Race and gender in: "M. Butterfly" -
Committing suicide "cross-dressed" and "cross-raced" to fulfill the
fantasy of a perfect woman

Final Paper for the Hauptseminar
,,Sex/Gender Representation in Modern American Culture"

WS 2001/2002

by

Kerstin Wien

Bergisch Gladbach, May 30^th 2002

"I wrote M. Butterfly as an attempt to deal with
some aspects of orientalism. I assumed that
many in the audience would be coming to the
theatre because they hoped to see something exotic
and mysterious, but what exactly is behind the
desire to see the "exotic East"? "

David Henry Hwang¹

1. Introduction 2
2. Three scenes 4

2.1. The first meeting 4
2. 2. The second scene - living the fantasy 10
2. 3. The death scene - a failing fantasy needs to be saved 14

3. Conclusion 17

Literature: 20

Primary texts: 20
Secondary texts: 20
Internet Links: 21

Appendix: 23

1. Introduction

The figure in the middle of the high room seems to be alone, despite all the people around him. He (apparently a male person) kneels on a kind of a stage wearing a kimono and a wig. It must be a prison, because all the people around wear prison clothing. Like spectators in an arena (or in a theatre) the prisoners occupy the balconies above, and the space in front of the stage. He starts to speak:

"I have a vision. Of the Orient. That, deep within her almond eyes, there are still women. Women willing to sacrifice themselves for the love of a man. Even a man whose love is completely without worth."²

This is a part of the last scene in David Cronenberg′s film "M. Butterfly". The described figure is former French diplomat René Gallimard (played by Jeremy Irons), who is going to kill himself in the costume of an "Oriental" woman - a Geisha. And the question is: Why is this the only thing to do for him? Why is it the only consequence of a quite straight forward development? And, is it really the only thing to do? The film itself offers just this end (as well as the play), but how can one explain it theoretically? David L. Eng gives with his text Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America a "tool" to look on Gallimard′s behavior through out the film, and to explain his actions and reactions, his bearing and some of his thoughts, as well as his conception of the world and his understanding of gender and race.

Eng also sees in Gallimard′s suicide the only way "to protect the psychic integrity of his farce."³ What farce? Eng merges in his text Freud′s psychoanalytic tractate about fetishism, and also "the Ego"⁴ with the factors race and Orientalism (a concept lent mainly from Edward Said⁵ to explain the relation of the East and the West). The result is a concept that explains, why Gallimard enters into the relationship with the opera diva Song (played by John Lone) - a male Chinese spy, who pretends to be a woman - and how they could live together for almost 20 years without Gallimard knowing (or admitting) that Song is a man, i.e. "castrating" him in a way sexually and racially. In the end the secret - that Song is a man - is revealed through the espionage being laid open, and Gallimard′s fantasy of a submissive Asian woman by his side is destroyed. His farce cannot be kept up, and Gallimard needs to react on these new conditions. Eng presents an explanation why Gallimard reverses gender as well as race, and becomes that Butterfly fantasy himself, viz. committing suicide to fulfil his ideal of the perfect woman.

In my paper I want to show, how Eng′s text can help to analyze three particular passages of David Cronenberg′s movie to look behind Gallimard′s psyche. I will take those three sequences which appear in chronological order in the film, and apply parts of Eng′s theory on them. How does Gallimard manage the situations, and why "it is, after all, only through Gallimard′s sustained identifications with and Song′s sustained investments in conventional stereotypes and fantasies of the Oriental geisha that Hwang′s drama can unfold to its pitiable end."⁶ Doing this, I am also briefly going to look on certain cinematic techniques (especially the setting of light in the first scene I have chosen) to find out, how David Cronenberg interprets Hwang′s Drama and how he creates Gallimard′s psyche, Gallimard′s feelings for Song, and how Cronenberg deals with the question of gender and race. And finally, I will raise the question, if Gallimard is homosexual. Does Eng′s theory give a proper answer for that or can that question be solved, though Eng does eventually not give any answers.

2. Three scenes

2.1. The first meeting

a) The "Butterfly Fantasy" is born

[...]

1 DiGaetani, John Louis. "M. Butterfly" - An Interview with David Henry Hwang. In TDR, The Drama Review. Volume 33, No. 3. 1989. p. 141.

2 quotation from the film M. Butterfly.

3 Eng, David L. Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 2001. p. 138.

4 See Sigmund Freud, Fetishism, in "The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud", ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1955. And Freud, The Ego and the Id, in Freud, "Standard Edition".

5 See Said, Edward W.. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. 1978.

6 Eng, David L. Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 2001. p. 4.