Re: Apul’s post, David Mamet’s racist salesman drama Glengarry Glen Ross is being revived on Broadway next Wednesday. Even though the lines are uttered in character, it’s a deeply offensive play:
MOSS: I’ll tell you what else: don’t ever try to sell an Indian.
AARONOW: I’d never try to sell an Indian.
MOSS: You get those names come up, you ever get ’em, “Patel?”… You had one you’d know it. Patel. They keep coming up. I don’t know. They like to talk to salesmen. They’re lonely, something. They like to feel superior, I don’t know. Never bought a fucking thing… They got a grapevine. Fuckin’ Indians, George. Not my cup of tea. Speaking of which I want to tell you something: I never got a cup of tea with them. You see them in the restaurants. A supercilious race. What is this look on their face all the time? I don’t know. I don’t know. Their broads all look like they just got fucked with a dead cat, I don’t know…
ROMA: Patel? Ravidam Patel? How am I going to make a living on these deadbeat wogs? Where did you get this, from the morgue?… Patel? Fuck you. Fuckin’ Shiva handed him a million dollars, told him “sign the deal,” he wouldn’t sign. And Vishnu, too.
The play, written in 1984, won a Pulitzer and was turned into a major 1992 film with Alec Baldwin, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey and Ed Harris. Mamet had second thoughts, but only decades later:
He thinks maybe he should take another look at his anti-Indian remarks that still smolder in Glengarry Glen Ross, a play he wrote 20 years ago. “Patel” was a racial epithet uttered by guys in his line of work years ago, when he was selling real estate. Maybe it doesn’t belong in the play anymore, given what the times are now.
Ya think? Some context by a Brit who shilled storm windows over the phone:
If you sent a salesman to the home of an Indian family… not only did you lose your commission for that lead, but you were docked a percent of your next one. The company president swore this wasn’t racism but a cold business calculation. Indians, he told us, never buy, they just haggle ad nauseum. This stereotype, obviously an international one, surfaces in Glengarry Glen Ross, which David Mamet confected out of his year-long stint in a Chicago sales office. In the play, Shelly Levene knows he’s despised by his supervisor when the only lead he gets is named “Patel,” a name as Indian as Shapiro is Jewish. “Patel?” says a sympathetic colleague. “They gave you Patel?”
The Broadway revival has Alan Alda and Liev Schreiber and is being directed by Joe Mantello, the director of the smash hit Wicked. Between the Pulitzer Prize and Wicked, this puerile work is 100% blessed by the mainstream. From Bombay Dreams to ‘fucked with a dead cat’: we’ve come a long way, baby.
Update: Put Down the Bong, People (Don’t Put Down the Patels remix)
Ok, I’m going to say this slowly and clearly: y’all are on crack. Respected authors, playwrights and random hecklers included.
- It’s prima facia offensive. Take the line about desi wives looking like the victims of necrophiliac bestial rape. I shouldn’t have to explain to anyone who’s not named Michael Dukakis why that’s insulting.
Or take the line about deadbeat wogs. Non-Brit readers may not recognize this for the intense ethnic slur it is. This play is set in America, not the UK; it’s almost like Mamet purposely used ‘wog’ instead of ‘Paki,’ ‘dot-buster’ or ‘sand n–‘ to shield himself from criticism.
When I saw the film, I was groovin’ on the dialogue density a la Shakespeare, Stoppard, Woody Allen, until it suddenly went racist. It was as if someone had reached out and slapped me.
- It crosses the verisimilitude line. This isn’t about a few lines or even a few tirades for texture and to establish that a character is both verite and racist. Mamet is using the cover of fiction for grossly excessive, gleeful bashing on a visible minority. Even granting that he’s aiming for an over-the-top, Tarantino sensibility, the dead cat comment is so far over the line, it’s in another galaxy.
There is a practical limit to the ‘in character’ defense. If I performed a play at your house and said, ‘Women are evil,’ your wife would laugh it off as fleshing out motivation. If I said, ‘Indian women named Sandhya look like they’ve been anally violated with a cattle prod,’ Sandhya might justifiably inflict testicular violence.
