Brass Balls:

Masculine Communication
and the Discourse of Capitalism
in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross
ANDREA GREENBAUM
Department of English
University of South Florida

David Mamet has referred to his Pulitzer Prize-winning play,

Glengarry Glen Ross, as a “gang comedy about men, work, and
unbridled competition.” This essay explores this imbrication of
masculinity and the discourse of capitalism, which is often
structured around the mythos of individualism and cutthroat
competition. Additionally, this article addresses the means by
which Mamet’s characters, who are constituted by the
demands of capitalism, use language as a source for domina-
tion and manipulation.

Key Words: David Mamet, masculinity, language, capitalism,

competition, individualism, Glengarry Glen Ross

T each: You know what free enterprise is?

Don: No what?
Teach: The freedom …
Don: … Yeah?
Teach: Of the Individual …
Don: … Yeah
Teach: To Embark on Any Fucking Course that he sees
fit. (Mamet, 1982, pp. 72-73)

In the 1992 film version of Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet creates a new char-
acter for his screenplay adaptation of his 1989 play; an expensively dressed, Rolex-

Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Andrea Greenbaum, Department of English,
University of South Florida, 4202 East Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620-5550 or greenbau@chuma.
cas.usf.edu.

The Journal of Men’s Studies, Volume 8, Number 1, Fall 1999, pp. 33-43.
© 1999 by the Men’s Studies Press. All rights reserved.

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ANDREA GREENBAUM

wearing executive (played by Alec Baldwin) stops by the real estate office as a
henchman for the unseen, but often referred-to bosses, Murray and Mitch. The
unnamed executive informs the men about the contest Murray and Mitch have
devised: The top salesman will win a Cadillac; second prize is a set of steak knives;
“third prize is you’re fired” (Tokofsky, 1993). Baldwin, his character described as a
“human steak knife” (Corliss, 1992, p. 84), then removes from his expensive brief-
case a pair of oversized, dangling brass balls and holds them suggestively in front of
his crotch. His message is clear: to be a successful salesman, you must have the
“balls” to be ruthless, cunning, competitive, and aggressive. Anything less, the char-
acter taunts, and you “can’t play in a man’s game” (Tokofsky, 1993).
In that singular visual moment in the film, Mamet instantly conjoins masculinity
with capitalism,1 and Mamet himself has described Glengarry as a “gang comedy
about men, work, and unbridled competition” (Kane, 1992, p. 256). The addition of
the Baldwin character to the screenplay further implicates this fusion between mas-
culinity and capitalism, and is made manifest in the film by Mamet’s refusal to allow
the executive to possess a novel identity, a name. When the salesmen ask the execu-
tive his name, he vituperatively responds, “Fuck you, that’s my name” (Tokofsky,
1993). The absence of his name does not, as one would assume, indicate invisibility,
but the contrary—ubiquity. Mamet uses the executive as a metonymic figure, a stock
character, whose “balls” are the true measure, the sole indicator, of his economic
success—the paradigmatic American male success-object. The correlative between
the composition of American masculinity, which is often structured around the
mythos of individualism (“Hurray for me, and the hell with you,” Roudane, 1986a,
p. 74), is also the miasma of the American Dream myth. Mamet contends that:

The national culture is founded very much on the idea to strive and
succeed. Instead of rising with the masses one should rise from the
masses. Your extremity is my opportunity. That’s what forms the
basis of our economic life, and this is what forms the rest of our
lives. That American myth. The idea of something out of nothing.
(Roudane, 1986b, p. 36)

The plot of Glengarry revolves around that American Dream myth: unseen capitalist
bosses pit four real estate salesmen against each other. At stake is their jobs, and
since these men define themselves according to their place on the sales “board,”
what transpires is a desperate struggle for these men to retain not simply their sales
positions, but their sense of masculine identity.
This essay will explore Mamet’s absorption with the American Dream myth in
Glengarry, and his “fascination with the male tribe” (Friedman, 1985, p. 40). And
while Glengarry Glen Ross has been the subject of much analysis, to date there has
been scant critical examination of the purely masculine elements that permeate the
play. With the exception of Hersh Zeifman’s (1992) article, “Phallus in Wonderland:
Machismo and Business in David Mamet’s American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen
Ross,” which itself only presents a cursory view of masculinity as it relates to busi-
ness, and Carla J. McDonough’s (1992) “Every Fear Hides a Wish: Unstable Mas-
culinity in Mamet’s Drama,” there has been no direct extensive criticism addressing

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the overt parallel between masculinity and capitalism, and the means by which
Mamet’s characters, who are constituted by the demands of capitalism, use language
as a source for domination and manipulation.

