M. Butterfly Representing Asia through Various Elements - Essay Example

Production of M. Butterfly M. Butterfly investigates Western stereotypes towards Asian and the prejudice of sexual identity and Gender. M butterfly is a play that David Henry Hwang wrote in the year 1988; it was based on the relation between the diplomat of French Bernard Boursicot and a Peking opera singer, Shi Pei Pu. The play got premiered on the Broadway at the theater of Eugene O’Neil in the same year, closing after several performances in the year 1990 (David pg 2). The play got directed by John Dexter with stars like John Lithgow acting as Gallimard and BD Wong acting as Song Liling. M Butterfly play is one of the most popular plays and which was a highly applauded Asian American plays during the late 20th century. The importance of this play and the new visibility of Asian American theater reveal the growing attention given to cultural, political and intellectual issues. The intellectual issue includes ethnicity, gender, race, and sexualities (David pg. 12). The main strategies of understanding the play depend on the background of political histories between North America, China and Europe as well as on the cultural political of Orientalism. Critical reading of M butterfly varies from debates over the re3prewsentation of sexualities and ethnicity, theories of performance, politics of Orientalism, and the notion of the masquerade. This paper intends to look at how M. Butterfly represents Asia through several things. The image of a woman of Asia as both dangerous and sensual is important. The clash in this combination of need for fear of Oriental women gives some light on the manner in which inter-racial relationship get viewed in America (David pg 24). The plot of an Inter-racial romance that is seen in this play about a European American mans fateful love affair with a lady from another culture and race, almost ended in the nonwhite tragic pregnancy of a woman or her final sacrifice. It depicts the best of the two worlds like Gina Machetti states while apparently confirming a complete separation of the races; it also gives way for the possibility of assimilation through adopting mixed-raced child. This kind of unfortunate love between white men and Asian women becomes an efficient cultural means of accepting the interracial relationships; it is a method that emphasizes the splendor of love as an ideology and, concurrently, introduces the transitory and the tragic nature of inter-racial love. The symbol of Butterfly serves well the cultural trends of her time: she reflects the persistent fantasy on the submissive, hyper-sexualized oriental and exotic woman, but at the same time, her noble quiet nature of self-effacement through dying maintains and guarantees the myth and belief of racial purity (David pg.37). The most important construct in M, Butterfly according to David Hwang is the shape of Butterfly as an Orientalist dream of a beautiful Asian woman who sacrifices herself for the love of a white man (David pg 39). While driving down Santa Monica Boulevard on an afternoon in the year 19876, David had a vision of a play that would deconstruct Madame Butterfly. Hence, one of the first crucial pedagogical approaches to this play is to get a hope the play first performs and then debunk the projection wish of western masculinity imagination about an Oriental lady. Just like Andrew Shin states, M. Butterfly dislocates sexual and moral agency from a normative white male body and gives a provocation to queer and postcolonial discourses through the conceiving of concepts of imposture and acting (David pg. 40). The dismantling of the play of Orientalist starts with its affirmation of the fictionalization of racial or ethnic fantasy and cultural constructivism of gender fantasy in connection to Orientalist discourse. The gendered and racialized experiences of Asians in America have produced a crisis on identity of sex for both men and women. On one side, the Asian American women get challenged by the procedure of hyper-sexualized and exoticization as items of sexual desire; on the other hand, Asian American men, go through emasculation when they get confronted with historical bias that disallowed them to be classified within a heterosexual situation, are effeminized. As a matter of fact, one finds male and Asian to be different terms, giving prove to what Sau-Ling Wong names as the metricizing of gender. The characterization of the desire of the Butterfly for a white man, even in the shape of David’s revision of the Butterfly symbol, according to some male scholars of Asian American further extends and inflames the historical emasculation of men from Asia already in progress (David pg 50). A further development on the notion of cultural representation through building of communist in this play through the references made by Comrade Chin and Song in the western masculine tend to be problematic. There live two different stereotypes in the Orientalist Dream: the western men and Oriental women. The Oriental woman is stereotyped as a person who is both eager and exotic to get dominated while the western man is stereotyped as intensely masculine-powerful and dominating. While western women have threatened the masculinity, it finds security in the Oriental female who does not question about her work. David Hwang challenges the two different stereotypes in the play by depicting a reversal in roles (David pg. 57). His ignorance, which is intensely rooted in the Orientalist dream, makes him fail to see Song for what she is exactly is- a man. Song is capable of creating the illusion of the work of the Oriental woman so as to gain access to classified data. While Gallimard supposes that he is piercing the exoticized Orient by invading the place of Song as the traditional restrained Asian woman, it is not noticed to him that his character has started to take after the role of that which looks for very badly to claim. Song, who finally reveals his real gender, does not show the usual character traits of the Oriental male, but instead he shows the