Edmond de David Mamet. Criza libertății și a moralității în societatea capitalistă – de la identitate reprimată la exprimarea violentă a sinelui –

Abstract

Globalization as a phenomenon is deeply tied to the concepts and politics of capitalism and the society and american culture is one of the most relevant examples concerning the effects of globalization and capitalism on the society and the individual. In his 1982 play Edmond, the acclaimed playwright David Mamet presents the journey into the underworld of his main character: a white, middle-class, midle-aged man by his name Edmond Burke. During one night in NewYork City in wich Edmond seeks liberation from all constraints that society had imposed in him, a liberation from law and morality, Mamet examines the existential feeling of desperation of the modern man who feels that society cannot provide answers to his fundamental questions about fulfillment and the meaning of life. Edmond is an individual who has lived his life under the principals of conformism, he’s deeply attached to the moral values of religion but at the same time he is deeply frustrated and unsatisfied . His motives are not theoretically explained to us by the playwright, instead they represent a subconscious force that drives the actions of his character. In „Edmond” the paradoxes related to society and the individual lead towards acts of extreme violence and brutality. Mamet brings toghether concepts and feelings like fear and desire, freedom and captivity, man and beast, sex and love, society and the individual, sees them as simultaneous opposites that constantly generate devastating tensions within the human psyche. At it’s roots, Edmond can be regarded and understood as both the failure and succes of the spiritual journey of a lost soul in capitalist society.