Let's Talk about the Butterfly in the Room

Fiction, Fantasy, and False Dichotomy in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly

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 When you search “kimono costume” on Google, the front page of images would make any Heian-era Japanese noble spit their tea out.

You’re presented with a window shop of atrocious cuts which scream “oriental sexploitation” rather than “traditional Eastern dress”. Note the provocative nature of the titles: “sexy”, and “doll”, the overabundance of white models (whatever happened to Japanese dress?), not to mention the tired chopsticks-in-hair trope and mix-match fabric patterns which amalgamate into a culturally confused caricature of Asian identity as seen through the perspective of a shallow Western gaze.

For those who are familiar with David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, this reductive portrayal of Asian women should come as no surprise as fitting right to French diplomat Rene Gallimard’s tastes. When considering these vapid portrayals of Asian culture, this excerpt from his final monologue comes to mind:

“There is a vision of the Orient that I have. Of slender women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils.”

Outdated derogatory language aside, there’s another glaring discrepancy in Gallimard’s words. He lumps in chong sams (traditional Chinese dress), with kimonos (Japanese dress) together underneath the monolithic label of the ‘Orient’. 

It’s an insight into how Gallimard perceives his relationship with Chinese opera singer (and secret spy!) Song Liling – and by extension, the rest of the Eastern world. 

For Gallimard, Song exists only as an object of desire who must submit to him. His completely reductive conception of the East and the submissive traits he imposes on Song are nothing more than a fantasy embedded in fiction and antiquity. Where Gallimard believes he has fallen in love with the “perfect woman” (who’s actually a man), he falls in love with a bastardisation of the East, which is in reality, a mere figment of his own creation: an imposition of what he believes the East should embody.

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The Puccini Playbook

To understand Gallimard’s delusion, one must understand the original drama that M. Butterfly can attribute its namesake to: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. It’s the tragic tale of American officer Pinkerton’s seduction and abandonment of 15-year-old Japanese Cio-Cio-San, otherwise known as Butterfly, who is driven to suicide. Madama Butterfly reflects the context of European imperialism it was written in; featuring values that simultaneously patronise women as being the inferior sex while portraying the white race as dominant and all-conquering against its Eastern counterparts.

These are attitudes that Gallimard forwardly sympathises with. He references Madama Butterfly as his favourite opera, and further portrays Pinkerton himself in metadramatic scenes. When Gallimard and Song begin to develop an intimate relationship, he’s obsessed with asking Song to be his “Butterfly”. Where Madama Butterfly represents the epitome of a Westernised story that construes a reductive portrayal of the East, Gallimard expresses his fondness for Pinkerton, the symbol of Western dominance: by extension associating himself with said symbol. It’s clear that Gallimard seeks to fulfil this fictionalised perception of a romance between the domineering, Western man, and the submissive Eastern woman through Song:

“I began to wonder, had I, too, caught a butterfly who would writhe on a needle?” 

Gallimard sees Song as a Butterfly, both symbolically and allegorically. Symbolically, it references the hobby of lepidoptery, - where dead butterflies are pinned in display cabinets to show off their beauty; showing that Gallimard objectifies Song as a sort of exotically beautiful trophy. Allegorically, with Gallimard’s un-ending references to Madama Butterfly that put him up to odds with the modern-day Disney adult, Gallimard is desperate to parallel the ‘love’ story of Pinkerton and Butterfly in his own life. He expects Song to naturally submit due to her Asian background under his sentiment that “Orientals will always submit to a greater force.” 

 

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Dichotomy and Delusion

So, if Pinkerton represents the fantasy of Western dominance over Eastern submission, Gallimard must represent the continued Western belief in this fairy tale. Song is no stranger to Gallimard’s flaccid dualistic understanding of the world, testifying to it during the Act 3 trial: 

“The West sees itself as masculine, big guns, big money, big industry, while it sees the East as feminine: weak, delicate, poor.” 

As a Western audience who’ve been fed this falsely dichotomist narrative ever since the Europeans figured out how to sail intercontinental ships, most are led to expect the same story to play out in M. Butterfly. We’re led to believe that, yet again, the Western man dominates the Eastern girl: which is what initially seems to be the case for Gallimard, rising up in the diplomatic world in what appears as a direct result of ghosting Song into a hysterical mess.

Song initially plays into this submissive persona, but it doesn’t take long for their true wings to burst from their cocoon. Gallimard’s delusional fantasy of Song and the Eastern world at large shatters in his mindscape: with Song assuming his masculine persona, asserting dominance over Gallimard in a total subversion of the gender and race dynamics perpetuated in Puccini’s original drama. Far removed from the submissive, modest persona that Song previously played while presenting as the stereotypical submissive Chinese woman, he provokes Gallimard, actively disobeying his pleas of “No!” and “I order you! To stop!”, cementing Song’s position of power.

But don’t be fooled that Song’s power over Gallimard can only be attributed to their sudden masculine presentation: even while still under the disguise of a woman, she brings Gallimard to his knees when he proclaims his desire to marry Song, showing the true extent of his dominance.

Truly putting the ambiguous ‘M’ in M. Butterfly, Song’s fluid embodiment of both the feminine and masculine, in addition to the dominant and submissive, serve as living, breathing proof that refutes Gallimard’s claustrophobic dichotomist worldview. There’s no such thing as inherent masculine Western dominance over a supposedly feminine, submissive East that exists outside of colonialist and patriarchal narratives – it’s fiction.

And yet, despite everything, Gallimard can’t face the truth. Even after Song’s confrontation, he desperately clings to his twisted and reductive fantasy, and by extension, the delusional fairy-tale of the East-West dichotomy: 

“Tonight, I’ve finally learned to tell fantasy from reality. And, knowing the difference, I choose fantasy.”

Ultimately, he’s the one plagued by naivety. Not Song. In a truly cathartic and climactic ending, Gallimard clings to his black-and-white fantasy, although not assuming the role he had auditioned for.

“…I have found her at last. In a prison on the outskirts of Paris. My name is Rene Gallimard—also known as Madame Butterfly.”

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En-mei Miao

1098 words.