Incarnations Of Butterfly

Madame Butterfly, made world-known by Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, is a classical Western construction of Asia. Produced in the prime of Orientalism-the discourse that nourishes the generation of this icon, the tale of Madame Butterfly, is portrayed subversively in postmodern playwright, David Henry Hwang's, 1988 play M. Butterfly.The formulation of this Western archetype of an Asian woman as Madame Butterfly, examined under the light of post-colonial criticism of Orientalism, unearths the double misrepresentations in this symbol of "perfect femininity": East distorted by West and woman misunderstood by man. Although such a fantasy of an Asian woman never translates into real encounter between Caucasians and Asians, the figure of Madame Butterfly dominates Western understanding of Asia even today.Countering the dated prototype of an effeminized Asia, David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly manifestly undoes the Orientalist tale in Puccini's opera. Hwang's deconstruction of Madama Butterfly ridicules the Western mind of reading Asians as forever submissive females sacrificing groundlessly for Westerners. In re-incarnating Butterfly as the Western man who falls for his fantasy of an "Oriental woman", M. Butterfly subverts the racist and sexist discourses by performing gender and nationality as superficial signs referring to no definitesubjects. Reading the play with Judith Butler's notion of "performative gender" and Stuart Hall's defining national identity through the framework of an imaginative cultural narration, the substantial being of any identity is undermined through its subversive performance of the icon of Madame Butterfly.The study of the performances of Butterfly in different incarnations demonstrates the destructive mistake of believing in fantasies and stereotypes in any interracial relationships. Getting away from icons as Madame Butterfly, a successful interracial relationship, like any other encounters between different cultures, is rooted in healthy understanding and mutual respect of each other of its participants.