Every Fear Hides a Wish: Unstable Masculinity in Mamet's Drama Author(S): Carla J
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Every Fear Hides a Wish: Unstable Masculinity in Mamet's Drama Author(s): Carla J. McDonough Source: Theatre Journal, Vol. 44, No. 2, American Scenes (May, 1992), pp. 195-205 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3208739 . Accessed: 03/06/2011 18:07 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Theatre Journal. http://www.jstor.org Every Fear Hides a Wish: Unstable Masculinity in Mamet's Drama Carla J. McDonough When the secretsof the age were clearto him he took it like a man, which is to say as one who has no choice. David Mamet,from "AllMen Are Whores:An Inquiry"' David Mamet's most recent collection of essays, SomeFreaks, offers insight into his ideas of masculinity which help to illuminate a reading of the gender issues of his plays. Whether describing the men who hang out at the hardware store in small- town Vermont rhapsodizing about poker, recounting his adventures at the fifth annual convention of Soldierof Fortunemagazine, speculating about what women want, or defending the pleasure of "spending time with the boys," this collection is often a defense of and a tribute to male activities in a time when such activities are under intense scrutiny. Mamet indicates in these essays that men are concerned with what women think of them, and are confused about what women expect of them. This confusion is expressed quite openly in his essay entitled "Women"which was written on a dare from his wife in response to her affirmation that he did not know much about the opposite sex.2 In this essay, Mamet attempts to advise young men how to relate to women now that feminism has made it clear that women "are people too" (22). He presents himself as a well-meaning, sympathetic guy who would like to figure out how to negotiate easily with women since "our society has fallen apart and nobodyknows what he or she should be doing" (23). The idea that society is falling apart is one shared by many of Mamet's male characters, and, like him, they seem to connect this apocalyptic view to women's changing positions in society. However, the essay also champions women as basically smarter, more focused and dependable than men, while men are described as "the puppydogs of the universe" who have "a lot to learn from women" if they can just figure out who these people are (22). In the later essay "In the Company of Men," Mamet again focuses on men and their activities as viewed in a feminist age. Written in a somewhat defensive tone, Carla McDonoughis completingher Ph.D. in English at the Universityof Tennessee.She is currently working on a study of masculinityin contemporaryAmerican drama. 1 David Mamet, GoldbergStreet: Short Plays and Monologues (New York: Grove, 1985), 186. 2 David Mamet, Some Freaks(New York: Viking, 1989), 21. Subsequent page references are to this edition. TheatreJournal 44 (1992) 195-205 ? 1992 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 196 / CarlaJ. McDonough Mamet celebrates the camaraderie of male activities which has "been given the unhappy tag 'male bonding'" (87). He emphasizes acceptance and understanding among men and sums up: For the true nature of the world, as between men and women, is sex, and any other relationship between us is either an elaboration, or an avoidance. And the true nature of the world, as between men, is, I think, community of effort directed towards the outside world, directed to subdue, to understand, or to wonder or to withstand together, the truth of the world. [90-91] This community between men Mamet defines as a "community" unique to men, something that women do not have together because "women do not, on the whole, get along with women" and when they are together they tend "to indulge in the . intrafemale activities of invidious comparison, secrecy, and stealth" (86). Both essays set up ideas of masculinity in contrast to or defiance of women. Women are the objects against which male identity positions itself. Men's confusion and skepticism about women, which often borders on the misogynistic in Mamet's plays, stems from the fear that in losing the definition of women on which patriarchal market society is based, men have lost themselves. Mamet's drama addresses the confusion felt by men such as himself who no longer know where they stand in a patriarchythat is under revision; it also reveals that this ideal male community which offers acceptance, fun, and a sense of belonging is not readily available to his male characters. Since the beginning of his playwriting career, David Mamet's work has demon- strated an overriding interest in male characters, their fears and desires, loyalties and rivalries. His emphasis on male issues is made clear by his favoring of male-cast plays and by the care he takes in creating vivid, masculine characters and putting them into traditionally masculine words, particularly the world of work. Although many of his men-at-work plays have been read as critique and exposure of the dirty side of business, of the failure of the American dream, and of the cutthroat nature of capitalism, all of these issues ultimately explore certain expectations about man- hood.3 More than anything else, characters such as Teach, Edmond, and Levene are concerned with their identities as men. They are driven by a sense of powerlessness for which they seek to overcompensate, and they labor under a need to establish their identities in the face of real or imagined challenges to their manhood. Although his plays show that this crisis of male identity is intricately linked with the position of women, they ultimately demonstrate that the identity crisis has less to do with women than with problems inherent in our society's expectations concerning mas- culinity. This essay explores the frustration with traditional masculine identity and 3These themes are pervasivein Mametcriticism. For a few examples see JackV. Barbera,"Ethical Perversityin America:Some Observationson David Mamet's AmericanBuffalo," Modern Drama 24 (1981):270-75; Matthew C. Roudane, "PublicIssues, Private Tensions: David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross," South CarolinaReview 19:1 (1986): 35-47; June Schlueter and Elizabeth Forsyth, "America as Junkshop: The Business Ethic in David Mamet's American Buffalo," Modern Drama 26 (1983): 492- 500; and Mamet's own comments in David Savran, In Their Own Words: ContemporaryAmerican Playwrights(New York:Theatre Communications Group, 1988),132-44, and in MatthewC. Roudane, "An Interview with David Mamet," Studies in American Drama, 1945-Present 1 (1986): 73-81. MASCULINITYIN MAMET'SDRAMA / 197 the search for a new identity which Mamet's male characters from Edmondand GlengarryGlen Ross to Speed-the-Plowoften undertake and usually fail to complete. Edmond,in particular, merits close study because it forcefully recounts the story of one man's quest for identity and of his failure to find it through traditional means. Edmondis, in fact, something of a fable of identity lost and found, in that it presents the story of an Everyman figure.4 Mamet's comments about Edmondoffered in an interview for the Profileof a Writerseries for British television5 set up a clear connection between the world of Edmondand the socio-economic state of American society, in which women have begun performing a variety of new roles-a change that seems to be bringing about something of an apocalypse, in Mamet's view, for both men and women. In this interview, Mamet bemoans how American society is "falling apart," and he discusses the problems that face women now that the security of marriageis no longer primary for them. Mamet states "that which would give Woman a place in the male mythology, which is as a partner in marriage" is disappearing. His vision of possibilities for women expressed here is, of course, extremely limited, and his concept of marriage has much in common with the usual position (that of subjugation) of women in patriarchal society, but his real concern is not for women in this situation but for men. Mamet explains that marriage for a man now means being "encumbered with a partner who is going to both increase your debts and witness your shame." Although this shame is never explained, Mamet describes how the continuity of relations between men and women has always been upheld "by the possession of woman" so that having women in the market place vying for equal positions in a "man's world" seems the reason that the old value system in this country is breaking down.