- It’s spoken by protagonists. As much as I adore knee-jerk replies by those who’ve never seen the work (or read the script), I must demur. The Dave Moss (Ed Harris in the film) and Ricky Roma (Al Pacino) characters are central characters in this ensemble piece. They’re not discardable villains, they’re respected and looked up to by the other characters. Even if Mamet’s misanthropy makes Neil LaBute sound like the Sundays, these guys lay claim on some share of the author’s voice.
- It targets a specific minority. It’s just as graphic as the testicle-tearing and cadaver-nibbling in Sin City, but it’s targeted at a very specific, real-life ethnic group, not characters in a comic book.
- He picked a minority that wouldn’t object. When Mamet wrote this play, there were ~350,000 desis in the U.S. Today there are ~2,000,000. While the U.S. population increased by 28%, the desi population increased by 470%. At the time, Mamet’s character was attacking curios under musty glass. They were just a new immigrant group who were careful spenders of necessity; 1980 is the first time Asian Indians were even counted separately on the Census. Mamet might as well have picked on Xosas or Bantus in America.
Today, in contrast, both South Asian Studies departments and David Mamet find desi Americans at the gates. Now that desis are in the audience, the lines Mamet penned don’t stand the test of saying them to your face. They’re just too disrespectful. That’s why he’s having second thoughts.
Here’s a thought experiment: replace ‘wog’ with ‘n–,’ ‘kike,’ ‘gook’ or ‘wetback’ and see whether the play would be commercially viable.
- He has a history of penning racist tirades. Mamet’s plays are chock full of anti-minority tirades ‘in character,’ he’s obsessed with these. I credit him for fighting Holocaust revisionism in real life, but look to his Russian Jewish ancestry for bearing. His respectability and his respect for minorities are quite orthogonal.
- It’s about commercial freedom. I love that Mamet is guaranteed freedom of expression in America. Similarly, we have the right to purchase works that don’t pointedly disrespect us, and to persuade mainstream markets of the same.
On an unrelated and purely humorous note, it appears Mamet would not take a shine to Bollywood. In a recent essay, he listed film turn-offs, and as he ticked them off I thought ‘yep, yep, yep’ — they’re in everything from Amar Akbar Anthony to Veer-Zaara 😉
Any film containing any of the disqualificatory elements listed below loses… any further claim on me: Any use of Handel’s Messiah, or The Four Seasons, or Pachelbel’s Canon; any slow-motion sequence of lovers out of doors; any rack-focus from grass, wheat, or other vegetables to a distant object; … any shot of the protagonist twirling slowly with arms spread; a title card reading, “based on a true story”; and that, to me, unfailing diagnostic tool, a present participle in the title.
dude, it’s a play about rotten people. they’re going to say rotten things. don’t blame mamet for that.
Yes, the lines are deeply offensive and deeply hurtful. It also sounds, sadly, as if the lines were picked up from Mamet’s experience working at sales. He heard people saying these lines, or something similar I think. Isn’t it the duty of the artist to faithfully describe what he or she sees around him? How will we ever learn anything if we are not completely and utterly honest? Even if that honesty is hurtful?
I haven’t seen the play: are these characters and their ideas glorified or are they, as the commenter above says, rotten people saying rotten things as evidence of their rotten characters?
“Isnt’ it the duty of the artist to faithfully descibe what he or she sees around him (or her)?” I think reads better. Or maybe not. Sorry.
Wow, re-reading those lines, it really is horrible, isn’t it?
Its not the author’s fault per se for writing those lines; if its a work of art its for us to decide our reaction, no?
It’s a play. I dont think the play is racist, the characters are.
truth hurts sometimes. theres a reason why some sales people hate helping indians…a few dumb people ruin it for everyone.
It’s a wonderful play. Mamet is not a racist as his comments on revisionism attest. The words are confronting yes but they still echo a perception out there so I think that they are still valid. Until the perception goes away I think the words should remain.
Mamet as an artist presents a reality for the viewer to interpret, isn’t that the purpose of art? And isn’t that what we’re supposed to do as a viewer?
