demands and temptations. It\u2019s also very intensely and recognizably about the sex-abuse crisis in the Church. (I note that my assessment of where the play offers insight and where it doesn\u2019t is nearly the opposite of what David Muse\u2019s note in the playbill says Shanley\u2019s own intentions were!)<\/p>\n

From the second scene I was surprised by how much angular insight Shanley gave to the old sister, Sr. Aloysius Beauvier (Sarah Marshall). She works her lips like a cow chewing the cud of her experience and then spits out these perfect shivs of wisdom: \u201cInnocence is laziness.\u201d \u201cIf you are looking for reassurance, you can be fooled.\u201d Her foil is the flighty young Sr. James (Amelia Pedlow), a sincere pre-Raphaelite beauty who seems constantly on the verge of fainting, the embodiment of \u201cisn\u2019t it pretty to think so.\u201d Sr. Aloysius has the mind of Miss Marple, always awake to the possibility of folly or sin; she\u2019s especially alert against deception, including self-deception. She is in fact suspicious. She is also aware of how easily an unsuspicious woman can talk herself out of protecting those entrusted to her, because it\u2019s easiest to just assume everything\u2019s all right.<\/p>\n

Fr. Brendan Flynn (Christian Conn), our doubtful priest, is above all a man<\/em>: comfortable with power. He plumps right down in Sr. Aloysius\u2019s chair when she calls him into her office. In one scene he uses his height to try to dominate her. He is not particularly laid-back, my friend. I get that one critique of \u201cspirit of Vatican II\u201d-type antiauthoritarianism argues that rejection of traditional authority is always imposed by fiat and with even more dictatorial vigor than the old ways ever imagined (and I\u2019m very sympathetic to this line of thinking, nobody\u2019s as self-willed as an antiauthoritarian in power) but I\u2019m not sure what Fr. Flynn even says, other than the doubt stuff<\/em>, that would make him a \u201cspirit of Vatican II\u201d priest. Is that enough? He has no social concerns, he has no liturgical opinions, he proposes no changes, he does not feel like he even intends to be a breath of fresh air sweeping into the claustrophobic Church.<\/p>\n

Sr. Aloysius is the best and worst of the old ways. She\u2019s the strict, loving general who doesn\u2019t expect her kids to open up to her because \u201cThey\u2019re children! They can talk to each other,\u201d who through iron discipline creates a haven in a heartless world; but also the grouch who grumps about the pagan witchery of \u201cFrosty the Snowman,\u201d and the martinet who insists so firmly on discipline and humility above all that she nearly crushes a teacher\u2019s love of her work. She\u2019s got a touch of Frost in May<\/em><\/a>, you know. But Fr. Flynn doesn\u2019t particularly represent the new ways at all, let alone both the best and worst aspects of them.<\/p>\n

The play intends you to remain uncertain about whether Fr. Flynn actually did what he\u2019s accused of. I was not that<\/em> uncertain tbh. To me it is a harder play than mere uncertainty would allow: It played out like a story about what it\u2019s like to know something terrible is happening, something which it is your responsibility to prevent, yet find no way to stop it. She lacks evidence\u2013that\u2019s true\u2013but her real temptation imo is not fanatical certainty. Sr. Aloysius goes far past the boundaries of her obedience\u2013and past the last buoy of Catholic faith, I think\u2013and what tempts her is her responsibility. She begins to believe she has a right to do anything in the service of that responsibility. That is her idolatry.<\/p>\n

A few caveats and miscellaneous notes: One situation where the \u201cgift of fear\u201d may predictably mislead us is when we confront someone we\u2019ve been trained to view with hypersuspicion. White women clutching their purses at black men on the street are listening to their fear, you know? And this role in Doubt<\/em> is played by Fr. Flynn\u2019s effeminate long fingernails. Are they signaling something? And is it the awful signal Sr. Aloysius imagines? Or is it just that she\u2019s been trained to view any man who doesn\u2019t conform to very<\/em> strict gender roles as a predator? OTOH when homosexuality is explicitly discussed in the play it\u2019s in a context which, frankly, fits the pattern of a lot of sexual predation. \u2026Also Sr. Aloysius\u2019s final collapse and confession is cheesy, sorry. Some of her dialogue gets a bit cartoony toward the end, and that last line in particular should\u2019ve been cut\u2013the play is more powerful if she cries but says nothing. \u2026And last\u2013Sr. Aloysius tries to find an alternative source of authority and power, against the unlistening men of the hierarchy, but gives up quickly. What cleansing has happened in the Church\u2013a process barely begun\u2013has happened in large part because Catholics overcame their reluctance to turn to secular powers. They turned to the press, the state AG\u2019s office, etc, in order to expose evil and thereby protect the Church, Christ\u2019s flock. In 1964 perhaps that path wouldn\u2019t really be imaginable to a Sr. Aloysius, which fuels her desperation.<\/p>\n

Photo of an unrelated Catholic school via Wikipedia.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the central points of Gavin de Becker\u2019s terrific book The Gift of Fear is how often we (especially we women) talk ourselves out of listening to our fears. Something seems off\u2013about this person, this relationship, this joke, this dark alley\u2013and yet we tell ourselves not to be so suspicious, not to be hysterical, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":12756,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7],"tags":[171,35,470,113],"class_list":["post-12753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-mackerel-snapping","tag-abuse-of-power-comes-as-no-surprise","tag-district-of-chaos","tag-order-is-chaos","tag-woman-is-the-irony-of-the-community"],"yoast_head":"\nJust Because You're Paranoid: I watch "Doubt" at Studio Theatre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of the central points of Gavin de Becker's terrific book The Gift of Fear is how often we (especially we women) talk ourselves out of listening to our\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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