Gender and Genre: Essays on David Mamet

266 Pages·2001·1.456 MB·English

by  Christopher C. Hudgins, Leslie Kane (eds.)

Gender and Genre
Essays on David Mamet
Edited by
Christopher C. Hudgins
and Leslie Kane
GENDERANDGENRE
© Christopher C.Hudgins and Leslie Kane,2001.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001 978-0-312-23869-8
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in
any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published 2001 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-38656-7 ISBN 978-0-230-10920-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230109209
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gender and genre :essays on David Mamet / edited by Christopher C.
Hudgins and Leslie Kane.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-38656-7
1. Mamet,David—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Sex
(Psychology) in literature. 3. Sex role in literature. 4. Literary form.
I. Hudgins,Christopher C.,1947- II. Kane,Leslie,1945-
PS3563.A4345 Z77 2001
812’.54—dc21
00–051475
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Design by Letra Libre,Inc.
First edition:June,2001
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Mamet’s Three Children’s Plays:
Where the Wilder Things Are 15
Thomas P.Adler
Plowing the Buffalo,Fucking the Fruits:
(M)others in American Buffaloand Speed-the-Plow 27
Janet V.Haedicke
Disguise in Love:Gender and Desire
in House ofGamesand Speed-the-Plow 41
Steven Price
Prophecy and Parody in Edmond 61
Richard Brucher
Demotic Male Desire and Female Subjectivity
in David Mamet:The Split Space of the Women of Edmond 77
Imtiaz Habib
Oleanna,or,The Play of Pedagogy 95
Robert Skloot
A Few Good Men:Collusion and Violence in Oleanna 109
Kellie Bean
Women on the Verge,Unite! 125
Karen C.Blansfield
“It’s the way that you are with your children”:
The Matriarchal Figure in Mamet’s Late Work 143
Leslie Kane
iv
Reinscribing “the Fairy”:The Knife and the
Mystification of Male Mythology in The Cryptogram 175
Linda Dorff
Mamet’s Novelistic Voice 191
Ilkka Joki
“A small price to pay”:Superman,Metafamily,
and Hero in David Mamet’s Oedipal House ofGames 209
Christopher C.Hudgins
Man Without a Gun:
Mamet,Masculinity,and Mystification 235
Diane M.Borden
Contributors 255
Index 259
Acknowledgements
We extend our thanks to all of our contributors,a wonderful group
of scholars and friends who have worked diligently with us in
preparing this book. We are particularly grateful to them for their pa-
tience and for their generous and sensitive insights.
Joining a very broad community,we extend our sympathy to the fam-
ily and close friends of Linda Dorff,who died in the fall of 2000 as we
completed preparations for this collection.Linda was a delightful and tal-
ented colleague, generous with her students and her colleagues and her
fellow scholars of dramatic literature.We will miss her tremendously.
Finally, we thank our editor at Palgrave, Kristi Long, whose good
humor, wise suggestions, and general helpfulness we have delighted in
over the last several months. Our thanks as well to Sarah Schur, Ms.
Long’s efficient editorial assistant,and to Palgrave’s production staff.
For William J.Hudgins,Jr.
and Cathryn T.Hudgins
For Pamela and David
Introduction
In “Meritocracy”(1997),David Mamet writes that “advancement,sub-
sistence, friendship, regard, in the theatre, is priceless to me and has
been,after the love of my family,frankly,the guiding desire of my life:
to win and keep a place in our culturally despised profession through
merit” (126). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, few know-
ledgeable people would deny that Mamet has won his place as one of the
most respected, talented, and provocative of American dramatists
through merit, though they might argue vehemently about how audi-
ences should understand his plays,filmscripts and films,novels,poetry,
and essays,especially as that understanding relates to matters of gender
and matters of genre.
To put it differently, and more bluntly, critical and popular debate
about Mamet’s work often centers on whether or not he is a misogynist,
or,more broadly,on whether we should read his often misogynist,unlov-
able, and unloving characters as reflecting his own misogyny or should
recognize some Mametian irony in his depiction of these figures of his
fertile imagination.The notion of irony is intimately related to issues of
genre and to audience expectations.Those audience preconceptions and
those critical debates about gender and genre are often colored by
Mamet’s celebrity,his fame,and our consequent knowledge about his life,
his family, his marriages, his politics, his hobbies. The attention that
Mamet has drawn as one of the most important figures in the modern
American theater influences our reception of his plays and perhaps skews
his aesthetic reputation.
Mamet came to international attention with the premiere of American
Buffaloat the Goodman Theatre’s Stage Two in Chicago on October 23,
1975. That October night, as Richard Christiansen suggests in “The
Young Lion of Chicago Theater,”was one of the most “significant dates
in the history of...American...theater”(12).Twenty-five years later,
Mamet’s fulfillment of his early promise has made him successful not
only in playhouses around the world but also in movie theaters and in the
2 Christopher C.Hudgins and Leslie Kane
cutthroat world of literary fiction.But,as he has mused on several occa-
sions upon turning fifty, his life is much different now than when he
started as a struggling artist. As Mamet grows older, several new em-
