David Mamet’s ‘Race’: Key Characteristics and Themes
David Mamet
David Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director. He was born in 1947 in Illinois. His play Race opened on Broadway in 2009.
Mamet stands out for having very personal characteristics that make his works special and unique. Some of these features, according to Race, are:
Minimal Dramatic Elements
The entire story of Race is set in the lawyers’ office, and we only find four characters: the two lawyers, Jack and Henry, the assistant, Susan, and the client, Charles.
The whole work is about a rehearsal of a trial for a crime. It occurs in a continuous time with uninterrupted actions.
Specific Rules in Mamet’s Universe
As we can see in Race, Mamet follows these rules:
- Everybody lies: All characters in this work are guilty of something. For example, Jack is guilty of racial bias, although he pretends to look impartial on these race themes. He investigates Susan and is patronizing to her. Susan is guilty of prejudging the client as soon as she learns the story; she defends herself, saying that Charles seems a guilty person, but she can’t answer what a guilty person looks like. Susan is also guilty of betrayal and racial revenge. Henry is guilty of passive submission to Jack’s will. About Charles: despite the fact that Charles confesses in the end, we don’t know for sure if he confesses because he is really guilty or because Susan has made Charles feel guilty.
- Society is a mechanism to keep individual impulses at bay, to prevent us from tearing each other apart.
- Contemporary society is permissive toward some forms of corruption, fraud, and betrayal.
- Moral relativism and corruption pose a threat to that already thin protection.
The Mametspeak
In a deeper analysis of his work, we can see how Mamet uses obscene and colloquial language in his characters, and the use of a natural racist language in characters like Charles. We also see short questions and notes followed by silences and pauses that give us a “machine gun” impression.
The Creation of Tension
Mamet uses some techniques to make his story more interesting and full of tension. He creates dramatic tension with themes like race, with the fact that the client is a white man and the victim is a black woman, which the lawyers say makes the possibility of winning the case more difficult. With the decision that these lawyers represent him for the fact that one of them is black and he believes that it will give him more advantage. Social class is also a topic that creates tension because, in addition to the race fact, Charles is a rich man, unlike the victim, who is an illegal immigrant. Gender is also important in the case because of male chauvinism thoughts.
With the appearance of complication and extenuation in the rape case, it creates tension and intrigue in the plot, which makes the viewer want to know what is going to happen at the end.
The Meaning of Concepts Like Law, Order, Justice, Truth, and Public Opinion According to Mamet
Throughout the work, Jack sometimes compares the law and the trial to a fight or shows where there is a story, and the job of the lawyer is to tell a better story that convinces the judges. It doesn’t matter if the client is guilty or not; the important thing is to make the judges see that he is not guilty.
Jack talks about the press as public opinion. When Charles says that he wants to go to the press, Jack warns Charles that going to the press does not benefit him; whatever he says, they will tear him apart.
The Relativity of Truth and Morals
Morality as an ambiguous and relative concept can be clearly seen at the beginning of the book when lawyers talk to Charles and clarify that they believe in Charles’s veracity simply because he pays them for it. And makes it clear that in case he was not his client would think that Charles is guilty because according to the case it would be the most obvious to think.