MASCULINITY AND THE DISCOURSE OF CAPITALISM

By using the term “masculinity” in relationship to Mamet’s play (and film), I am

employing two broad theoretical approaches to this subject: (1) trait perspectives and
(2) normative perspectives. Trait perspectives are those that are exemplified by the
“male sex role identity model” (Pleck, 1981) and theorize the consequences of males
acquiring culturally defined personality traits and behaviors. Normative perspectives
view masculinity as an ideologically-based characteristic. Thompson, Pleck, & Fer-
rera (1992) illustrate both perspectives by arguing that “a ‘traditional’ male, in trait
terms, actually has culturally defined masculine characteristics. By contrast, the ‘tra-
ditional’ male view in the normative conception is one who endorses the ideology
that men should have these characteristics (and women should not)” (p. 575). It is
admittedly erroneous to discuss masculinity through a unitary, homogeneous defini-
tion, and while there are numerous sociological testing instruments that measure
“masculinity” (see Thompson et al., 1992), I will be employing the term liberally,
using both the trait and normative perspectives to refer to certain behavior character-
istics which Mamet, in particular, sees as oppositional to culturally defined norms of
“feminine” behavior.

“ALWAYS BE CLOSING”: MASCULINITY AND WORK

In Western, capitalistic, industrialized countries, it should not surprise us to note that

definitions of masculinity are tied to definitions of work. Such a corollary is not lim-
ited to physical strength or mechanical ability, but is also tied into terms of ambition
and competitiveness; the qualities needed to be a successful worker are bound to
those of the successful man (Brittan, 1989). This is certainly true of the salesmen in
Glengarry, who unquestionably define themselves by capitalism and competition.
The world of business, therefore, is intrinsically connected to masculinity. In fact,
much of the language in Glengarry uses the logical, masculine vocabulary of the busi-
ness world. Zeifman (1992) comments on the phrase, “Always be closing,” the mantra
of Mamet’s salesmen, and the quote that appears in the book’s epigraph. He writes:

“Always be closing” might also stand as Mamet’s credo in Glen-

garry. For Mamet has once again “closed” this play about Ameri-
can business to women, excluding the “feminine” and its reputed
values from the sphere of dramatic action; once again there is no
place for such values in a world ruled by machismo. (p. 132)

Zeifman’s argument is illustrated when Roma tries to convince Lingk, Roma’s mark,
that Lingk’s decision to renege on their real estate deal is unwise. Roma (the
youngest, and currently the most successful salesman of the group) uses the language
of the boardroom to persuade him to go against his wife’s wishes. He tells Lingk,

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ANDREA GREENBAUM

“You have a contract with your wife. You have certain things you do jointly, you
have a bond there . . . and there are other things. Those things are yours. You needn’t
feel ashamed, you needn’t feel that you’re being untrue . . .” (p. 93). Marriage is
reduced to a “contract,” a business transaction—like purchasing real estate; the world
outside of this male universe ceases to exist, and when its values do intrude, as in the
case of Lingk’s unseen wife, it is viewed with suspicion and disdain.
The exclusion of women from Glengarry implies that what is frequently associ-
ated as “feminine” values—compassion, nurturance, empathy—are threatening to
the men’s business ethos. Zeifman contends that “Mamet makes use of this explo-
ration of the gendered perspective for specific thematic ends: a dramatic world in
which women are marginalized to the point of literal exclusion provides in itself the
most scathing indictment imaginable of the venality and corruption of American
business” (p. 124). The exclusion of women reinforces the notion of duality that per-
meates the play—culturally defined traits of masculine versus feminine behavior and
values. Roma laments to Levine:

I swear it’s not a world of men, Machine … it’s a world of clock-

watchers, bureaucrats, officeholders … what it is, it’s a fucked up
world … there’s no adventure to it. Dying breed. Yes it is. We are
the members of a dying breed. (p. 105)

Similarly, since work is bound to masculinity, by failing to perform, or “close” a

deal, questioning a character’s masculinity is fair game. Levene (the oldest sales-
man) tells Williamson, the office manager charged with the task of dispensing the
leads, “A man’s his job and you’re fucked at yours…. You can’t run an office….
You don’t have the balls” (p. 75). Further, in this world of gender dichotomies, to
not be masculine (sans “balls”) is to be feminine (a failure in the business world),
and a “feminine” man is undoubtedly homosexual. In “Man Among Men: David
Mamet’s Homosocial Order,” David Radavich (1991) explores Mamet’s references
to homosexuality, in particular the “fear of violation by other men, insistent desire
for male friendship, and pursuit of domination and acceptance operating at the core
of dramatic conflict” (p. 46). The most powerful invectives in the play are those that
“feminize” men and suggest homosexuality. At the end of the play Roma violently
explodes at Williamson, berating him in the most insulting way he can—by ques-
tioning his masculinity:

Roma: You stupid fucking cunt. You, Williamson … I’m talking to

you, shithead … you just cost me six thousand dollars … You stu-
pid fucking cunt. You idiot. Whoever told you could work with
men?… You fairy. You company man …you never open your
mouth till you know what the shot is. You fucking child…. (p. 96)

Contrary to the masculine world of work, Williamson is a “cunt,” a “fairy,” and is

incapable of working “with men.” As a representative, an extension of Murray and
Mitch, Williamson’s position of authority (and masculinity) is bestowed upon him
by the capitalist bosses, and therefore, Williamson has no need to respond since he is

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inoculated from the competitive milieu of the salesmen.

Because Mamet’s characters are not just men, but salesmen, they are constituted
by American capitalism. While there are similarities between Henry Miller’s Death
of a Salesman and Glengarry, the most apparent analogue is the contention that both
Willy Loman and the salesmen in Glengarry are consumed by the desire for eco-
nomic success. But success in this capitalistic framework comes at a steep price—
the obliteration of compassion, loyalty, and trustworthiness. The discourse of capi-
talism is transformed into what Jonathan Cullick (1994) has called the “discourse of
competition,” a linguistic environment created by the need to gain capital, which is
characteristically “adversarial, the language of manipulation, deception, and self-
interest” (p. 23). Such agonism is made manifest through the characters’ use of lan-
guage and their ability to manipulate others.

THE LANGUAGE OF MEN

TALK VERSUS ACTION

While Willy Loman carried carpet bags, presumably filled with his wares,2 Mamet’s
characters have only their serpentine narratives to sell—promised dreams of a life in
sunny Florida and the assurance of a profitable retirement. Because the play is about
salesmen, Worster (1994) has noted that “a particular way of using language (the
ability or inability to ‘sell’) is central to the characters’ identities and relationships to
each other” (p. 375). Worster also comments that no other Mamet play is so consis-
tently about talk. The characters frequently question each other, and the words “say,”
“said,” “tell,” “told,” “talking,” and “speaking” appear over two-hundred times in
the play (p. 376). Characters perpetually need reassurance from each other about
what was “said,” an attempt, perhaps, to decipher the message of the sender, because
the characters know that the language of the salesmen, their discourse, is notoriously
unreliable. In no better way is this point illustrated than with the linguistic acrobatics
that Moss (one of the clearly dominant salesman in the play) inflicts on Aaronow in
an attempt to persuade him to steal the leads from the office so that they can be sold
to Jerry Graff—Murray and Mitch’s prime competitor.

Aaronow: You haven’t talked to him [Jerry Graff].

