As the title suggests, "M. Butterfly" is essentially a play about metamorphosis. It is, first and foremost, 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 unlikely 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 "merely 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 acquiescent - in order to feel completely masculine. Although he tries to confine Song within the context of his fantasy, Gallimard's vulnerability and need actually liberate Song by providing her with an outlet to escape the Orientalist representation of Asian people. Gallimard turns Song into a butterfly, but instead of turning him into “a butterfly writhing on a needle,” Gallimard is the one who ultimately ends up 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 East, a philosophy that is ultimately self-destructive. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay "Orientalism" is a term that refers to the study of Eastern cultures, but, according to postcolonial theorist Edward Said, "it can also express the strength of the West and the weakness of the East – as seen from the West. Such strength and weakness are as intrinsic to Orientalism as they are to any view that divides the world into a broad general divide” (45). Western cultures. 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 guns, big industry, big money - hence the East it is feminine – weak, delicate, poor…the West thinks that the East, deep down, wants to be dominated.’” (Hwang 83). Since Song is from the East, he can never be completely 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 a guarantee of its power over the East. If the West feels that it is innately masculine and that the East is feminine, its power is seen as natural, real, and justified; in short, something about which nothing can be done. Furthermore, the moral compass of Orientalism is the duty to help the East become more like the West, while retaining aspects of its own culture that the West deigns to accept. Said writes, “The modern Orientalist was, in his view, a hero who saved the East from the darkness, alienation, and strangeness which he himself had adequately distinguished” (121). In a significant scene, Gallimard tells his colleague Toulon that the Asian people will always submit to the force of the greatest power (Hwang 46). Therefore, by submitting to him, Song gave Gallimard the right to power. Hwang comments on the cultural exchange between East and West forming "M. Butterfly" as a deconstructivist version of Puccini's "Madame Butterfly". The idea that the beautifulCio-Cio-San commits ritual suicide because she was abandoned by Pinkerton, a "not very handsome, not very intelligent, and basically a wimp" naval officer, seems completely absurd (Hwang 5). But as feminist writer Marina Heung observes: As a foundational text of Orientalism, "Madame Butterfly" confirms the perpetual sexual availability of the Asian woman to the Western man, even as her convenient disappearance delimits such relationships; ultimately, Cio-Cio-San's suicide recapitulates the face of the expendable Asian whose inevitable death confirms her marginality within dominant culture and history. (Heung 225) For Gallimard, Song's Cio-Cio-San for his Pinkerton represents the supreme fantasy of male sexual power. This relationship is made even more ironic because Song is an opera singer and Gallimard meets her during a diplomatic function where she has been hired to sing Cio-Cio-San's death scene. In Act I, 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 he answers in the affirmative that Gallimard responds, “My little butterfly, there should be no more secrets: I love you” (40). But while Gallimard's statement "Butterfly...Butterfly..." opens the show, it closes with Song's question: "Butterfly? Butterfly?" The reversal of the opening and closing lines indicates the dissolution of the fantasy of Gallimard's "Madame Butterfly"; just as the meaning of the lines changed completely, so did the relationship between Gallimard and Song; it is Gallimard, at the end of the work, 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 girl who is ruined by the only man she loves. loved. While the audience can't help but be moved by the helpless injustice of the situation, the circumstances in which it occurs are still perceived as entirely believable, from the Japanese bride, to the American groom, to the painful end of their relationship. As Song tells Gallimard when they first meet, “because he is an Easterner who kills himself for a Westerner… you find him beautiful” (Hwang 17). If it were about "a blonde beauty queen" and a "short Japanese businessman", the comedy would be considered ridiculous (17). Heung agrees, writing that "Puccini's popular opera is in many ways a foundational narrative of East-West relations, having shaped the Western construction of the 'Orient' as a sexualized and sexually compliant space, ripe for conquest and domination." ( 224). Since the Orient is seen as innately feminine, any association between a blonde beauty queen and a short Japanese businessman would be impossible; the businessman could never, in an orientalist framework, beat Western competition. West. A critical element in 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 would rather kill herself than marry Prince Yamadori after experiencing Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton's superior affection. Gallimard's reasoning for why most Asians hate "Madame Butterfly" is "because the white man gets the girl," but their disgust is due to more than just "sour grapes" (17). The figurative castration of the East by the West is a very real problem, a mentality that is beneficial to neither party and is destined to be fundamentally self-destructive. It seems unlikely that anyone could remain ignorant about the sex of their lover for twenty years, but "M. Butterfly" isbased on the true story of French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and his Chinese lover Shi Peipu, with whom he had a twenty-year affair before discovering his lover's true identity. Hwang attempts, in "M. Butterfly", to provide an answer as to how such an incongruous relationship could have arisen. While he intends the relationship between Gallimard and Song to be a critique of the West's xenophobic and supremacist perception of the East, Hwang writes in his afterword that it is not a "diatribe... on the contrary, I take it to be an appeal to all parties to overcome our respective layers of cultural and sexual misperception, to deal with each other sincerely for our mutual good, from the common and equal ground that we share as human beings" (Hwang 100). The only likely reason why Gallimard and Boursicot could have remained blind for so long is because they did not want to acknowledge the truth. Song explains to the judge, when he is put on trial for espionage, that men only hear what they want to hear and that Gallimard believes he is a woman because he has to accept that his fantasy woman is actually a woman. profound insecurity regarding his masculinity, experiences significant communication problems in all his relationships with women. His marriage to Helga was a matter of convenience, his brief relationship with Renee was fueled only by his sadistic desire to cause Song pain, and he maintained a twenty-year relationship with Song without any level of emotional intimacy. Gallimard's desperate need for domination exposes a vital weakness, which provides Song with the means by which to assert his freedom from Eastern castration by asserting his sexual power over a member of the Western elite. The song knows exactly how to seduce Gallimard: "I take the words from your mouth. Then I wait for you to come and retrieve 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 behave, she knows exactly how to seduce men like Gallimard (63). From the beginning of the show the audience already knows the whole story. The show is presented in a series of chronological flashbacks interspersed with personal comments from various characters. At times, both Gallimard and Song speak to the audience, inviting them to try to understand the characters' different motivations. Gallimard's character is a tragic figure, because - as he readily admits to the audience - he does not want to recognize the actuality of his situation, but rather chooses to continue living in his imaginary world with his imaginary woman. In the final and climactic confrontation between Gallimard and Song, he tells Song, "Tonight I have finally learned to distinguish fantasy from reality. And, knowing the difference, I choose fantasy" (Hwang 90). Like Cio-Cio-San, who waited faithfully for three years without a word from Pinkerton, Gallimard's most pitiful quality is his dogmatic inability to admit the obvious truth. "I always knew somewhere that my happiness was temporary, my love a deception. But my mind kept this knowledge at bay. To make the waiting bearable" (88). Even after the truth has been presented beyond any doubt, Gallimard knows that he cannot live with the burden of knowledge. In his final speech, Gallimard nostalgically recalls his "vision of the East...of slender women in chong sams and kimonos dying for the love of unworthy foreign devils" (91). Like the tragic heroine of "Madame Butterfly," Gallimard chooses to die with the death of a dream rather than live with the acceptance of facts. Gallimard claims to die for love, and to a certain extent he is right: he loves the woman. he believed Song was. "The man I loved was a scoundrel, a limit. He deserved nothing more than a kick in the.