Anxiety and Cell Phones
Ruhl’s Critique on People-Pleasing to Death.
Sarah Ruhl creatively tackles the two themes that seem to define this generation’s way of living. Anxiety and cell phones. Dead Man’s Cell Phone recounts the story you would assume. A woman, Jean, answers calls on a man’s cell phone who just died. Ruhl successfully constructs a dynamic between our fear of dying, our reliance on technology, and their association with anxiety. The audience ventures into an avant-garde satire created purely off Jean’s inability to disconnect from technology and admit the truth. Ruhl’s ability to generate modern language into an absurd world in this play devises a dimension only today's society can understand.
What exactly makes this play function? I would argue that Jean's character in her entirety institutes the base. It all begins when a man’s phone commences ringing, and ringing, and ringing, and ringing some more. Jean can not help but get up and tend to it. She has begun her journey. Jean has chosen that once she touches the phone, she can not stop until the man is well. After recognizing he will never be well because he has died, she finds it her new obligation to answer all and any incoming calls. The fear of handing back the phone produces dependence on this new piece of technology. This hunk of metal becomes the embodiment of the man himself. Ultimately she takes it upon herself to keep this embodiment alive.
Rather, instead of being honest with the callers that Gordon, the man, has recently passed, she takes it upon herself to close loose ends for him. Ruhl integrates the anxiety drawn from technology with this first inciting incident. The reason she succeeds comes from Jean’s distinctive personality trait of people-pleasing. Deep down, Jean struggles to be perpetually afraid of criticism and rejection but conceals it by pivoting the engagement to Gordon. To manage this anxiety, she would instead inform people of lies she assumes they want to hear to avoid conflict. She creates justifications for his poor choices, says yes to meeting with some of the callers despite knowing Gordon, and even works excessively to tie up loose ends for him by describing to people dishonest last words in his moments before death.
Ruhl creates this familiar trait to manage anxiety by people-pleasing and makes it unique through Jean’s language. Jean consented to meet with some of the callers in person. Of course, these become the juicy moments for the audience because they know something the other characters do not. In scene two, a former lover of Gordon sits across from her, under the impression that Jean is his new mistress. After being profiled, Ruhl’s voice comes bearing through the modern-day chit-chat. Jean suddenly slips into this avant-garde way of speaking.
“Gordon said that he had loved many women in his life...he said that other women seemed like clocks compared to you - other women just - measured time - broke the day up - but that you - you stopped time” (20).
At this moment, part of Jean desires validation from this woman that she feels can only come by lying. Tell her what she thinks she wants to hear. As we know, Gordon just happened to have died in a café; Jean happened to answer his phone. The other key players in his life determine Jean’s role. Jean plays along to whoever titles her: the mistress, the co-worker, the business partner.
As the play goes on, Ruhl does not just stop there. Jean's character interests me most because of her unending loyalty to Gordon's cell phone. The satire Ruhl constructs through the anxiety of the physical ringing. The idea is that if Jean does not answer for whatever reason, Gordon dies all over again. This play works so well because of Jean's modern language and subtle absurdity. The audience can empathize with Jean's decision to lie because most people have all told white lies. We justify Jean telling his mother he calls her the day he passes because we see in action that the mother receives closure from the simple thought. Ruhl takes people-pleasing and makes it unusual by elevating Jean's dialogue in these actions above the rest of the supporting characters.
Now, the reason this play succeeds depends upon its absurdity. In scene five, the audience finds Jean and Gordon both dead back at the café from the top of the play. By the time we reach this scene, we learn Gordon was no good man. He had many affairs, had sold organs on the black market, and had no real relationship with his family. Jean's anxiety compelled her to make Gordon seem profound and exemplary when he did not live that way. Now, they are both dead. In an attempt to return to Earth, Jean utilizes Gordon's cell phone. Of course, being in Hell, the phone does not work. She "bangs it on the ground until she destroys it"(58). Ruhl comments on society in this final scene and the ones that follow. After Gordon's phone stops ringing, he finally lays at rest. The same way society lives in technology and allows it to dictate our lives. When someone dies, and after some time, their profile deletes, their number switches to a new user, or in Jean's case, people stop calling.
Ruhl’s intention behind this play feels driven by our unwavering loyalty to technology and the anxiety caused by it. The absurdity in this play grounds itself in Jean’s elevated diction which feels compelling yet unsettling. She succeeds in creating an avant-garde satire by generating Jean’s wants through Gordon’s cell phone. However, Jean can only get what she wants when she tells the truth and accepts death’s inevitability. Ruhl’s final piece of crazy plays out when the mother throws herself into the fire. After Jean shares with his mother, she does so because Gordon is waiting for her to die. The added dramatics institute a satire today’s society would witness and say “same.” Worry of dying and technology remains our crutch; Dead Man’s Cell Phone just makes them easier to laugh through.
