Mamet, David

A noted American playwright, screenplay writer, and film director also credited under the name Richard Weisz (1947–), Mamet uses powerful language to a far greater extent than most of his contemporaries. His plays generally concentrate on male-centered situations in which swearing and foul language form an essential aspect in macho posturing and the establishment of dominance. Christopher Bigsby, in his perceptive study on Mamet in Modern American Drama (1992), comments that “the past does not inform the present except as the origin of a now degraded language or as the source of a set of decayed and disregarded values” (1992, 200).

Glengarry Glen Ross (1983), which won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, was inspired by Mamet’s own experience in a Chicago real estate agency where, as he confesses, “I sold worthless land in Arizona to elderly people” (in Bigsby 1992, 214). The play contains many exchanges like the following, in which a newcomer to the sales force is introduced to the office argot:

Williamson: … my job is to marshall the leads.

Levine: Marshall the leads … marshall the leads? What the fuck, what bus did you get off, we’re here to fucking sell. Fuck marshalling the leads. What the fuck talk is that? Where did you learn that? In school …? (Scene i, ll, 95-100)

Curiously, Bigsby gives only a passing reference to the foul language: “Shelley Levine’s speeches are sprinkled with italicized or capitalized words and with obscenities” (1992, 216).

American Buffalo (1976), set in a junk store in Chicago, concerns the inept scheme of some minor crooks to rob a man who has purchased a buffalo-headed nickel. The dialogue of the all-male cast is laden with profanity. Mamet has commented, however: “I don’t think it’s a naturalistic play at all … The language is very stylized … the fact that it has a lot of four-letter words might make it difficult to see that it’s written in free verse” (quoted in Bigsby 1992, 209). Yet the Introduction to the printed text of the film, starring Dustin Hoffman, recalls the problems Hoffman had in recalling the rhythm while checking his work at the video replay station: “Wait, stop the tape a second. I had this. Christine, is it ‘Fuck you. Pause. Fuck. Pause. Fuck you’? or ‘Fuck you. Fuck. Pause. Fuck …’? Aaagh fuck me , what’s the line?” (1996, x).

Oleanna (1992) dealing with an accusation of rape against a member of a university faculty by a student, created the most furious controversy although the language was comparatively mild. There were three provocative factors: the accuser is a manipulative female student who is persuaded to make the charge by some feminist supporters, the victim is male, and the audience knows the accusation to be false. The play enraged feminists and scandalized audiences, responses that clearly suggested Mamet had touched a nerve or breached some taboo. In an article (“Why Can’t I Show a Woman telling Lies?” in The Guardian , April 8, 2004), Mamet claimed sexist prejudice against himself as a male, saying, “The sex of an author is nobody’s business.”

Christopher Bigsby has written eloquently of the debased language of Mamet’s plays: “a language evacuated of meaning and principles, distorted and deformed by greed and suspicion” (1992, 211). Thus in American Buffalo , Teach defines free enterprise crassly as “The freedom … of the individual … To Embark on any Fucking course that he thinks fit … in order to secure his honest chance to make a profit” (1978, 35). In Edmond (1982) set in a prison cell, the aftermath of a homosexual rape contains this exchange, an ironic distorted homage to Hamlet V ii 10: Edmond: “There is a destiny that shapes our ends …” Prisoner: “Uh huh.” Edmond: “Rough-hew it how we may.” Prisoner: “How’er we motherfucking may” (p. 100).