Moss: No. What do you mean: Have I talked to him about
this?
Aaronow: Yes. I mean are you actually talking about this, or
are we just…
Moss: No, we’re just…
Aaronow: We’re just “talking” about it.
Moss: We’re just speaking about it. As an idea. (p. 39)

By engaging in conversation, by just “talking,” Moss has managed, through his lin-
guistic manipulations, to implicate Aaronow as an accomplice simply because, as
Moss tells Aaronow, “you listened” (p. 46). Listening implies complicity. Further-
more, manipulative conversational patterns are indicative of the way the male char-

37
ANDREA GREENBAUM

acters communicate. Toby Zinman (1992) refers to this rhetorical questioning as a

variation on aporia, the trope of doubt, “the real or pretended inability to know what
the subject under discussion is” (p. 209). Aaronow needs reassurance from Moss that
there is a distinction between action and “talk” since Aaronow knows that “talk”
among the salesmen is not to be trusted. Speaking, utterance, is not about communi-
cating, but “claiming power to withhold it from others” (Worster, p. 384). Again
aporia is demonstrated when Levene berates Williamson:

Levene: You talk to Murray...

Williamson: I have. And my job is to marshal the leads.
Levene: Fuck marshaling the leads …What the fuck talk is
that? In school? That’s “talk,” my friend, that’s
“talk.” Our job is to sell. I’m the man to sell. (p. 19)

Levene makes the distinction between “talk”—something one learns, “in

school,” presumably in a genteel, effeminate environment—and the ostensibly mas-
culine world of action, work—“I’m the man to sell”; Levene’s masculinity is inextri-
cably joined to his ability to create capital. Women, on the other hand, are viewed as
“talkers,” those who not only do not have the capacity to take action, but instead
thwart the actions of hardworking men. This notion of action versus talk is again
illustrated through Moss’s desire to go into business on his own—the fulfillment of
the American Dream.

Moss: The difference between me and Jerry Graff. Going

to business for yourself. The hard part is … you
know what it is?
Aaronow: What?
Moss: Just the act.
Aaronow: What act?
Moss: To say “I’m going on my own.” Cause what you
do, George, let me tell you what you do: you find
yourself in thrall to someone else. And we enslave
ourselves to please … to win some fucking toaster….
(p. 35)

For Moss, to be in “thrall” and “enslaved” is the equivalent of being emasculated. A

real man, by Moss’s definition, is an entrepreneur, a man of action, and apparently
Mamet holds this perspective as well. In Some Freaks, Mamet’s essay collection, he
writes, in “In the Company of Men” (1989), that,

In the Company of Men, this adage seems to operate: You will be

greeted on the basis of your actions [italics, mine]: no one will
inquire into your sincerity, your history, or your views, if you do
not choose to share them. We, the men, are here engaged in this
specific activity, and your willingness to participate in the effort of
the group will admit you. (p. 89)

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“Action” within the parameters of this play means the ability to manipulate, violate,
and dominate co-workers—all in an attempt to outmaneuver the malevolent forces
that seek to deprive these men of the one thing they believe they are most entitled to:
capital.

“PRICK-TEASING”: THE AMERICAN DREAM

In the world of Glengarry, women stand in direct opposition to the fulfillment of the
American Dream—the ability to make something out of nothing. Female obstruction
to this goal is made evident in this play through Lingk’s wife, the only female pres-
ence in the drama.3 It is Lingk’s wife who compels Lingk to renege on the contract
he signed with Roma, but when Lingk goes to the office to tell Roma that the deal is
off, Roma reassuringly tells Lingk that it’s only natural that she would be concerned
about the considerable investment and that his wife is showing “prudence” (p. 83).
Roma then adds with obvious derision, “it’s something women have” (p. 83)—like a
menstrual cycle; Guido Almansi (1986) makes a rather insightful comment when he
suggests that women in Mamet’s plays symbolize America, “the Great American
Dream, only to prove a prick-teaser who fucks up every single thing and every single
man” (p. 193). Women, if they contaminate the male work world at all, are always
seen in direct opposition to masculinity,4 and therefore agonistic to the production of
capital. In Some Freaks (1989), Mamet notes that “Men get together to do business
… men also get together to bitch. We say, ‘What does she want?’… [And the final
way in which men get together is for] That Fun Which Dare Not Speak Its Name,
and which has been given the unhappy tag ‘male bonding’” (p. 87).
James Lingk is so in need of “male bonding” that even after he learns that his
check was cashed and that Roma lied to him, he apologizes for his own inadequacies
as a man. Lingk tells Roma, “Oh Christ. I know I’ve let you down. I’m sorry. For …
Forgive … for … I don’t know anymore. Forgive me” (p. 95). Lingk, like all “marks”
in the play, is viewed by the salesmen with disgust; he is a “cocksucker,” a “fucker,”
homosexual, feminine, and therefore unworthy of respect.
Another way in which Mamet’s salesmen cement “male bonding” is by using a
linguistic pattern that has, until recently, been distinctly male—military discourse. As
Levene recounts to Roma his conquest of the Nyborgs, the elderly couple whom he
sold land to, an angry Moss retorts, “Hey, I don’t want to hear your fucking war sto-
ries” (p. 67). Later in the play, Roma tells Moss, “What is this your farewell speech
… your farewell to the troops?” (p. 71). By the play’s end, when Williamson inadver-
tently blows Roma’s deal with Lingk, Levene berates him for not being part of the
unit, in essence for not being a good soldier.