Mamet has written about anti-semitism before. He wrote a novel called The Old Religion about a Jewish man who is wrongly accused of rape and murdered. I think if Mamet got down to think about it he would notice the confluence between this racist stereotype of Indians that his characters mutter and the the anti-semitic caricatures of the Shylockian Jew.
Having said that, he is reflecting the nastiness of his characters, and I dont believe that Mamet is racist.
My brown boyfriend works for a brown company in a very very brown part of town, and his biggest complaint is that clients think they can haggle over the cost of services his company provides, when there is a set price list. This is not a fish market back in your home village, he says. They’ll argue for 45 min over the tiniest things until his bosses give in just to make them go away. He practically wept with joy recently when a mostly-white company (their biggest client to date) paid their massive invoice, no questions asked. While this is one person’s experience in one particular community in one city, I was rather fascinated to learn that this is (or was) perhaps a larger stereotype.
Whats wrong with bargaining. You can bargain a whole lot of things if a person would only ask.
The funny thing is that big companies “haggle” or refuse to pay list price all the time. That’s considered laudable. But God forbid that you would want to bargain over … real estate! Everybody knows real estate is fixed price, just like cars. It’s all take it or leave it, right?
w.r.t. Mamet, it’s hard to call somebody a racist when his characters are deeply misanthropic in general. It’s harder to call him an anti-desi racist when the remarks about desis are such a small part of the overall. It’s thrown in for versimillitude.
Are these lines in the movie version of GGR? I don’t remember them.
Offensiveness is often a matter of context. What happens to the characters who say these lines? Is their view of the world, both specifically in these lines and in general, challenged during the course of the play?
Incidentally, we might want to note that these types of stereotypes (i.e., the stereotype of Gujurati parsimoniousness) circulate quite widely within the South Asian community — we’ve all heard “Gujju” jokes, Sardar/Santa-Banta jokes, Bengali jokes, etc.
It’s interesting how much uglier the stereotypes sound when uttered by non-Indians…
Yes, the crass and offensive remarks are in the movie. Personally, I thought the movie was entertaining in an extremely vicious way. These men were really slimy characters, so these vicious comments are not out of character.
Personally, I think there were worse stereotypes in Bhaji on the Beach.
Sure, it’s racist and I think that’s the point, as C. alluded to in his/her post.
Mamet should keep the play as-is and let someone else write a cultural revision. The characters lose integrity if so easily changed.
As for whether the words hold any truth for a contemporary audience, the lines have to stay and I don’t know what he’d replace “Patel” with… Something Russian? That doesn’t really make it better.
Given “Bombay Dreams” vs. “Glengarry Glen Ross,” I’d choose the latter as at least it makes a person consider the “truth” about Mr. Ravidam Patel as opposed to dancing Indians, who, unfortunately, only cause one to stare at the stage with their tongue hanging out.
In “Pulp Fiction” everyone’s walking around talking about “niggers” and that was a useless and racist exercise. Don’t know that the same can be said about this.
Manish – do you find the work immature or the characters? Are all works where characters say offensive things inherently bad? Do you dislike this play b/c the characters are pricks? If not, what is bad about this work?
IIRC, only a part of the exchange is in the film — mostly delivered by the Pacino character. I chiefly recall the “Shiva” comment.
The speaker is not a very sympathetic character. He’s a charismatic “producer” who’s also a dishonest bully. In the course of the film, he manipulates a weaker personality into an unwanted purchase. A reputation for resistance to his kind of pressure sales tactics isn’t a very damning stereotype. And he isn’t speaking in either the voice of Mamet or the “mainstream”.
In my experience with fans of the movie, the “Shiva” line gets a big laugh, but not because anyone considers it a serious assessment of Indians. Rather, it uses some vivid, fantastic imagery out of nowhere to make a exagerrated point, from the very particular viewpoint of these hardscrabble salesmen. The salesmen would harbor the same crude resentment toward any group who, in their experience, tended not to buy their vacation real estate. And yet, not buying their offerings is no negative reflection on the group — just the cause of their image vis-a-vis the salesmen.
