by Erica Boey
Madama Butterfly, the renowned opera by Giacomo Puccini was released in 1904 and inspired by John Luther Long’s short story Madame Butterfly (1899). The story tells the tragic tale of protagonist Cio Cio San, a young Japanese girl who falls in love with an American naval officer, Pinkerton. At the turn of the 20th century, 15-year-old Japanese geisha, Cio Cio San, better known as Butterfly, marries Pinkerton to escape poverty. She instantly devotes herself to the American, going as far as to denounce her own Japanese faith to convert to Christianity for him. Pinkerton, on the other hand, disregards the significance of the marriage. Instead, he intends to marry an American woman. He abandons Cio Cio San and their child in Japan, where she sorrowfully yearns for his return. After three years, Pinkerton arrives in Japan with his new wife. Heartbroken and devastated, Butterfly chooses to die with honor by taking her own life.
Critics believe the opera to be a poignant depiction of unrequited love. However, David Henry Hwang believes otherwise. Hwang is an Asian American playwright, screenwriter, and theater professor at Columbia University in New York City. After coming across a recent newspaper account of an actual international spy scandal between a French diplomat and Beijing Opera singer during the Vietnam War, Hwang wrote what would eventually be a Tony Award-winning play, M. Butterfly.
It premiered on Broadway in 1988, where the playwright uncovers his own interpretation of the scandal and the story of Madama Butterfly. The play is narrated by minor French diplomat Rene Gallimard, where he recounts his 20-year affair with his lover, Song Liling in mid-20th-century China. Gallimard meets Song Liling after watching the Peking Opera singer play Puccini’s Butterfly. Eventually, they both develop a relationship. Gallimard uses this relationship with Song, his personal Butterfly, to restore his sense of manhood. Unbeknownst to him, Song is a Chinese spy who seduces Gallimard to obtain information about the French for the Chinese Communist Party to leverage themselves in the Vietnam War. Their forbidden relationship explores the clashes between Eastern and Western cultures and the shifts of perceptions between each other. As the story unfolds, it is revealed that Song, the diplomat’s 20-year lover, is actually male. Driven into madness by this revelation, Gallimard takes his own life in his prison cell as the scandal comes to a tumultuous end.
Fortunately, I was given the opportunity to act in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student-led production of the play during my first semester. Since then, it has left a profound impression on me. The critically-acclaimed play is a bold piece that cleverly deconstructs Puccini’s Butterfly. But above all, Hwang’s M. Butterfly illustrates the dark side of Puccini’s opera and the 20th century — Orientalism. M. Butterfly is a richly-textured prominent postcolonial drama that heavily critiques Orientalism, stereotypes of Eastern and Western civilization, and racial and gender identity. The play highlights the blatant sexism and misconceptions of the Orient propagated in Puccini’s opera. It criticizes and even rebukes the Occident’s ideals of the “exotic East”. It sheds light on the gendered warfare of the subaltern during the Vietnam war by giving them a voice. The gradual dismantlement of Hegel’s master slave-dialectic is present in the progression of Song and Gallimard’s relationship, where the conception of gender plays a pivotal role in the formation recognition or misrecognition of the characters.
The East: Debunking Objects of the “Feminine Mystique”
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly has similar themes to the Western ideals and perceptions of the Orientals. The “exotic” East is deemed as mysterious, inscrutable, and ultimately, inferior to the Occident. The object comes into definition through objectification (Said 1979, 27). Based on Puccini’s assumptions about the East, the play paints the Orient as beings that are helpless to resist. Cio Cio San is willing to surrender the entirety of her culture and being for a White Caucasian man. She is a “poor little thing” condemned to a life of tragedy. The Asian female lead is naive and childlike, an object of submission to the West.
M Butterfly: Act 1 Scene 4
In the scene above, an excerpt from Madama Butterfly is depicted in M. Butterfly to exemplify the dogmatic views Western men had on Oriental women. This idea of the Oriental women’s desire to being subjugated by violence is one of the many instances in Puccini’s play that propogates European representation of the colonized that is far from an objective or accurate truth. While seemingly minute and inconsequential, stereotypes on the Orient during the colonial period were pervasive and can penetrate into different societal structures.
M. Butterfly: Act 1 Scene 3
Beyond the derogatory perception of the Orient, colonization further enables the West to capitalize on their ideals in an oppressive manner. According to Said, this presumed knowledge of the Orient is deeply internalized within the psychology of the colonial being, and in turn manifests itself in institutions as a form of colonial conquest, occupation, and administration (Zhang 2002, 7). In Act 1 Scene 3 of M. Butterfly, Gallimard recounts the events that occur in Madama Butterfly in his prison cell. He explains the marriage laws in 20th-century Japan, where Oriental women are treated as property to be bought by Western men. In this scene, not only are we able to understand the oppressive system established by the Western world on the people of the Orient, but it also highlights the unbothered nature of the Occident on their actions. Gallimard uses the phrase “great bargains” and “package deal” to describe Pinkerton’s purchase of Cio Cio San. Through the systemic integration of the Western’s knowledge of the Orient into various societal bodies, the objectification of Asian women is proliferated throughout generations as a theory that ultimately becomes ingrained as a part of general culture.