Levene: Your partner depends on you. Your partner … a man

who’s your “partner” depends on you … you have to go
with him and for him … or you’re shit. you’re shit, you
can’t exist alone…. (p. 98)

The comment is strangely ironic, since the ruthless competitiveness of sales

requires, nurtures cut-throat individualism, and therefore to be a success means the

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ANDREA GREENBAUM

subordination of interpersonal relationships; in this realm all that matters is “closing

the deal.” In “The Inexpressive Male: Tragedy or Sexual Politics?” Jack Sattel
(1989) notes that the mobility of working-class men requires “an inauthentic rela-
tionship with one’s male peers” (p. 126). It should not surprise us then that with the
exception of Aaronow (who is constructed as female), all of the salesmen in the play
are liars; Moss lies to Aaronow about the amount of money he’s getting from Jerry
Graff, originally telling Aaronow that they were going to split five thousand. After
Moss accidentally reveals that his take is five thousand, and Aaronow questions him,
Moss remarks casually, “I lied. My end’s my business” (p. 46); Williamson lies to
Roma when he tells him that the contracts went out and were not stolen; and Roma
lies to Lingk about his check not being cashed. The intrinsic duplicity in the men’s
relationship with one another is succinctly illustrated in the following interaction
with Roma and Moss, and then later, Roma’s conversation with Williamson.
When Moss refuses to listen to Levene’s narration of his “sit” with the
Nyborgs—the couple Levene believes purchased several parcels of land—Roma
angrily defends his “friend”:

Roma: Fuck you, Dave, you know you got a big mouth and you
make a close the whole place stinks with your farts for a
week. “How much you just ingested.” What a big man
you are, “Hey, let me buy you a pack of gum. I’ll show
you how to chew it.” Your pal closes, all that comes out
of your mouth is bile, how fucked up you are…. (p. 71)

Roma’s defense of Levene and the use of the word “pal” to describe Moss’s relation-
ship with his co-workers is rendered ironic when, after only minutes before congrat-
ulating Levene on his sale to the Nyborgs, Roma tells Williamson that he expects to
be given half of Levene’s commissions. “My stuff is mine, his stuff is ours. I’m tak-
ing half of his commissions…” (p. 107).

STRIPTEASING: THE LANGUAGE OF SEDUCTION

This disregard for maintaining authentic relationships with male peers is also mani-
fested by the way the salesmen manipulate those around them through the use of lan-
guage as a source of seduction. For instance, our first glimpse of Roma is in the Chi-
nese restaurant when he is talking to Lingk. Roma’s sophistic monologue is
captivating, sexual, teasing, and we can sense that Lingk is enticed by Roma’s dirty
talk:

Roma: You think you’re queer… ? I’m going to tell you some
thing: We’re all queer. You think that you’re a thief? So
what? You get befuddled by middle-class morality…?
Get shut of it? Shut it out. You cheated on your wife…?
You did it, live with it. You fuck little girls, so be it….
(p. 47)

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Roma’s lurid sexual divulgence (“The great fucks that you may have had … it’s
probably not the orgasm … me lying in bed: the next day she brought me café au
lait. She gives me a cigarette, my balls feel like concrete” [p. 48]), acts as foreplay
for the final moment when Roma’s purpose becomes clear (not just to Lingk, but to
the audience as well)—that this lesson in relative ethics is Roma’s sales pitch:

Roma: I’m glad to meet you, James. (Pause.) I want to show you
something. (Pause.) It might mean nothing to you… and
it might not. I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.
(Pause. He takes out a small map and spreads it on a
table.) What is that? Florida. Glengarry Highlands.
Florida. “Florida. Bullshit.” And maybe that’s true; and
that’s what I said: but look here: what is this? This is a
piece of land. Listen to what I’m going to tell you now….
(p. 51)

Roma’s winding sales pitch is so imbedded that Mamet has described Roma’s
speech as “inspirational … classic stoic philosophy” (Dean, 1990, p. 204). Lingk,
seemingly desperate for male companionship, is an easy mark for the experienced
salesman. And even later in the play, after Lingk comes into the office to cancel the
contract, Roma attempts to reassure him with a personal line of reasoning. “Forget
the deal, Jimmy. (Pause.) Forget the deal … you know me. The deal’s dead. Am I
talking about the deal? That’s over. Please. Let’s talk about you…” (p. 93). This
time, however, the intrusion of Lingk’s wife, with her threats to call the Attorney
General’s office if Roma does not return the money, is greater than Roma’s rhetoric.
The invisible emasculating woman, the “cockteaser,” has again managed to thwart
the action of a hard-working man.
Language as seduction is again represented in the scene where Levene recounts
his conquest of the Nyborgs to Roma.

Levene: They signed, Ricky. It was great. It was fucking

great. It was like they wilted all at once. No gesture
…nothing. Like together. They, I swear to God, they both
kind of imperceptibly slumped. (p. 74)

The implication is obvious: by seducing the Nyborgs, Levene has managed to “fuck”
them out of eighty thousand dollars. Anne Dean (1990) suggests that as Levene
moves toward the “climax of his tale, a climax that seems almost orgasmic, particu-
larly when one notes the final, ‘Ah fuck,’ it is as if he has lost himself in a sexual
dream” (p. 209). Levene, the oldest salesman in the group, is nicknamed “The
Machine” (a nickname replete with masculine, sexual, and industrial imagery) since
he was once the most successful salesman in the company. But Levene is no longer
the man (translation: salesman) he once was, and the manipulation of an elderly cou-
ple out of their savings is a small price for Levene to pay to get his balls back. Lev-
ene gleefully tells Roma, “I did it. I did it. Like in the old days, Ricky. Like I was
taught…. Like, like, like I used to do…. I did it (p. 73).

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ANDREA GREENBAUM

CONCLUSION

Glengarry Glen Ross vividly captures, in the same way that Death of a Salesman
does, the sad ethos of American capitalism. Mamet’s play is not merely an indict-
ment of a culture that equates happiness with material acquisition, but is also a
reproach to a particular discourse of masculinity that capitalism fosters. The misogy-
nist language that permeates the drama, and the vilification of women, or more pre-
cisely, the essence of women (since women do not actually appear in the play),
serves to heighten the play’s binary oppositions between culturally defined notions
of masculinity (both trait and normative perspectives) and femininity. Finally, the
venal, mercenary salesmen of Mamet’s play are depictions of masculinity gone
awry; the ideological forces of capitalism—with its emphasis on cut-throat competi-
tion, duplicity, and stratification—Mamet suggests, augment the predatory nature of
masculinity.

NOTES

1. Mamet employs another phallic visual symbol—the recurring image of a

loud, speeding, subway train, barreling on the El across from the salesmen’s office,
often intruding on their conversations, further complicating their ability to communi-
cate. The image seems to tie masculinity to industrialization and suggests urban
decay.
2. When asked what Willy was selling, what was in his bags, Arthur Miller
responded, “Himself” (Miller, 1957, p. 28).
3. In the filmed version, Mamet has added Levene’s daughter as another unseen
female presence, and like Lingk’s wife, who dominates her husband, we sense that
Levene’s daughter is the impetus for Levene’s decision to rob the office.
4. Mamet often works within this framework of misogyny. Two plays in partic-
ular, Speed the Plow (1985) and the more recent Oleanna (1993), contain female
characters whose sole objectives are to hinder and manipulate the male characters
around them.

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