The group most negatively stereotyped in GGR? Salesmen themselves. But even there, while it shows them all in the same corrosive environment, with some similar values, they each have different personalities, beliefs, and ethics.
Man, that’s nothing. I saw this movie “Downfall” the other day and whoever wrote that must really hate Jews. You should have heard the nasty things he had this guy named “Hitler” say. I can’t believe the theatre would show such a “puerile work”.
If you want to see real anti-desi attitudes then watch any Gurinder ‘fat ass’ Chadha movies.
To assume these to be racist comments displays a limited knowledge of literature in general and the theatre in particular. Immature people will perhaps take what the characters are saying for what the playwright feels and run and sob and claim their ethnicity has been slandered. Sensible people need to understand it in the context of the play and the world of the play. Many playwrights have said cruel things about various subjects, professions, ethnicities etc. These are to portray or get under the skin of a character, not to espouse their own political beliefs, whatever they may be. For reference, I would reccomend this gentleman read Mamet’s Speed the Plow or a somewhat well-known playwright called William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice for hugely anti-semetic dialogue or Corpus Christi by Terence McNally that says a lot more horrific things about the church that these few lines. In all cases, it has been the purpose of art to hold up a mirror to life, not be some forum for people of all colors to hold hands and get along. I reccomend this gentleman look to the UN for that, not the stage.
Anuvab Pal
I generally agree with what you say. But The Merchant of Venice is a bad example to use, because it really is an anti-semitic work. It may be partially redeemed by the ‘Hath not a Jew eyes’ speech. But it is a deeply anti-semitic work.
Anuvab Pal
In all cases, it has been the purpose of art to hold up a mirror to life, not be some forum for people of all colors to hold hands and get along. I reccomend this gentleman look to the UN for that, not the stage.
The gentleman who you so patronise in your speech happens to be a fan of yours that gave you much love in his blog
There is one thing that always irks me about certain writers and that is how pompous and condescending they can be. They are very thin skinned, and often suffer under a delusion of grandeur and holy writ. The patronising ‘Marie Antoniette’ tone of your post exemplifies that. Manish isnt some ignorant philistine as you make him out to be, he is just a man making a point. Its enough to engage with him and describe where you believe he might be mistaken on something rather than stand up like a God upon Mount Olympus laying down the law to the philistine masses.
By the way, is the only purpose of art ‘to hold up a mirror to life’? Not to entertain, inform, communicate, reconcile? Has art never performed those functiosn before? Even if it is only a subsidiary function to the above, are you saying that art only has one purpose and definition? Be careful Anuvab, that comes perilously close to sounding like a didactic prescription of what art should be, what it can be and what it can do, and is at odds with the presumptions of open mindedness you seek to dazzle us with.
Pedant Saab,
Leave it to a playwright to attempt to consecrate “the stage” as an enchanted and insulated forum for expression that somehow does not affect the world at large. Negro Please.
Artistic freedom is all well and good, but when art or expression is celebrated and accepted into the mainstream (movie, play, references in the Simpsons), it has a way of creeping into the social consciousness as acceptable and “normal.” In the worst case, such expression confirms and reinforces stereotypes that may exist consciously or unconsciously in the viewer’s mind. (“Yeah, so its not just me who thinks Hindoos are cheap bastards ! They really must be”)
The specious reasoning of artistic freedom probably informed Tarantino’s overly-emphatic utterances of “n*$(er” in Pulp Fiction….”hey its art, I can get away with it.”
Art at its WORST simply mirrors the corpuscles of life, without comment. Art should have a point, a didactic message, a critique, an expression of useful sentiment (not just distilled hate).
Manish,
On the Updated post, you’ve convinced me, especially with points 1, 2, and 5.
Have you thought about turning your argument into an op-ed for an NYC paper? Or submitting it to the VV?
Because my post about the 2005 “Write Like Mamet†contest inspired the above condemnation, I need to state for the record that as far as I’m concerned, both David Mamet and “Glengarry Glen Ross†are brilliant. I agree with most of the arguments already made on Mamet’s behalf in this thread, so I’ll forgo reiterating them. Also, I’ve read the play, and watched the film a number of times, and was not under the influence of crack or marijuana. Not by choice though. I couldn’t score any, dammit.
