Impact of feminism on society

The play was originally inspired by Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly. This paper aims to explain the main parts of the play and then refer to some important themes such as Orientalism and Plato’s view about the truth, illusion and reality and how these subjects help to form the body of the play. René Gallimard falls in love with the opera singer Song Liling who is actually a man disguising himself as a woman. The love affair between them lasts for twenty years until Gallimard discovers that Living is a male Communist agent whose aim is to extract information about Vietnam War. All the events in this play are actually one big memory of Gallimard. Everything in this play starts with when René Gallimard goes to the theatre and falls in love with the opera singer Song Liling.

The love Gallimard feels for Song Liling is not an actual love. The whole play or the movie tries to give a message about the real love which has a philosophical background. Song Liling is not a woman that Gallimard falls in love with. He is a Communist agent who is trying to steal information about the Vietnam War. At the end of the play, Song exploits the way of Western domination by recalcitrating Gallimard’s endless requests. Gallimard is actually searching for his self-identity. Because of the loneliness and desolation, he unwittingly lets butterfly take over his reality. His inability to distinguish reality from illusion causes him to fail in his searching for love. On the other hand, Plato’s philosophical view about the reality, truth and the illusion illuminate the rest of the play.

Butterfly is a crucial play to emphasize the opposition of men and women as well as the clash of East and West. This play is filled with philosophical assumptions and judgments. With binary oppositions like illusion and reality, East and West or men and women, David Henry Hwang makes the play more comprehensive and more detailed. Hwang emphasizes on the stereotypical opposition between East and West as well as women and men. René Gallimard, depicted as a powerful western man, portrays the oriental as submissive, uninfluential, low and powerless. "The West has sort of an international rape mentality towards the East. Basically, 'Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. ' The West thinks of itself as masculine -- big guns, big industry, big money -- so the East is feminine -- weak, delicate, poor.

but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom -- the feminine mystique. Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. (Kondo 6) The theatre is actually an exercise of perception. This is a memory play that consists of highly subjective memories. Gallimard, in a sense, is trying to reconstruct his past. Apart from this, in the play Gallimard warns Living to be quiet all the time. The relationship between Gallimard and Liling is kind of a power game. However, Gallimard can realize his self and identity only after he meets Living. Nothing has meaning without its binary opposition that’s why Gallimard can finally find his true self and the meaning of his existence thanks to Living. In the end, Gallimard presents himself as ‘’butterfly’’ indicating that he gains his double awareness.

The movie version of the play makes a difference by adding a mirror scene to the final performance of Gallimard to his cellmates. Gallimard looks in the mirror to question his essence, self and reality. She says no when Rene wants her to undress. Gallimard often treats his lover Liling cruelly during their twenty-year relationship just to see her submissiveness and inferiority. In the world of M. Butterfly, China is already ‘’liberated’’ and Gallimard’s residual Oriental fantasy is fully manipulated by Song Liling; therefore, it is quite ironical that the oppression imposed upon Song Liling comes from China, not from the Western World. While never conceals his role as the spokesman for Chinese culture, in his backstage encounter with Gallimard, he straightforwardly calls the latter ‘’White man’’ (20) and ‘’an adventurous imperialist’’ (21).

The shadows represent such photocopy and, the reality is possible to know with the spiritual knowledge. The chains symbolize our limitation in this material world so that we cannot know the reality to know reality; we have to break the material world. The outer world of the light symbolically suggests the world of spiritual reality, which we achieve by breaking the chains that are used to tie us (Morgan). It may be true to say that Gallimard, from the beginning, knew Song was a man, however he did not allow himself to believe it. In fact, Gallimard never saw Song as herself. Gallimard’s stereotypes serve him just as tragically, directing him to symbolically commit suicide. (Hoffman 5) Gallimard only loved the character that Song played, the Butterfly.

Gallimard even admits it through the end of the play when Song Liling exposes her body as well as her true identity. ‘’You showed me your true self, when all I loved was a lie. 2) With this confession, he also admits that he only loved the fantasy he had with Song Liling. Plato saw this world as a copy and imitation of the ideal perfect world. According to him everything we see, hear or touch are just a copy of the ideal and original that we can’t experience with our five senses. He thought that theatre is a copy of a copy and it imitates our ordinary life. Another word, art is a copy of a copy of a form.

In M. M. Butterfly shows the way of looking into the life and people all around the world. This play contains philosophical background for love, truth and most importantly orientalism. David Henry Hwang by bringing these crucial elements together, aimed to show how reality sometimes can be replaced by illusion and lies or how one’s ignorance and prejudice about something can be destroyed and be manipulated. Since Song Liling’s complex identity and René Gallimard’s prejudice and fantasies about the East open a road to the strange love story between them, their understanding of reality and illusion is also shaken. p. , n. d. Web. 19 Mar. 1997 Hwang, David Henry. M. Butterfly. New York: A Plume Book, 1988 Kondo, Dorinne K. “"M.