Sex and its ism

I wrote the following as a response to a prompt in my theatre class for social change. I analyzed one of my go-to plays, Pizza Man:

Pizza Man

By Darlene Craviotto

Social issue: sexism

Summary and analysis:

The play Pizza Man begins with two women in their mid and late twenties, both struggling with failures in love, work, and life in general. These women, Alice and Julie, are home late one evening discussing the shortcomings in their lives, the inequalities put upon them as women, and they become enraged. Julie is a beautiful, but depressed alcoholic, and Alice is an overweight, dimwitted Jewish woman, who provides a little comic relief for what could otherwise be a very serious play. The women, feeling overwhelmed by their troubles, decide to take control of their lives, and they start by ordering a pizza with the intent to capture and rape the pizza man as a way to be in power. The pizza man, Eddie, is a married man in his late twenties, and he agrees to a drink with the women in hopes of hooking up with them; his intentions, however, are muddled by the women’s secret plot, and they tie him up and gag him. The women are not really sure how to go about raping him, and despite their efforts to oppressively seduce him, Eddie reveals that they would never be able to rape him because, as a man, he would always be willing. This infuriates the women even more, and they become more violent and start leaning toward killing him. Eddie becomes terrified, and struggles to maintain his tough guy exterior. Throughout the course of their warped evening, the three of them bond over their shared failures and disappointments. In the end, the women realize they’ve crossed the line, and they release Eddie, who then feels close to the women. They have all attained an understanding that surpasses gender identity. They are just three human beings struggling to gain control of their lives and be the people they wish to be.

I believe the playwright was successful in breaking down the gender barrier with regard to power, as she was able to volley power back and forth between the characters throughout the work. For instance, these two women started out feeling powerless in attaining the commitment of the men in their lives, or powerless to their bosses’ decisions, and so they decide to forcefully take power. Their actions attempt to take power from Eddie, a man, which he then backfired on them by claiming he could not be raped because he was a man. This type of power is aggressive in that it is unalterable. The women cannot change or negate this fact, so they attempt to overpower Eddie in a gender-blind manner, by threatening to murder him. This genuinely shows the women in a moment of power, however unreasonable. I think this was a great ploy on the part of the playwright because she used this plan of action to demonstrate the helplessness, the desperation women often face to gain equality amongst their male counterparts. By the end of the play, there appears to be no gender-centered power struggle; just a struggle for equal rights to live, which I believe was Craviotto’s intention.