{"id":6313,"date":"2010-07-30T11:09:46","date_gmt":"2010-07-30T15:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=6313"},"modified":"2010-07-30T11:09:59","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T15:09:59","slug":"david-mamet-a-voice-in-the-artistic-wilderness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/6313\/david-mamet-a-voice-in-the-artistic-wilderness\/","title":{"rendered":"David Mamet: A Free Market Voice in the Artistic Wilderness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Kennedy once described himself thus: \u201cThere are those that look at things the way they are, and ask \u2018Why?\u2019\u00a0 I dream of things that never were and ask \u2018Why not?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Perhaps the strongest criticism against liberalism is the charge that too many of its prescriptions for achieving the good life begin from premises in a world that doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

For cold-eyed realists like playwright David Mamet, the answer to Kennedy\u2019s second question is easy: people are tempted to pride and selfishness.\u00a0 And after a lifetime spent in the intellectual employ of liberalism\u2019s \u2018why not\u2019 ethos, Mamet rejected his former worldview in an essay for the Village Voice<\/em><\/a>, and followed up his rejection of state control in favor of free markets in his new book Theatre<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

A review of the book by Commentary<\/em>\u2019s Terry Teachout reveals Mamet\u2019s stinging rejections of the liberal mindset<\/a> in favor of conservative-libertarian explanations for how the world actually works.\u00a0 For Mamet, his conversion is a matter of his personal philosophy catching up with his art, which is characterized by dark struggles for power in an unfair world.<\/p>\n

But lest readers think the notion of realism is code for worst case scenario of the human condition, don\u2019t worry.\u00a0 Instead, Teachout describes Mamet\u2019s reading of conservative luminaries like Thomas Sowell, Paul Johnson, Milton Friedman and Shelby Steele as persuading him that \u201ca free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than the idealistic vision I called liberalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the moment, Mamet stands alone as a free market supporter in the playhouses of elite theater.\u00a0 Taking a cue from his characters in Glengarry Glen Ross <\/em>and Speed-the-Plow<\/em>, Mamet probably doesn\u2019t care what others think.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, there is a certain attraction to dreaming of a world that doesn\u2019t \u2013 and probably can\u2019t \u2013 exist.\u00a0 It explains the popularity of fantasy tales for which Hollywood studios make hundreds of millions of dollars selling as a form of escape.\u00a0 For artists like Mamet, though, the real world in all its imperfect complexity provides a much richer source of inspiration.<\/p>\n

In an era where politicians are challenging playwrights for creating the most compelling drama, it\u2019s good to know of at least one professional artist who prefers reality to fantasy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Kennedy once described himself thus: \u201cThere are those that look at things the way they are, and ask \u2018Why?\u2019\u00a0 I dream of things that never were and ask \u2018Why not?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Perhaps the strongest criticism against liberalism is the charge that too many of its prescriptions for achieving the good life begin from premises in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1616,102,754,127,1618,1617],"class_list":["post-6313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-david-mamet","tag-free-market","tag-liberalism","tag-realism","tag-robert-kennedy","tag-terry-teachout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6313"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6319,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6313\/revisions\/6319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}