Deconstructing Madame Butterfly: The Politics Of David Henry Hwang--The Reversed Stereotypes Of The East For The West In M.Butterfly

Puccini's Madame Butterfly, describing how a submissive Oriental girl loves a cruel white man unconditionally but is abandoned and then commits suicide finally, is, without a doubt, the Westerners' projection of an ideal Oriental woman and reveals a sense of racial supremacy and imperialist mentality. Madame Butterfly, as a cultural product, tends to perpetuate the misconceptions it contains, thus making Madame Butterfly a stereotype for the Oriental woman.The strategy of masculining the West and feminizing the East inevitably involves the Western fantasy of a submissive and vulnerable Orient as feminine and reveals the desire of domination. The West refuses to regard the Oriental man as man, which is a kind of castration. By dominating the Oriental woman and feminizing the Oriental man the West gains certain superiority over the East.David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly shows up as a countering play, which, in a sense, tries to expose the sexual imperialism and deconstruct the cultural image of Madame Butterfly. Hwang initiates his deconstruction by breaking the myth of Madame Butterfly and reversing the role. Hwang recasts the Japanese geisha into a female impersonator from the Peking Opera and thus ironically changes the American sailor into a homosexual French diplomat. By reinterpretation and reinscription, the Western fantasy and racism are exposed to ridicule and satire while at the same time the myth of Madame Butterfly is broken and the stereotypes of the East for the West are reversed and subverted as well.Chapter I is an introduction to David Henry Hwang's Broadway hit M. Butterfly and critics' reviews. Chapter II exposes the racism and sexism Madame Butterfly contains and discusses the cultural image of Madame Butterfly for the Oriental woman. In Chapter III, I explore the way in which David Henry Hwang deconstructs Madame Butterfly. Chapter IV addresses the original and reversed stereotypes of the East for the West. The politics of David Henry Hwang in his M. Butterfly is discussed in Chapter V. The last Chapter attempts to suggest that the East and the West should cut through the respective layers of cultural and sexual misconceptions and deal with one another truthfully.In Madame Butterfly, the Oriental is in a submissive position and at last commits suicide while in M. Butterfly the condition is reversed. Both of them go to extremes. The golden rule is the middle course. Samuel P. Huntington, a profound contemporary scholar at Oxford University, predicts in his The Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking of World Order that seven or eight civilizations will become stronger in the future and the major clash of all between them will come from the difference of their cultures. The East and the West will have more and more chances to contact each other in the future. To live peacefully on the earth, people both in the East and the West have to utilize negative dialectics to clear through the stereotypes produced by cultural products and to combat misconceptions inscribed in Orientalism.