David Henry Hwang´s play "M. Butterfly" - A Fantasy of the Western Male

1 Introduction


Modern-day drama is often considered to be an effective means of expressing criticism. Numerous contemporary playwrights experiment freely with dramatic conventions, and most works overtly demonstrate to be a piece of performance, so that the audience is alerted not to view reality but a play. Thus, the boundaries between authenticity (the ´natural`) and role playing (the ´artificial`) are blurred “in order to address the construction of social and political identity.” (Saddik 2007: 13).
David Henry Hwang´s play M. Butterfly (1988) can be regarded as one representative of that type of contemporary dramatic pieces. It demonstrates the construction of identity around the politics of gender, sexuality, power and race. In the course of the drama, the (biological male) character Song Liling constructs a female, Oriental fantasy for the French diplomat Rene Gallimard. By performing her1 ´race´ and gender according to Gallimard´s ideas about the Oriental, Song is able to disguise her male sex. For almost two decades, the French diplomat is not aware of the fact that his partner is not a woman but a man. (cf. Hwang 1988: 94ff.).

The drama M. Butterfly - the first Asian American play to be produced on Broadway - has been introduced in the course of last summer semester´s seminar Gender, Sexuality, ´Race` and Class in Contemporary American Drama. It aroused my interest not only due to its witty and provocative style, but also because of the drama´s fascinating and powerful but rather bizarre story about the relationship of a Western man and a perceived Chinese woman. I could not understand how Gallimard neither was nor, in the course of all their years together, became aware of his partner´s true sex.

Therefore, the term paper will have a closer look at Song´s and Rene´s affair, in order to figure out how the Chinese opera star is able to create a masquerade she can preserve for so many years. In this sense, the paper will deal with the following questions: How can Song deceive Gallimard for almost twenty years? How can she hide her true sex and hence begin an affair with the diplomat? What role do both protagonists´ racial backgrounds play with regard to this? What fascinates Gallimard about Song in the first place? And in this sense: What effect does Song´s Oriental identity have on Gallimard´s perception?