Hwang attempts to condemn the false ideals of the West and Puccini’s play in his writings, most prevalently through Song Liling. Throughout the play, Song consistently challenges Gallimard’s perception of the East. The Peking Opera singer is the play’s most prominent figure in facilitating Hwang’s views on anticolonialism and gender during this time period.
M. Butterfly: Act One Scene 8
Puccini’s play presents the women of the East as victims of imperialization and their own culture. They are objects who do not have autonomy over body and mind and the West manipulates this to their own advantage. However, the West does not realize how the Oriental woman has utilized misogyny to navigate the system. In Act One Scene Eight of M. Butterfly, Song gives Gallimard a glimpse into the life of an Oriental woman. When speaking to the French diplomat, he characterizes the women of the Orient as “delicate” and “slender lotus blossoms”, an implication that women of the East were well aware of the fetishization of the West.
In an interview, Hwang explains the East’s complicity in projecting a dual form of cultural stereotyping (Hwang & DiGaetani 1989, 13). “We have always held a certain fascination for you Caucasian men, have we not?” said Song, is a justification of the occurrence of the reverse fascination of the West from the East, a possibility that seems unfathomable to the West. Gallimard’s hesitance in the line “that fascination is imperialist”, not only insinuates the West’s self-acknowledgment of their derogatory behavior, but it is foreshadowing on how the Orient attempts to disrupt the hierarchy between the subject and the object.
Let the Butterfly Speak: An Homage to the Heroes of Gendered Warfare
(from the Left): M. Butterfly: Act One Scene 13, Act Two Scene Two
(Bottom): M. Butterfly: Continuation of Act Two Scene Two, Act Two Scene Three
During periods of war, women played into misogyny to conduct belligerent activity or acquire information from the enemy. Similarly to the Female Bombers scene of Battle of the Algiers, Song utilizes gendered warfare in the form of honey-trapping to obtain knowledge on the French and Americans from Gallimard for the Chinese Communist Party. In Act One Scene 13, Song takes advantage of the West’s sexualization of the Asian woman, specifically the notion of the modest and untouched Chinese girl, to seduce Gallimard. Evidently, this pays off as we see in the beginning of Act Two, where Song ridicules the sexism of their own culture while bolstering the ideals of the West as saviors to Asian women. His unsuspecting nature to the eye of the colonizer allows him to worm into the inner circles of Gallimard’s war discussions. This scene signifies women in the war were deemed as unconvincing and incapable by men on either side of the spectrum, and this placed them in morally complex positions.
M. Butterfly: Act Two Scene Five
Women, who are the subalterns of history, are caught in a proxy of men of the colonial power or colonized believe they are saving women from one another (Spivak 1988, 16). However, participants of gendered warfare who committed adultery to penetrate the colonial power are a subgroup of the subaltern. In morally acceptable warfare, Chinese women who take up arms are praised for their nobility and bravery in spite of their unusualness, but those who engage in espionage and honey-trapping are often condemned despite advocating for the same nationalistic causes against a common aggressor. In this scene, Chin revers to Song with disgust, much like the scrutiny against sex spies in China. Under Chairman Mao, women spies deployed by the CCP face degradation from both their nation and the colonized. Women spies are subjected to developing an intimate relationships with members of the Occident. However, Orientalism forced the nature of women’s espionage roles to be inevitably sexualized, which taints the morality and chastity of the CCP (Edwards 2012, 20). The West per are just objects or playthings. To the CCP and post-war rewriting of history, sex spies are repulsed by their own people. Due to the high morality placed upon women in a collectivist and conservative country like China, acknowledging this war strategy will be a hindrance in legitimizing a then-fractured government. Hence, the roles of sex spies are silenced due to their “controversial” means of achieving their goals.
M. Butterfly attempts to shed light on the stigmatization of characters like Song, who are victims of Orientalism and Mao’s iron fist rule. But above all, the playwright provides the subaltern the opportunity to have a voice by criticizing the discrimination inflicted by both the West and the East.
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M. Butterfly: Act Three, Scene One
In Act Three Scene One, the narrative of the play is transferred to Song. He recounts his perspective of the affair, and he blatantly states his unfiltered judgments about Orientalism and the West’s misogyny toward Asian women in a Western courthouse. Hwang has allowed the Butterfly to speak, in full force. Through Song, M. Butterfly opens the conversation of a part of history that has consistently been silenced. Here, the unexpressed rage and hatred for the Western patriarchy and objectification are addressed through the voice of the subaltern. The Occident is condemned by the most unexpecting of Orientals — the unsuspecting Butterfly.