character traits of the western male colonizer, putting him in power. Consequently, Gallimard meets his fate at last as the doomed butterfly- he is weakened and fully does his work of the quintessential Asian female (David pg 60). The change makes the west become the scene instead of the East. The Orient makes use of the West by use of tropes that were meant to oppress the former. Nevertheless, the rejection of the truth of the gender of Song shows a bleeding of ethnic and gender lines. That the dual stereotypes may not be dual-m the significance of the character in this play is the capability to be watery fitting in the gender stereotypes that is set by their ethnicities, neither is a whole man or whole woman despite their physical sex. M. Butterfly as an Asian representative of women; the sacrifices of women can be traced back in bibles stories like that of Ruth, who indeed gave up everything just for her husband’s sake whose religion and culture was different from hers. In United States, Pocahontas stories, which call for a woman’s sacrifice for the sake of white men. Nevertheless, M. butterfly has become the popular modern manifestation of this kind of narratives. The play is a tragic tale of love, disloyalty and a young mother sacrifice. It is a tackle, and myth lies at the bottom of the western view of Japanese women as selfless, passive and dedicated full to their families and husbands (David pg 65). The work shows several prejudices and stereotypes of the western world that concern the oriental culture. It becomes an emblem and myth of the woman from Japan and the ultimate of loving self-sacrificing, and a devoted wife to a western husband. Regardless of the changes and the rise in independence of Japanese in the nineties, the dated western stereotypes of women from Japanese remain firmly entrenched in film media, broadcasted, and film. In the latter, mostly women from Japan are still habitually depicted with geisha attire and painted faces. The photo type for each of these images was Cio-Cio-San in M. Butterfly. This classical display has no doubt had a long effect on the psyche of men from the west. The gentleness and compliance accredited to women from Japan have a lengthy struck responsive chord in men employed to confrontational, self-assertive, and independent western women. There are several visual features in this performance that attributed in the process of stereotyping the Asian women as the white face makeup, hair style, stenograph of the region and especially the costumes which are kimonos of the key character of the play M.Butterfly. The people from west try to understand Japan through the symbol of kimono. There are several types of kimono that are dressed depending on the age of the wearer, formality of the occasion, time of the day, marital status, and time of the season. In addition to styles and colors, the manner in which kimono is dressed varies between whether the woman is married or single. All these factors get into the play when deciding which kimono is suitable to wear and the manner in which to wear it which shows that kimono is not just a dress to be worn but it is a culture. The people from the west have treated this culture with great contempt since any figure of kimono represents women from Asia despite the kimono culture. M. Butterfly assisted in stereotyping women from Asia by surrounding them by a barrier of isolation. It has become a symbol of the cultural identity and a parody that get associated with feminists, fragility, and submission. And through dealing with kimono as a symbol of representation of that culture it became connected to these concepts. As if M. Butterfly did not dress the kimono several notion and stereotyping observation could change (David pg 70). The play incorporates performance approach from the east and west. The play is a deconstruction of operas of Puccini of M. Butterfly, while showcasing the art form from Eastern including Kabuki and Peking Opera. There are few aforementioned performances styles: Giacomo Puccini’s M Butterfly; set during the 20th century Nagasaki, Japan, the opera informs of the love story of an American navy soldier Benjamin and the young Japanese bride by the name Cio Cio San (David pg.78). Benjamin tells his friend Sharpness that he is planning to marry a Japanese woman. The scene in Peking Opera is nominal; the set mostly consists of just a chair and a table. Symbolic gestures and movements are used to narrate complicated stories. For instance, four soldiers and four generals stand for an army of thousands, while waving a whisk with tassels in the air stand for a riding horse. According to David (pg 80)In the play M. Butterfly, Song is a Dan, a Peking opera practitioner that is specializing in the role of women. Kabuki is a mix of three characters from China: Ki the artisan, Bu the dance and Ka the song. The traditional art form of Japan is a spectacle of high stylized music, dancing and acting on the stage. M Butterfly integrates Kabuki by including Koroko dancers. They are stagehands that rarely play small sections. They dress in clothes of color black to depict that they are not visible and are not part of what is occurring. Conclusion Some opponents state that in the play the willingness of Gallimard to accept Song like a woman is a normal extension of his view of men from Asia as feminized figures. Moreover, Gallimard’s labeling of women from Asia as modest and submissive makes it possible for Song to stay with him, not being revealed as a man. The relationship of Gallimard with song shows that his Colonia attitude towards the culture of Asia. Nevertheless, in the end he turns to a butterfly that is ready to sacrifice for love and kills himself. As for Song, even though it looks like he is the one who betrays Gallimard, he also get betrayed by himself since he forgot his own pursuit for his nation, including his love, his life and even his freedom (David pg. 98). What a sad, tragic, but amazing play. Works cited David, H. H. M. Butterfly. New York : Dramatists Play Service, [2008?], ©1988 print. Read More