As its title suggests, "M. Butterfly" is essentially a play about metamorphosis. First of all, it is about the metamorphosis of Giacomo Puccini's famous opera “Madame Butterfly” into a modern geopolitical argument for cultural understanding. Author David Henry Hwang shows, through a highly implausible love story between a French diplomat and the Chinese opera singer he believes to be a woman, how the inability to separate desire from reality can lead to deception and tragedy. Less obviously, "M. Butterfly" alludes to the literal metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Gallimard transforms Song from “just a man” into “the perfect woman” (Hwang 88, 4). Because of his insecurity about his own masculinity, Gallimard needs to create Song in the image of the perfect Asian woman - exotic, sensual and willing - in order to feel fully masculine. Although he seeks to confine Song within the context of his fantasy, Gallimard's vulnerability and neediness actually liberate Song by providing him with an outlet to escape the orientalist representation of Asian peoples. Gallimard transforms Song into a butterfly, but instead of transforming him into “a butterfly writhing on a needle,” it is Gallimard who ends up finding himself trapped by his own fantasy (Hwang 32). Through an analysis of Gallimard's cultural, sexual, and personal relationship with Song Liling, Hwang demonstrates that his treatment of Song is a reflection of the Western rape mentality toward the Orient, an ultimately self-destructive philosophy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"?Get the original essay "Orientalism" is a term that refers to the study of oriental cultures, but, according to postcolonial theorist Edward Said, “can also express the strength of the West and the weakness of the East – as the West sees them. This strength and weakness are as intrinsic to Orientalism as to any view that divides the world into a great general division” (45). The Western rape mentality is a byproduct of the Western belief in the dominance and superiority of Western cultures. By playing on the racism and sexism inherent in Gallimard's orientalist belief system, it is not difficult for Song to deceive him. According to Song, "the West sees itself as masculine – big caliber, big industry, big money – so the East is feminine – weak, delicate, poor… the West thinks that the East, deep down, wants to be dominated”. " (Hwang 83). Because Song is from the East, he can never be fully masculine in Gallimard's eyes. The goal of this rape mentality is to serve as an imperialist reminder of the supremacy of the West and of assurance of its power over the East If the West feels inherently masculine and the East is feminine, its power is considered natural, real and justified in short, something that cannot be done about; Furthermore, the moral compass of Orientalism is the duty to help the East become more like the West, while retaining those aspects of its own culture that the West deigns to accept: “L. "The modern orientalist was, according to him, a hero saving the Orient from the obscurity, alienation and strangeness that he himself had correctly distinguished" (121). his colleague Toulon that the Asian people will always submit to the force of the greatest power (Hwang 46). Thus, by submitting to him, Song gave Gallimard the right to power. Hwang comments on cultural exchanges between East and West by forming "M. Butterfly" as a deconstructivist version of "Madame Butterfly"by Puccini. The idea that the beautiful Cio-Cio-San would commit ritual suicide because she was abandoned by Pinkerton, a naval officer who is "not very handsome, not very bright and more of a wimp", seems utterly absurd (Hwang 5). But as feminist writer Marina Heung observes: As a master text of Orientalism, “Madame Butterfly” confirms the perpetual sexual availability of the Asian woman for the Western man, even as her timely disappearance demarcates such liaisons ; ultimately, Cio-Cio-San's suicide recapitulates the face of the Asian whose inevitable death confirms his marginality within dominant culture and history. (Heung 225)For Gallimard, Song's Cio-Cio-San in his Pinkerton represents the supreme fantasy of male sexual power. This relationship is all the more ironic since Song is an opera singer and Gallimard met her during a diplomatic reception where she was hired to sing the death scene of Cio-Cio-San. In the first act, scene 13, when Gallimard first tells Song that he loves her, instead of asking for her love in return, Gallimard simply asks: "Are you my butterfly?" (Hwang 39) It is only when she responds in the affirmative that Gallimard responds: “My little Papillon, there should be no more secrets: I love you” (40). But while Gallimard's statement "Papillon... Papillon..." opens the play, it ends with Song's question: "Papillon? Papillon?" The reversal of the opening and closing lines indicates the dissolution of Gallimard's "Madame Butterfly" fantasy; just as the meaning of the verses has completely changed, the relationship between Gallimard and Song has also changed; it is Gallimard, at the end of the play, who has become Cio-Cio-San. The tragedy of Puccini's opera lies in the destruction of Cio-Cio-San, a beautiful and innocent Japanese woman who is ruined by the only man she loves. Even though the audience can't help but be moved by the helpless injustice