An Analysis Of M. Butterfly From The Perspective Of Postcolonialism

M. Butterfly was finished in October,1986.The play is based on a real spy case, Chinese M.Butterfly, which happened in France in1960s. M. Butterfly is the first Chinese play that wasperformed at Broadway. David Henry Hwang was honored with Tony Award for best Play in1988and he is the first Chinese American playwright who has won the great prize. M. Butterflydeconstructed Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. The play is considered as a subversion of the originalorientalism and now it has become the necessary reading book for western university students.Compared to the research abroad, the research on M. Butterfly at home started late. Theresearchers mostly start from the perspective of Deconstructionism and Orientalism to explainpolitical problems. Most of the foreign researchers think that the playwright David HenryHwang expresses his political standpoint as “the East is stronger than the West”. The maincomments at home think this play caters to the western stereotype. But the former commentsseldom analyze the sources that caused the protagonists’ hard situation from the play itself.From the perspective of Postcolonialism, this thesis analyzes the protagonists’ identity crisisand discusses the reasons that cause this crisis through Orientalism, Hybridity and Subalterntheory.This thesis contains six parts.Chapter One is a general introduction to David Henry Hwang and M. Butterfly. This chapteralso presents the research purpose and the background of this thesis.Chapter Two presents literature review and the relevant postcolonial theories. Literaturereview is about the domestic and overseas critics’ researches and comments on M. Butterfly fromdifferent perspectives. Most of the preliminary researches start from the political perspective todiscuss the colonial discourse and the relation between the East and the West. However, in orderto find out the source of the identity crisis and find out a harmonious and co-development way inthe globalized world, this thesis analyzes M. Butterfly by Postcolonialism comprehensively.Theoretical basis introduces the relevant postcolonial concepts and ideas of this thesis. This partshows that the postcolonialists want to pursue a “common and equal ground” of dealing withinternational affairs, which is accordant with David Henry Hwang’s expectation.Chapter Three discusses the fate of three “butterflies” through Said’s Orientalism and pointsout that Cultural conflict and the misunderstanding of the Orientalism are the objective reasonscaused their identity crisis. Although the three “butterflies” live in different cultural backgrounds,and the consciousness is also different, their fates are similar—finally all trapped in identitycrisis. The original Madam butterfly Cio-Cio-San is deeply influenced by Japan’s tranditional idea about male and female. She defines herself as man’s ancilla and finally commits suicide forlove. Song Liling gives the image “butterfly” new meanings through positive disguise, but thisimpersonated butterfly can not flee from his tragic fate. It means that Gallimard is the synonymsof “despair”. His miserable fate is because of his character flaws and the misleading ofstereotype.Chapter Four mainly discusses the identity problem of the protagonist through Bhabha’sHybidity theory and analyzes the reasons that caused their identity crisis. Cultural conflicts bringidentity conflicts, and in order to dispel the conflict to achieve self-purpose, Song Liling andGallimard all do positive mimicry. But the mimicry is bidirectional that while getting a falseself-identity identify, their true identity has been weakened. This leads to the ambiguousness anduncertainty of the two people, and then moves towards the irreparable situation.Chapter Five starts from Spivak’s Subaltern theory, probes into the effect that subalternidentity puts on the protagonists and further analyzes the importance of identity. As an actor,Song Liling is not accepted by ordinary people. He dresses up like a woman and “dedicates tothe revolution” so as to seek for the self-value, of which intensifies his suffering. Because of hisfrustrated early life experience and unpleasant sexual experience, Gallimard is timid and passivein interpersonal communication. He excludes westerners subconsciously and hopes to remodelhis patriarchal through the ideal “butterfly”.Chapter Six summarized this study and pointed out the theoretical and realistic significanceof it, along with the limitations of the study and the prospects for further research. The subalternidentity and the miserable fate of Song Liling and Gallimard are resulted in cultural conflictsand cultural misunderstandings. It can be concluded that cultural hegemony leads to decline,and multicultural coexistence will surely become the mainstream of the era so that onlycommunicate in peace and dispel identity crisis can lead to greater development.