“Art at its WORST simply mirrors the corpuscles of life, without comment. Art should have a point, a didactic message, a critique, an expression of useful sentiment (not just distilled hate).”
Yes, this is valid and I think many of the voices here are making the point that GGR’s anti-Patel-ed-ness is an expression of useful sentiment and not simply a bindi on Gwen Stefani’s forehead, a squatting Jew in Eliot’s Wasteland, etc..
Anuvab Pal: art without limits is one thing, art without purpose is another and I think the blogger knows the difference.
Punjabi Boy: pompous condescension on this site? Where?
He is an excellent playwright, and Bobby Fischer was an excellent grandmaster.
No, I’m content to rabble-rouse here for now 🙂
Manish has just updated the post and just like our man Anuvab, is talking down to the masses (but without the Oxonian clip). It’s true, some of us are spinning an eight-ball in our pipes, but some of us do have a point and so, in response:
Assume all of us are dumb Greeks like that pogue Dukakis.
The dead-cat, along with Ravidam Patel, is in another galaxy.
All the dialogue, like the leads and the guys who use them, are discardable.
It has to target a specific minority because night-salesman are a specific minority.
Mamet’s having second thoughts because Patels are now “buyers” but not because he cares about Patels.
If you flip the coin, Mamet has a history of using race as a literary-vehicle and, find me a “tirade” that isn’t in a play.
Yes, well, let’s all make certain Indians stay away from Naipaul and the makers of “American Desi” too.
Seriously, if you want this kind of stuff to end, then don’t post about it. Mamet, like a number of other writers, will eventually weed or be weeded out. However, in writing about it you give it credence and have subsequently unearthed a host of South Asians ready to defend it. So, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I’m totally in favor of spreading the word about crappy creative, however you define it.
That was the Modi argument too, and ‘don’t rock the boat’ doesn’t hold much sway with me. ‘If you flip the coin,’ it applies to the civil rights movement, Indian independence, the political goals of the Tamil Tigers…
It’s not about not rocking the boat, it’s about just letting the boat sink. The guys in that play… That dialogue is anachronistic, so much so that even Mamet realizes it’s lost its poignancy.
Now, if the point is to simply stop writers from using racial slurs, epithets and ideas in their work, then you’re stepping into a whole new field of restrictions… Personally, I prefer to hear what somebody is thinking, as that’s easier to fight and conversely, I don’t like fighting things that are already on the ground.
As a People, I believe we’re stronger than anything Mamet could ever write, so.
sd
I was referring to the play writers post
There’s the small matter of that multimillion-dollar revival opening on Broadway for previews tomorrow…
See point #7. It’s not about restrictions, it’s about some minimal human respect.
sd, I’m curious: What is art with purpose? (This is with reference to your comment: “Anuvab Pal: art without limits is one thing, art without purpose is another and I think the blogger knows the difference.”)
holleration wrote: “Artistic freedom is all well and good, but when art or expression is celebrated and accepted into the mainstream (movie, play, references in the Simpsons), it has a way of creeping into the social consciousness as acceptable and “normal.” In the worst case, such expression confirms and reinforces stereotypes that may exist consciously or unconsciously in the viewer’s mind.”
This would make some sense if a) the quoted excerpt made the speaker look good for mouthing that kind of language and openly professing such an opinion. These guys are villains (as noted earlier); perhaps not in the august tradition of Ajit and Pran a la Bollywood but the ambiguity in their characterisation does not make them particularly pleasing to most liberal-minded audiences, b) one completely ignored the individual subjectivity of a reader/ audience member. The fact is that writing chapter and verse on the wonder that is the South Asian is not going to convince someone who thinks Mr. Patel at the grocery store is a “wog”, if that is what is the ingrained belief. It’s going to take a little bit more than that. On the other hand, if this someone finds himself relating to Moss and/ or Roma and then cringing at their behaviour because they are so obscene… now that has, psychologically speaking, better chance of registering. Reverse psychology, I believe they call it.