of the situation, the circumstances in which it arises are still seen as entirely believable, from the Japanese bride to the American groom to the breakup painful about their relationship. As Song tells Gallimard during their first meeting, "because she's an Easterner who kills herself for a Westerner... you find it beautiful" (Hwang 17). If it were about a “blonde prom queen” and a “little Japanese businessman,” the play would be considered ridiculous (17). Heung agrees, writing that "Puccini's popular opera is in many ways a founding narrative of East-West relations, having shaped the Western construction of 'the Orient' as a sexualized and sexually conforming space, ripe for conquest and reign” (224). Because the Orient is considered so naturally feminine, any pairing between a blonde prom queen and a small-time Japanese businessman would be impossible; the businessman could never, in an orientalist framework, beat his Western competitors. Orientalism originated as a study, but its underlying racism developed in response to fear – primarily fear of the potential of the East, which poses a very real threat to the power of the East. West. A crucial element of Puccini's plot is that Prince Yamadori - rich, handsome and royal - loses Cio-Cio-San to Pinkerton, the poor American sailor. In true Orientalist fashion, Cio-Cio-San prefers to commit suicide rather than marry Prince Yamadori after experiencing the superior affections of Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton. Gallimard's reasoning for why most Asians hate "Madama Butterfly" is "because the white man gets the girl," but their disgust is not simply due to "sour grapes" (17). The figurative castration ofEast by West is a very real problem, a mindset that is beneficial to neither side and doomed to be fundamentally self-destructive. It seems unlikely that anyone could remain ignorant of the sex of their lover for twenty years, but "M. Butterfly" is based on the true story of French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and his Chinese mistress Shi Peipu, with whom he carried on a relationship twenty years before discovering the true identity of his lover. Hwang attempts, in "M. Butterfly," to provide an answer to how such an incongruous relationship could have come about. If he considers the affair between Gallimard and Song as a criticism of the xenophobic and supremacist perception of the West towards the Orient, Hwang writes in his afterword that it is not a “diatribe… quite the contrary, I consider it a call to all parties to break through our respective layers of cultural and sexual misperceptions, to deal honestly with each other for our own mutual good, on a common and equal ground on which share ourselves as human beings” (Hwang 100). The only probable reason why Gallimard and Boursicot were able to remain blind for so long is that they did not want to recognize the truth. Song explains to the judge, when he is on trial for espionage, that men only hear what they want to hear and that Gallimard believes himself to be a woman because he must accept that the woman in his fantasy is actually a woman. . Deeply insecure about his own masculinity, he experiences considerable communication problems in all his relationships with women. His marriage to Helga was a matter of convenience, his brief affair with Renee was fueled only by his sadistic desire to make Song suffer, and he maintained a twenty-year relationship with Song without any level of emotional intimacy. Gallimard's desperate need for domination reveals a vital weakness, which gives Song the means to assert his freedom from the castration of the East by asserting his sexual power over a member of the Western elite. Song knows exactly how to seduce Gallimard: “I take the words out of your mouth. Then I wait for you to come and collect them” (86). As he admits to Comrade Chin, only a man knows how a woman should behave; Because Song knows how the perfect Asian butterfly should act, he knows precisely how to seduce men like Gallimard (63). From the beginning of the play, the audience already knows the whole story. The play is presented in a series of chronological flashbacks interspersed with personal comments from the different characters. Sometimes, Gallimard and Song address the audience, inviting them to try to understand the different motivations of the characters. Gallimard's character is a tragic figure, because - as he readily admits to the audience - he does not wish to acknowledge the reality of his situation, but instead chooses to continue living in his imaginary world with his imaginary wife. In the final and decisive confrontation between Gallimard and Song, he says to Song: “Tonight, I finally learned to distinguish fantasy from reality. And, knowing the difference, I choose the fantastic” (Hwang 90). Like Cio-Cio-San, who faithfully waited for three years without a word from Pinkerton, Gallimard's most pitiful quality is his dogmatic inability to admit the obvious. "I knew all the time somewhere that my happiness was temporary, my love a deception. But my mind kept this knowledge at bay. To make the wait bearable" (88). Even after the truth is presented beyond doubt, Gallimard knows he cannot live with the weight of knowledge. In his final speech, Gallimard remembers with envy his "vision of the Orient... of thin women in chong sams and kimonos.