Left Field Cinema: The Political Position of Glengarry Glen Ross

The Political Position of Glengarry Glen Ross
by Mike Dawson
Left Field Cinema



The early 1980’s. This is the era; the time when David Mamet wrote Glengarry Glen Ross. A play about the competitive and ruthless world of a real estate salesman. A play which is very reflective of its time. The early 1980’s in the United States of America is a time of consumerism; materialism; and of competition. Ronald Reagan was the president of the country for most of the decade; as a result the trend of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer was largely due to his administration and the creation of Reaganism. A set of economic policies very similar to Thatcherism; which was rising in Britain at the same time. Reaganism centred on the individual prospering.

Ronald Reagan was inaugurated President in 1980 and succeeded James Carter, the democrat. He would usher in a twelve-year era of Republican Party rule, which would change the shape of the USA in many ways. The US was a nation still dealing with the scars of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War, scars which hadn’t been healed completely by the Carter Administration. Both Carter and Reagan were elected largely because of public dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs in Washington. There was a lack of trust. They were both political outsiders; from other states and had little to do with central government until their elections to President.

“Both Carter and Reagan played successfully on business or public dissatisfaction with government to get elected… Once in office they became targets. They were outsiders who became insiders, anti-Washington candidates who became, with success, the very symbol of Washington.” (Fawcett and Thomas, 1983, 140)

Where Carter failed to heal the nation, Reagan partly succeeded. Instead of trying to be the ‘outsider’ after taking office. He worked on ways of making the people trust Washington again. Unlike Carter, he was an actor, and managed the public well for the most part.

“Carter a conservative Southern populist campaigned under Democratic colours, who promised lower defence spending and national health insurance, raised the first and never got around to the second.” (Fawcett and Thomas, 1983, 166)

Instead of continuing to heal the wounds of the Nixon era; Reagan decided to change the way people felt and what they were thinking by a series of new laws, which would radically alter the labour forces. “By partially ‘deregulating’ labour relations along with banking and transportation, Reagan has paved the way for more rapid capital flight, plant closure, deunionisation, and the proliferation of all manner of new sweated industries. In the process he has also eliminated, temporarily or permanently, the judicial supports upon which the practice of bureaucratic trade unionism has vitally depended for over a generation.” (Davis, 1986, 131)

The Reagan administration - similarly to the Thatcher government – had a goal of phasing out the work unions. This was done primarily to make new work related laws easier to enforce. The new laws created a situation where low level employees were paid less, and the higher level employees were paid more. Attorneys, stockbrokers, landowners, and many other professions in the private sector all earned more. Meanwhile government workers, and others suffered from pay cuts and redundancies. One of the laws which allowed this difference in wages to expand was the ‘two tier’ system. The system was created allowed the more recently commissioned employees to be started on a lower wage than their older counterparts for doing the same job. This encouraged many employers to simply make redundant older employees and bring a cheaper and younger work force whose pensions weren’t close at hand. Another law was introduced which allowed part time workers to be paid less than the full time workers. This encouraged full time workers to be replaced by part time workers.

To Read the Rest of the Analysis

To Listen to the Analysis

Michael J. Anderson: Histoire de Marie et Julien: Jacques Rivette's Material Ghost Story

Histoire de Marie et Julien: Jacques Rivette's Material Ghost Story
by Michael J. Anderson
Senses of Cinema



There is no such thing as morality in the films of Jacques Rivette. Nor could there be, given the particular logic that dictates the narrative structure of his films, namely that everything contained therein belongs to the category of fiction. In this way, Rivette has preserved a tradition in French film that commenced with Georges Méliès, achieved maturity in the serials of Louis Feuillade, and reached its apogee in the post-war work of Jean Cocteau. Like these forebears, Rivette avoids neat delineation between fact and fiction, and dream and reality, opting rather for a universe in which all thoughts, actions and events maintain the same degree of verisimilitude. Yet, unlike a figure such as Cocteau whose adoption of this technique can be understood in terms of a Surrealist critique of traditional moral codes and their rational basis, Rivette's assimilation of a similar idiom instead corresponds to a manifest interest in the narrative process. In this way, then, the work of Rivette is hermetic in its neglect of anything that might exist beyond the immediate contours of the film's fictional universe.

In the septuagenarian director and former critic's latest work, Histoire de Marie et Julien (Story of Marie and Julien) (2003), the ubiquitous presence of fiction moves beyond mere formal matrix, however, to become the actual subject of the art. The film surely represents a dissection of the process of fiction which is particular to cinematic art. Indeed, Rivette's narrative is shaped by a consideration of the three discrete stages of filmic creation: the conception of the idea (pre-production), its actualisation (production) and its final molding through the process of editing (post-production). Thus, Histoire de Marie et Julien is a film about filmmaking, which one is tempted to read nevertheless in terms broader than pure didacticism, which is to say a film that teaches its viewer about the nature of the art form. To be sure, Rivette's is a work that cues its audience to consider not only the creative layers of the process of narration, but also the creator's place within this construction, which naturally implies Rivette's function in the creation of this specific film. Hence, it would not be unreasonable to attach the tag of “personal” to Histoire de Marie et Julien given both the narrative's recourse to referencing the creator in the process of creation, and also the director's biography. Following a cineaste's education in Parisian cinemas during the late 1940s and early 1950s, Rivette wrote and later served as editor of Cahiers du cinéma (June 1963 to April 1965) before devoting himself full-time to filmmaking; in other words, he has spent the bulk of his adult life devoted to the medium.

Before commencing an examination of Rivette's rhetoric in Marie et Julien, it does need stating that a traditional analysis which details the plot and characterisations utilised in the narrative is of little use in talking about Rivette's film. Such accountings generally rely on the logic of causality and psychological penetrability which are both utterly inimical to Histoire de Marie et Julien. Ultimately, the film is an exceptionally complex one that offers its viewer a cogent exposition of the nature of filmic narrative that a recapitulation of plot and character would in no way illuminate. Thus, rather than tracing these elements of the film, the subsequent analysis will instead consider the more relevant exigencies of Rivette's thought as explicated by the form of his art. Certainly, Histoire de Marie et Julien is a work of substantial abstraction that demands of its audience both their active participation and also an eye to the manner in which the elaboration of narrative serves the discursive purposes of its author. The following, then, is less a straight recapitulation of plot and character than it is an introduction to the basic discourses at work in one of Rivette's most important (and difficult) films.

To Read the Rest of the Essay