Aside from all that, your comment implies satire has no place in mainstream art and can only have a function in the alternative arena since once it enters the mainstream, it runs the risk of being taken at face value by more people.
So, the other day I was getting a ride from a desi couple that I know. We are only acquaintances, and don’t usually do things together socially.
The husband got cut off in traffic and said: “Those stupid chink drivers.”
I said: “Please don’t use that word around me.”
So if I write a play or story based on that experience, should I leave the word in or out?
What’s the difference between a banana peel and a garbage dump?
Eh?
No, no, no. I’m being serious, I’m not trying to score points. I am trying to seriously consider what you say.
How would you write that scene, Manish? Cause it’s not the first time I’ve heard that language from desi’s and it disgusts me. Should I gloss over it? Should I write around it? Should I write him as a gross man with gross opinions by hinting at his gross actions? What should I do? How would you write it. You write beautifully, you know you do. How would you handle it?
What’s the difference between establishing in film that a gang rape has occurred, and filming a 20 minute clip with all its lurid angles?
What’s the difference between claiming to write a serious film about desi lesbians, and turning it into straight softcore porn?
One is texture, the other is exploitation.
Ok, here’s this thought experiment: a group of Christians are upset because an artist puts a cross in a jar of urine, the object is put in a museum and called ‘art’. The group is offended. Should the artist change the installation? Is the artist under that obligation? (And doesn’t Duchamp have a lot to answer for……)
Probably like the Seinfeld episode where he’s accused of being anti-dentist, with a single racial epithet to set the scene. Thanks for the bouquet…
Good point – I don’t see them as the same, but I’d be at pains to explain why. I guess that is why I think art should be as free as possible; because we as individuals will draw the line differently.
The ‘Piss Christ’ artist is free to do what he wishes. You and I are under no obligation to like it.
See point #7.
You’ll notice that I’m arguing not for state control, but rather market feedback and minimal human respect.
Manish, excellent point once again (see how nice I am being these days?) The artist is free to keep the words in or not, the audience is free to watch or not (they can dress up in costume and protest the play for all I care), but you still did not answer my question 🙂
How do I ‘write’ a racist character, be honest to that character, and to my experience? I guess I can do whatever I want, and should I be lucky enough to get even two people to read it, you can trash it on Sepia Mutiny! Yeah. I so hope to be trashed on Sepia Mutiny someday…..
I can only dream…..
So far I’ve written neither novel nor play, so you should really ask sd or Anuvab. But I’d set the scene, not replay it in real time a la 24. Show, not tell. One carefully-chosen epithet might do the job.
Join the club 😉
Ah, but Mamet is all about heaping adjectives and descriptions on a situation. He’s baroque, like Rushdie, not sparse like Hemingway. That’s one reason why his plays are so hard to perform, they’re very wordy.
Even allowing for Rushdie / Tarantino / Rodriguez, GGR is ridiculous.
According to this review in The Chicago Tribine, Mamet removed the Patel bit from the current production of GGR
“On Broadway, ‘Glengarry’ still packs a punch” http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/search/mmx-g271sf1gu.11may01,0,458576.story
“Curiously, Mamet has excised Moss’ most egregious racial insult directed at anyone named “Patel.””
I’ve been curious about whether the revival includes those lines. Whether it’s a guilty conscience, fear of backlash or just modernization, I’m glad he excised them.
Lemme tell ya, he’s right. The name “Patel” sends me into an eye rolling frenzy. I’ve been in sales and you sure did RUN whenever you encountered anyone named “Patel”. Some guy named Patel just moved next door to me and within 7 days he was complaining about where I parked and when I took my garbage outside. Like I’m gonna keep empty crab leg shells in my home in 90+ degree summer weather. Jerk.
“Lemme tell ya, this salesguy named meme moved in next door…and he just looks like he got cornholed by a telephone pole straight outta a redwood forest–you know, where the giants get their fuckin’ electricity. Geez, I mean every time I wanna have a beer he’s always banging on the door, screaming about how Saddam won’t let him bang sheep for shillings on the corner no mo’.”