The Other Voice Resisting The Hegemonic Discourse: Subversion To The Traditional East-West Relations In David Henry Hwang's M.Butterfly

M. Butterfly opened successfully on Broadway on March 20, 1988, at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, and its author David Henry Hwang became the first Asian-American dramatist to earn the coveted Tony Award. M. Butterfly is based on an actual episode in 1964, an affair between a French diplomat and a Chinese Peking Opera actor. After being together for more than twenty years, did the diplomat find out that his lover was actually a man. David Henry Hwang also incorporates the plot of Puccini's famous opera Madame Butterfly into this play. Puccini's Madame Butterfly describes how a submissive Oriental girl loves a white cruel man unconditionally, but is abandoned and commits suicide finally. Madame Butterfly, as a cultural product, tends to perpetuate the misconceptions it contains and shows a sense of racial supremacy and imperialist mentality, which reflect the West's dominance over the East. David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly is a countering play, tries to deconstruct the cultural image of Madame Butterfly by reversing the role, and thus subverts the traditional relationship between the East and the West.Chapter one is an introduction to David Henry Hwang and his Broadway hit M. Butterfly, and the critical theory Post-colonialism is illustrated. Chapter two discusses the production of the cultural image of Madame Butterfly and explores the way in which David Henry Hwang subverts Madame Butterfly. Chapter three addresses David Henry Hwang's strategy of role reversal in M. Butterfly, by which the power relation between the East and the West is subverted. Chapter four discusses the international condition and America domestic condition, under what kind of premise can M. Butterfly be composed and the reversed relationship between the East and the West be achieved. The last chapter attempts to suggest that the East and the West should cut through respective layers of cultural and sexual misconception to deal with one other truthfully.In Madame Butterfly, the Oriental is in a submissive position, while in M. Butterfly the condition is reversed. Such an imbalance between the East and West is obviously a function of changing historical patterns. And the resurgence of political and cultural strength in the East furnishes David Henry Hwang with some important background to compose M. Butterfly. In the age of globalization, the East and the West will have more and more chances to contact with each other in the future. To live peacefully on the earth, people of different civilization have to resist racial misconceptions and learn about the language and cultural backgrounds of one another for our mutual good from the common and equal ground we share as human beings.