M. Butterfly

M. Butterfly, a play by Henry David Hwang, cleverly manipulates stereotypes about race, gender, and sexuality from the Puccini's Opera, Mme Butterfly. In Mme Butterfly, an American serviceman buys a Vietnamese wife for a price equivocal to pocket change. She is the epitome of the doting, submissive Asian stereotype. The American boasts that, like a Butterfly, the woman is so tame that she'll eat from his hand. During his stint in her country, she bears a baby boy. Yet, soon afterwards, the man is sent back to the United States, leaving the heartbroken wife waiting for his return. Finally, when she realizes that he is lost forever, she commits suicide so that at least her son will have a better life. In a heart wrenching scene, the small boy is retrieved by the American's new wife. Her unfailing love and her sacrifice are glorified. Yet, Hwang challenges this submission by playing upon this first M. abbreviation, using the french Monsieur instead of the opera's Madame. In Hwang's play, Song, an assertive Chinese opera singer, asks the American, and the reader, to reconsider his "favorite fantasy, " that of "the submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man." She asks him, and her reader, to reconsider -"Consider it this way: what would you say if a blonde homecoming queen fell in love with a short Japanese businessman? ... "§However, presumably, Song becomes the American serviceman's Butterfly. Hong illustrates how his confidence, which was weak beforehand, grows because the newfound feelings of superiority that the relationship provides. Yet, as the play progresses, Hwang adds several surprise twists that border on the bizarre to dispel these misconceptions about race aand gender.