The Dismantlement of Hierarchy: Recognition and the Master-Slave Dialectic
Unlike Puccini’s Butterfly where the self-identification of Pinkerton and Butterfly are solidified through the perceptions of the West, recognition and power dynamics in Hwang’s M. Butterfly is reversed between our two main characters.
(Top): M. Butterfly: Act Two, Scene Seven
(Bottom) M. Butterfly: Act Three, Scene One
At first glance, Song could be said to occupy a similar role as Puccini’s Butterfly — an objectified vessel for the West whose sole purpose is to drive the plot of the story. In this case, Gallimard’s desire for the perfect woman, or the possibility of his repressed homosexual desires. However, we see that Song has complete agency over who he is as the gender-fluid Peking Opera singer. The difference in the hierarchy of the subject-object relationship is defined by the disparity of knowledge and power (Quijano 2007, 10). Gallimard believed that his perceived knowledge that was projected on the Orient gave him leverage on the hierarchy. However, Song always had the upper hand in their relationship, the object was constantly steering the subject’s story. The Peking Opera singer expresses his agency through his ability to navigate his unjust society by being self-assured in his gender identity. This self-assurance allows Song to not only be indifferent to the objectification of the West and the ostracization of the East, but it also provided him with the confidence to manipulate the system to his advantage. The object may internalize their identity as inferior in their given reality, but that does not mean that they are defined by it. It is the counterrevolutionary acts of the object that can spark radical change, and even start a revolution. Song absorbed the projections of the West on his identity, but he never settled for them. Instead, he defied all the odds and served China on his own terms.
The success of Song’s deception could not have come into fruition without Gallimard’s misrecognition of himself, as the subject, and the Orient. The French diplomat’s relationship with Song was built on a Western male fantasy of the perfect Oriental flower.
M. Butterfly: Act Two Scene 11
M. Butterfly Act Three Scene 3
To maintain control over the object, Gallimard refuses to believe in the possibility of Song being anything other than his fantasy woman in spite of knowing the truth all along. Admitting and acknowledging Song’s true identity would go against everything he believed about the Orient, and more importantly, himself. The formation of self-consciousness is a product of culture and society which contributes greatly to the hierarchical master-slave dialectic (Hegel 1977, 10). The revelation of the truth invalidates the legitimacy of Gallimard’s entire existence, and it exposes his misrecognition to society. As the slave, Song has nothing more to lose, but Gallimard, the master, has everything to lose. The mutual recognition between master and slave is dismantled, and it completely warps the power dynamic of the subject-object relationship. The end of M. Butterfly comes into a full circle with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, where the loss of autonomy of one’s self leads both Gallimard and Cio Cio San to their own demise.
The Butterfly is the master, and the master is the slave all along.
Living Through it All: My Takeaways from Acting in the Play
Having just arrived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for no more than one semester, I never would have imagined acting in a student-led production in such a provocative play. After taking this class, being a part of the M. Butterfly world has a new meaning to me. Playing Comrade Chin alongside my Song has made me more appreciative of the Butterflies who fought to push their own narrative in spite of circumstances. What I find to be the most compelling part of M. Butterfly’s screenplay is its level of attentiveness in fleshing out the nuances of Orientalism. From gender to warfare, Hwang creates a world that holds the West accountable for its injustices and amplifies the voices of the Orient that have been excluded from history. He gives his hope that the cycle can be broken when voices are amplified, making M. Butterfly an empowering crash course in postcolonial art that transcends the masses throughout generations.
Reference List
Central College. 2019. “Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic: The Search for Self-Consciousness.” Writing Anthology. Accessed April 27, 2023. https://central.edu/writing-anthology/2019/07/08/hegels-master-slave-dialectic-the-search-for-self-consciousness/.
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
Edwards, Louise. 2012. “Women Sex-Spies: Chastity, National Dignity, Legitimate Government and Ding Ling’s ‘When I Was in Xia Village.’” The China Quarterly, no. 212: 1059-1078. doi:10.1017/S0305741012001210.
Hegel, G.W.F. [1807] 1977. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hwang, David. 1988. M. Butterfly. Plume.
Hwang, David, and John Louis DiGaetani. 1989. “‘M. Butterfly’: An Interview with David Henry Hwang.” TDR (1988-) 33 (3): 141-153. doi:10.2307/1145993.
Zhang, Pinggong. 2002. “Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient — On Edwad W. Said’s Orientalism.” Comparative Literature: East & West 4 (1): 176-183. doi:10.1080/25723618.2002.12015317.
Puccini, Giacomo. 1904. Madama Butterfly. Libretto by L. Illica and G. Giacosa. Milan, La Scala Theatre.
Quijano, Aníbal. 2007. “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” Cultural Studies 21 (2-3): 168-178. doi:10.1080/09502380601164353.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Die Philosophin 14 (27): 42-58.