Masculinity in the Movies of David Mamet

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.