Gallimard: From Semiotics to Seduction

Parsa Seyfi - Word Count: 1059

What’s your favourite song? 

Some might say ‘Shake it off’, ‘Shape of You’, or even ‘Friday’. 

Hopefully, given that our Lit Bros literature piece of the month was David Hwang’s M. Butterfly, your favourite song is master manipulator Song Lilling. In case you haven’t read Hwang’s drama, our perverted principal character René Gallimard — emotionally enraptured by the concept of a compliant Chinese girl — unknowingly aids in espionage, mirroring the experience of French diplomat Bernard Boursicot. 

Gallimard ‘[believed] what he [wanted] to hear’, and what he wanted to hear was a result of his, as well as the broader Occidental’s general exoticism of the East; their borderline obsession with Eastern women. Gallimard wanted to believe that there existed a fragile Oriental girl, in need of such help that even a weak little man like him could intervene, and because he wanted to believe, he did. 

Gallimard, the West and Artificial Binary Oppositions

You may have read M. Butterfly, thinking to yourself that it is impossible to fall for Song’s tricks, that you would immediately realise her true identity as a male. What if I told you that, though extremely unlikely, you possibly wouldn’t? 

“Liar! I would NEVER be so STUPID! 😡😡🤬🤬” 

I imagine you’re savagely screaming at me right now, tears of anger streaming from your eyes as you attempt, with all your might, to protect your sense of masculinity. But, the truth is, Gallimard was a victim of his environment. Yes, he was perverted, weak, and pathetic, but what truly stopped him from strongly accepting Song’s real identity was his fantasy of the submissive Eastern woman, a fantasy which has its roots firmly embedded within the structure of our language, decipherable through semiotics. 

Ferdinand de Saussure defined a binary opposition as ‘the means by which the units of language have value or meaning’. Binaries act as a pair of mutually exclusive signifiers, or phonological elements of a sign, and when placed against one another allow for a greater understanding of their own inherent meaning. For example, something cannot be ‘off’ if it is unable to be ‘on’ in the first place, hence, the meaning of ‘off’ is drawn from an understanding of its antithetical relationship with ‘on’. 

Since binary oppositions hold meaning, they are powerful in that they can influence people’s thoughts and consequently their actions. If you’re anything like me, you remember all the running races you had in primary school. Truth is, the fastest kid was always the most respected. They were powerful. A winner, while everyone else was a pathetic loser. The only other person remotely as powerful as them was the kid who brought the soccer ball they all played with. 

“I pick the teams because I’m faster than you. 😎” 

“My ball, my rules. 😐” 

For both people the instinctual binary opposition of a ‘winner’ and a ‘loser’, ‘powerful’ and ‘weak’ respectively arose, and the ‘winner’ and the ‘powerful’ were treated as such. However, regardless of their speed, or whether their parents bought them a soccer ball from Kmart, the children are not truly ‘opposites’, like light and shadow, but rather are all humans. Hence, false meaning was drawn from their artificial binary oppositions, which influenced their friends’ and their own actions, rendering the opposition itself powerful.  

The exoticism of the Orient is largely due to the artificial binary opposition constructed by the Occident. The signifiers ‘east’ and ‘west’ are natural binary oppositions, similar to ‘up’ and ‘down’ and are assigned such that they denote cultural boundaries as opposed to the physical location of countries on the world map. For example, Australia and New Zealand are considered ‘Western’ countries despite their objectively Eastern location. Evidently, someone didn’t know their lefts and rights. 😬

The danger in a false binary opposition arises when specific, damaging connotations are assigned to their representative signifiers, inferring meaning in the form of stereotypes. Such stereotypes are only possible because we view our artificial binary opposite as different, and hence capable of obtaining vastly different characteristics to us. Negative connotations are constructed through representations of the signified, an example of which being Gallimard’s ‘favourite opera: Madama Butterfly by Giaocomo Puccini’, in which the Japanese Cio-Cio-San, and thus the Oriental ideal is represented as submissive and adoring towards the American man to the extent of suicide should the American abandon them. 

In M. Butterfly, Hwang is able to critique the artificial binary opposition between the Occident and the Orient by highlighting the borderline delusional mentality it instilled into Gallimard. Gallimard, being the moron that he is, believed that ‘the east, deep down, wants to be dominated’, and having faced someone who supported this belief with their submissiveness, he ignored the potential man that was before him and instead indulged in his fantasy. If not for the binary opposition between the East and the West, and consequently the West’s exoticism of the East, Gallimard would not have ‘[chosen] fantasy’, as his fantasy wouldn’t exist. Hence, he would not have engaged in espionage, and I wouldn’t be here mocking him for it. 

Gallimard in the 21st Century

Gallimard’s fantasy; the Western interest in the Eastern mystique is still prevalent within modern media. In Disney’s 1998 film Mulan, Fa Mulan is dressed in a kimono, a piece of Japanese clothing in a movie which is, ironically, set in China. The Kimono, nonexistent in Western culture connotes mystery, and alongside the film’s demeaningly comedic representation of ancestral rituals, represents the East as spiritual, distant and different from the West; exotic. 

In the 2005 film Memoirs of a Geisha, Chiyo Sakamoto is sold into slavery due to poverty and becomes a geisha in the hopes of entering chairman Ken Imawura’s life. The chairman, who does business in America, serves as a suitable representation of a Western man, and the oriental girl is thus once again constructed such that she is willing to do anything to fulfil her desire for Western love. 

Hopefully, you’ve realised that in order to stop another ‘Gallimard’ from emerging, it is necessary to address our potential subconscious exoticism of the Orient — brought upon by representations in media — and thus, necessary to address the structure of our language. 

Otherwise, what I said earlier still applies. Anyone has the potential to become a ‘Gallimard’. Don’t get mad at me for it this time.

See you guys next month.