"A former French diplomat and a Chinese opera singer have been sentenced to six years in jail for spying for China after a two-day trial that traced a story of clandestine love and mistaken sexual identity…. Mr. Bouriscot was accused of passing information to China after he fell in love with Mr. Shi, whom he believed for twenty years to be a woman."
-- The New York Times, May 11, 1986
M. Butterfly
Lecture One
How Could He Not Know?
Gallimard’s Personal Journey to his Butterfly
Questions for today
Act One, Scene 1
Upstage Song, who appears as a beautiful woman in traditional Chinese garb, dances a traditional piece from the Peking Opera, surrounded by the percussive clatter of Chinese music.(p.1)
Woman: He still claims not to believe the truth.
Man 1: What? Still? Even after the trial?
Woman: Yes, isn’t it mad?
Man 2 (laughing): He says… it was dark… and she was very modest!
Man 1: That’s impossible! How could he not know?
Man 2: Simple ignorance.
Man 1: Time flies when you’re being stupid.
Woman: Well, I thought the French were lady's men.
(p. 3)
Helga: Madame Butterfly! Then I should have come…. Does she have a nice costume? I think it’s a classic piece of music.... Why can’t they just hear it as a piece of beautiful music?
(p. 19)
First encounter
Gallimard: They say in opera the voice is everything. That’s probably why I’d never before enjoyed opera. Here… here was a Butterfly with little or no voice -- but she had the grace, the delicacy … I believed this girl. I believed her suffering. I wanted to take her in my arms -- so delicate, even I could protect her, take her home, pamper her until she smiled.
(p. 17)
Gallimard: I .. what I mean is, I’ve always seen it played by huge women in so much bad makeup.
Song: Bad makeup is not unique to the West.
Gallimard: But, who can believe them?
Song: And you believe me?
Gallimard: Absolutely. You are utterly convincing. It’s the first time …. It’s the first time I’ve seen the beauty of the story.
(pp.. 16-17)
Helga: Madame Butterfly! Then I should have come. (She begins humming, floating around the room as if dragging long kimono sleeves) Did she have a nice costume? I think it’s a classic piece of music. ….
Gallimard: [The Chinese] hate it because the white man gets the girl. Sour grapes if you ask me.
Helga: Politics again? Why can’t they just hear it as a piece of beautiful music?(p. 19)
Beautiful music -- why not?
myth:
1) a story offering explanation of some fact;
2) it is based on partial, distorted information;
3) once the story is accepted as a commonly held belief, it appears to be natural.
The Butterfly Myth
(Without his noticing, Song enters, dressed elegantly in a black gown from the twentieth. She stands in the doorway looking like Anna May Wong.)
Song: China is a nation whose soul is firmly rooted two thousand years in the past…. Hard as I try to be modern, to speak like a man, to hold a Western woman’s strong face up to my own… in the end. I fail. A small, frightened heart beats too quickly and gives me away. Monsieur Gallimard, I’m a Chinese girl. (pp.. 27- 31)
Identities
"I have known, and been loved by … the Perfect Woman" (p.4).
"And I imagine you -- my ideal audience -- who come to understand and even, perhaps just a little, to envy me" (p.4).
What is the Ideal Woman?
Gallimard: Cio-Cio-San, also known as Butterfly, is a feminine ideal, beautiful and brave. (p.5)
A real woman
Helga: I went. I’m sorry. But listen: he says there’s nothing wrong with me.
Gallimard: You see? Now, will you stop --?
Helga: Rene, he says he’d like you to go in and take some tests.
Gallimard: Why? So he can find there’s nothing wrong with both of us?
Helga: Rene, I don’t ask for much. One trip! One visit!
(p. 50)
Another real woman
Renee: You have a nice weenie.
Gallimard: What?
Renee: Penis. You have a nice penis.
Gallimard: Oh. Well, thank you. That’s very …
Renee: What -- can’t take a compliment?
Gallimard: No, it’s very … reassuring.
(p. 54)
The myth and... what it does to Gallimard
Gallimard: I began to wonder: had I, too, caught a butterfly who would writhe on a needle? … Over the next five weeks, I worked like a dynamo. I stopped going to the opera, I didn’t phone or write her. I knew this little flower was waiting for me to call, and, as I wickedly refused to do so, I felt for the first time that rush of power -- the absolute power of a man. (p.32)
Gallimard: I saw Pinkerton and Butterfly, and what she would say if he were unfaithful … nothing. She would cry, alone, into those wildly soft sleeves, once full of possessions, now empty to collect her tears. It was her tears and her silence that excited me,….
(p. 56)
Gallimard: I started for Renee’s. But no, that was all I needed. A schoolgirl who would question the role of the penis in modern society. What I wanted was revenge. A vessel to contain my humiliation. Though I hadn’t seen her in weeks, I headed for Butterfly’s. (p. 58)
"Ideal Woman" makes "Real Man"
Song: I know who is a man, and who is not. (p. 51)
Pinkerton/Gallimard: When I leave, she’ll know what it’s like to have loved a real man. (p.6)
Marc: I’ve come across time and space to congratulate you.(p.24)
Marc: Ah, yes. She cannot love you, it is a taboo, but something deep inside her heart … she cannot help herself… she must surrender to you. It is her destiny. (p.25)
Butterfly myth today
"Asian women are renowned for their beauty, femininity, traditional values and loving disposition. They are sincere, faithful, devoted and believe in a lasting marriage and a happy home."
Cover-letter of Sunshine International
"Most clients of companies that supply mail-order brides are older men. A few younger men confess feeling ill at ease in encounters with Western women,…. most blame women’s liberation movement for their plight."
Raymond Joseph, Wall Street Journal
25 January 1984
Butterfly: Personal to Cultural Myth
myth:
1) a story offering explanation of some fact;
2) it is based on partial, distorted information;
3) once the story is accepted as a commonly held belief, it appears to be natural and is accepted as knowledge.