Abstract
No American playwright-scenarist-director has been so consistently obsessed with the meaning of masculinity than David Mamet. No writer of his stature has attempted with such tenacity to tie the gender-specific eruption of predatory aggressiveness to the commonplace operations of American business. In a series of works that began with American Buffalo, House of Games and Speed-the-Plow and reached a certain culmination with Oleanna, Mamet has addressed with exceptional savagery how contemporary men have negotiated the economic and social minefield that the relentless pursuit of profit and the egalitarian demands of women have registered. The films that he wrote and directed explore these phenomena by also recording the vernacular at its most corrosive pitch.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Further Reading
Bigsby, Christopher, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Bigsby, Christopher, ed. The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Holmberg, Arthur. David Mamet and American Macho. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Holmberg, Arthur. David Mamet and Male Friendship: Buddy Plays and Buddy Films. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Lahr, John. Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles. New York: Overlook, 2000.
Mamet, David. American Buffalo. New York: Grove Press, 1976.
Mamet, David. Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business. New York: Pantheon, 2007.
Mamet, David. Glengarry Glen Ross. New York: Grove Press, 1983.
Mamet, David. Make-Believe Town: Essays and Remembrances. Boston: Little, Brown, 1996.
Mamet, David. Oleanna. London: Metheun, 1993.
Mamet, David. Speed-the-Plow. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1987.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman, ed. Gerald Weales. New York: Viking, 1967.
Wilkinson, Rupert. American Tough: The Tough-Guy Tradition and American Character. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Whitfield, S.J. Masculinity in the Movies of David Mamet. Soc 57, 569–575 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-020-00536-w
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-020-00536-w