phases are emerging in his work,including rich meditations on the place
of religion in our lives and on the complex relationships between moth-
ers and fathers and children,these more clearly rooted in Mamet’s own
life than has formerly been the case.In recent years,too,he has created a
roster of evocative portraits of complex women—although that strand
can certainly be traced back to Margaret Ford in House ofGames (1987)
and Karen in Speed-the-Plow (1988).And on occasion,of late,Mamet has
produced engaging period pieces, including his adaptation for film of
Terrence Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy, with its specific emphasis on an
emancipated “new woman,” and his deliciously wicked drawing-room
comedy,Boston Marriage(both 1999).
Another of Mamet’s reverberant triangle plays, Boston Marriage is a
comedy about two genteel lesbians: the aging Anna fears losing the
younger Claire to a still younger woman,which threatens to destroy their
“Boston marriage,”a euphemism for an intimate,long-term relationship
between two women.The earthiness and emotional exuberance of their
Irish maid,Catherine,is a delightful counterpoint,“a sort of Greek cho-
rus, interrupting their high-minded chatter with simple yet profound
truths” (Hartigan N7). Wonderful complications ensue. As Richard
Brucher writes in his review, “Anna’s unexpected response to adversity
travesties Boston proprieties, collapses class distinctions, and demon-
strates the practicality with which sophisticated women, no less than
men,will act to secure their interests”(1–2).Similarly,M.S.Mason in-
sightfully recognizes that “Claire’s and Anna’s barbarity to the maid and
to each other,their greedy appetites,and their shallow self concern would
be as alarming as Mamet’s macho madmen’s were it not for the gleaming
surface of upper-class propriety,the elegant language (and even more el-
egant carriage) of the actors,the humor,and the fact that no one seems
to feel the barbs too keenly” (20). Although this is “girls night out in
Mametville,” as Ben Brantley puts it (E1), there is little “psychological
distance between Mamet’s louts and lesbians” (Siegel D1), especially in
the ways Mamet’s women reply to fears about aging,the loss of love,and
the vicissitudes of life. Indeed, “the wit and thrill” of this comedy, or
satire,issues from Anna’s and Claire’s passions “that,however self-indul-
gent, rebel against gender restrictions, class roles, and proprieties”
(Brucher 1–2).
Still, Mamet has often written about the distinctions between men
and women and wishes to protect that vision as it emerges in his work.In
1999, for example, the QuintEssential Theater Company planned to
Introduction 3
stage seven short plays from Goldberg Street(1985) at New York’s Lime-
light Theatre under the title Mamet Bare.The playwright rescinded per-
mission for the performance when he learned that the company planned
to cast all the characters with women actors. At least one other similar
withdrawal of rights to stage a play,in this instance,Glengarry Glen Ross
(1983), garnered national publicity in recent years, and a production of
that play in Las Vegas,not typically a city that attracts national attention
for its theater,cast mostly female actors.In his review of the April 1995
production by Los Angeles’ Studebaker Studios at the University of
Nevada,Las Vegas,Chris Hudgins wrote that the production was horrif-
ically misguided, especially in its changes of lines in Mamet’s Pulitzer-
winning script to accommodate its casting of women. Critical of these
gender shifts, Mamet remarked of the Las Vegas production:“I am re-
minded of Stanislavski’s statement:Any director who does something ‘in-
teresting’with the script doesn’t understand the text”(letter to Hudgins).
Mamet’s decisions to withdraw permissions due to casting women in
roles conceived for men have been controversial in some circles,adding
to the perception that Mamet is a misogynist.The impetus for this col-
lection of essays was our conversation several years ago about possible
topics for a Special Session on Mamet for a Modern Language Associ-
ation Convention, the venue for the David Mamet Society’s annual
meeting.We were particularly interested in issues of gender and genre.
As Steven Price points out in his chapter in this volume,feminist criti-
cism didn’t begin to grapple with Mamet’s work to any great extent until
Margaret Ford and Karen emerged in House of Games and Speed-the-
Plow as central female figures on his previously largely masculine stage
and screen.A controversial 1993 MLA Special Session on Mamet and
Pinter,“Playing Misogyny:Pinter et al.Stage the Rage,”essentially con-
cluded, we think wrongly, that Mamet is a misogynist. Ironically,
Mamet’s plays, films, and novels began to include compelling portraits
of women as his popular reputation as a macho, poker-playing, cigar-
smoking gunslinger grew.
Mamet’s celebrity and his voluminous output have complicated, per-
haps even compromised,his critical and popular reputation.He has writ-
ten more “occasional essays,” often about topics ranging far beyond the
theater,than any modern dramatist to our knowledge.Many of those es-
says have added to his reputation for machismo. That Mamet briefly
worked for Ouiin his youth and,more recently,has written for Playboyand
been the subject of one of its extensive interviews further contributed to
the popular conception of his misogyny in some quarters.His essays often
reveal his affections and passionate hobbies to be those that our culture
typically regards as quintessentially male—hunting, collecting guns and