Ding Dong!

Brass Balls:
A Marxist Critique of the Capitalist Conventions behind the Dangling Appendages of Glengarry Glen Ross

People commonly mistake the phrase “brass balls” as a euphemism for courage or audacity, in actuality the term dates back to a time when pawn brokers would hang three brass balls outside of their place of business to indicate their services (Urban). To have “brass balls” is to drive a tough bargain, to refuse to back down on the asking price (Urban). This definition is a befitting introduction for a Marxist interpretation of the a critical scene from David Mamet’s 1992 film, Glengarry Glen Ross. In this scene Alec Baldwin plays an abusive and authoritarian motivational speaker; while haranguing a satellite office of under-performing salesmen, Baldwin dangles a pair of brass balls before his “passively-consenting” audience of subordinates (Gramsci 673). He bellows: “You need brass balls to sell real estate,” and the varied connotations that the image of the dangling brass balls conjures reverberate in the mind of the audience. The testicular reference is hard to ignore and it is easy to interpret the sadistic call to action as an attack on the salesmen’s masculinity. However an alternate interpretation based upon the historical origins of the term “brass balls” lays bare the Marxist undercurrent of the scene.
In order to be able to drive a hard bargain, an economic system such as capitalism must be in place--without an indeterminate always fluctuating “exchange value” there is no hard bargain, no asking price, no tough sell (Capital 666). In his essay, Capital, Karl Marx illustrates how exchange value which “manifests itself as something totally independent of their use-value” leads to commodity fetishism. Through this system which obscures the social, political and mechanical means of production and alienates the laborer from his labor commodities become “mysterious” things (667). Alec Baldwin’s character is thus berating the proletariat salesmen to take advantage of the illusory notions of value that a capitalist market depends upon. Commodities are so divorced from their use value that bargains and tough sells are merely awaiting creation. All a salesman needs to do is decide on an asking price that suits his fancy--that needs relate in no way to an intrinsic or essential value of the product--and then with that price in mind: sell, sell, sell. When Alec Baldwin’s character says: “the money’s out there you go and pick it up,” he epitomizes the Marxist critique of a society where the essential value of commodities and labor has been masked…where the “form” obscures the “common factor” (666).
Alec Baldwin’s character is the voice of the bourgeoisie. His speech is representative of the superstructure of Marxist theory supporting and interacting with the material substance of society, what Marx terms the base. His ideological rant reinforces the relations of production. If the men do not “buy” into his despotic demands…driving the hard bargain, closing the sale…they are threatened with the loss of their means of subsistence. Baldwin’s character’s attack on the individuality, masculinity, and humanity of the salesmen is analogous to the Louis Althusser’s illustration of the “Beautiful Lies” told by “Priests and Despots” in his essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus. The salesmen “represent their real conditions of existence to themselves in an imaginary form--” their name is wanting because they do not drive an eighty thousand dollar BMW (Ideology 694). The cause of this imaginary transposition is locally and specifically the rant of Baldwin’s character. From a wider, more general perspective Althusser identifies the cause as: “the existence of a small number of cynical men who base their domination and exploitation of the ‘people’ on a falsified representation of the world which they have imagined in order to enslave other minds by dominating their imaginations” (694). In addition to being manipulated by what Althusser terms “Beautiful Lies” the salesmen are also subjected to the social power and domination that Gramsci defines as “hegemony” (Hegemony 673). According to Gramsci great masses of the population give “spontaneous” consent to the dominant social group to direct and control their social life due to the “prestige and (consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production” (673). The salesmen are passively consenting to their own oppression, but under the current capitalist system it does not seem as though they have much of a choice. If they attempt to disengage themselves from the dominant ideology they face “legally” enforced discipline from the apparatus of state coercive power (673). Baldwin’s character directs the sales staff’s attention to the three possible outcomes they face depending on how well they sell: first place is a shiny new Cadillac, second place is a set of steak knives, and third place is “you’re fired” (Glengarry).

Works Cited

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus.” Literary Theory: An Anthology.Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Blackwell Publishing, Maldon, Ma, 2004.
"Brass Balls". Urban Dictionary. 8/3/09 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brass+balls.
Glengarry Glen Ross. Screenplay by David Mamet. Dir. James Foley. Perf. Alec Baldwin, Al Pacino, and Ed Harris. 1992.
Gramsci, Antonio. “Hegemony.” Literary Theory: An Anthology.Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Blackwell Publishing, Maldon, Ma, 2004
Marx, Karl. “Capital.” Literary Theory: An Anthology.Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Blackwell Publishing, Maldon, Ma, 2004