M. Butterfly

“GALLIMARD: But as she glides past him, beautiful, laughing softly behind her fan, don’t we who are men sigh with hope? We, who are not handsome, nor brave, nor powerful, yet somehow believe, like Pinkerton, that we deserve a Butterfly.”

Gallimard explains why he idealizes the plot of the opera Madame Butterfly. He views himself as someone so undesirable that it fills him with hope to think that Pinkerton, whom the opera similarly characterizes as undesirable, could enter the kind of romance he does with Butterfly. Gallimard’s low self-esteem is one of his biggest character flaws, driving him to accept the illusion of Song’s love as reality.

“GALLIMARD: Of her death. It’s a…a pure sacrifice. He’s unworthy, but what can she do? She loves him…so much. It’s a very beautiful story.

SONG: Well, yes, to a Westerner.

GALLIMARD: Excuse me?

SONG: It’s one of your favorite fantasies, isn’t it? The submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man.”

Gallimard’s first encounter with Song shatters his fantasy while also giving Song the first impression of the fantasy she can use to ensnare him in her espionage operations. Gallimard is uncritical of Pinkerton and Butterfly’s romance because he sees and idealizes himself in Pinkerton’s shoes. Song, conversely, understands the opera’s flaws at once because of how it disenfranchises her as an Asian person.

“SONG: I love them for being my fans, I hate the smell they leave behind. I too can distance myself from my people. (She looks around, then whispers in his ear) ‘Art for the masses’ is a shitty excuse to keep artists poor.”

Song reveals that she’s unsympathetic to the masses, contradicting the values of the Communist society she lives in. In the context of Song’s espionage activities, the play leaves it ambiguous whether Song really feels this way about the masses or this is merely part of the cover she creates to seduce Gallimard. This creates an air of mystery around Song’s identity.

“GALLIMARD: Anyway, it’s impossible. I’m a foreigner.

MARC. Ah, yes. She cannot love you, it is taboo, but something deep inside her heart…she cannot help herself…she must surrender to you. It is her destiny.

GALLIMARD: How do you imagine all this?

MARC: The same way you do. It’s an old story. It’s in our blood. They fear us, Rene. Their women fear us. And their men—their men hate us. And, you know something? They are all correct.”

In Gallimard’s dreams, Marc encourages him to fulfill his Orientalist fantasies by pursuing his lustful feelings for Song. Importantly, Marc, as he appears in this scene, is merely an extension of Gallimard’s subconscious. Therefore, Gallimard is merely encouraging himself to desire Song, justifying it as the domination of the Westerner over Asia. This passage drives The Intersection of Gender and Politics as a theme.

“SONG: Please. 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. I’ve never…never invited a man up to my flat before. The forwardness of my actions makes my skin burn.”

When Song invites Gallimard to her apartment for the first time, she leans into his assumptions and biases about Chinese people, projecting herself as a modest and shy woman. This gives Gallimard the impression that he has the upper hand, but in the context of Song’s espionage activities, she’s merely teaching him to see her as the one person who can fulfill his sexual fantasies. This passage thus helps develop two themes, Blurring the Line Between Fantasy and Reality and The Selfishness of Love.

“GALLIMARD: I determined to try an experiment. In Madame Butterfly, Cio-Cio-San fears that the Western man who catches a butterfly will pierce its heart with a needle, then leave it to perish. I began to wonder: had I, too, caught a butterfly who would writhe on a needle?”

The immediate impact of the previous passage is evident here. Gallimard, who previously introduced himself as too shy to talk to women, is suddenly emboldened to act cruelly towards Song to see if she really does like him. Crucially, he derives his methods from Madame Butterfly, underscoring the idea that he sees their relationship as the fulfillment of a fantasy rather than a real engagement between them.

“GALLIMARD: Are you my Butterfly? (Silence; he crosses the room and begins to touch her hair) I want from you honesty. There should be nothing false between us. No false pride.

Pause.

SONG: Yes, I am. I am your Butterfly.

GALLIMARD: Then let me be honest with you. It is because of you that I was promoted tonight. You have changed my life forever. My little Butterfly, there should be no more secrets: I love you.”

This passage marks the admission of love between Gallimard and Song. Notably, Gallimard frames his admission as transactional. He doesn’t tell Song that he loves her until she admits that she’s his Butterfly. If she said otherwise, she would shatter the illusion of his fantasy, which he needs to embolden him and elevate his performance at work.

“GALLIMARD: I suggest that, while we men may all want to kick Pinkerton, very few of us would pass up the opportunity to be Pinkerton.”

Gallimard professes his awareness that Pinkerton is a deplorable character. The parallels between Gallimard and Pinkerton suggest that he sees himself as being deplorable as well. He proposes, however, that Pinkerton’s fate is so enviable that it justifies his moral character.

“SONG: Tell me—what’s happening in Vietnam?

GALLIMARD: Oh, Butterfly—you want me to bring my work home?

SONG: I want to know what you know. To be impressed by my man. It’s not the particulars so much as the fact that you’re making decisions which change the shape of the world.”

This passage is the first hint that Song has ulterior motives in pursuing a relationship with Gallimard. She masks her request to learn more about his work under the pretense of curiosity. Given that Gallimard’s work necessarily involves sensitive information, he would normally think twice before sharing diplomatic secrets. However, Song appeals to his ego, implying that his impressing her with his work would deepen Gallimard’s immersion in his fantasy.

“Suddenly Comrade Chin enters. Gallimard backs away.

GALLIMARD (To Song): No! Why does she have to come in?

SONG: Rene, be sensible. How can they understand the story without her? Now, don’t embarrass yourself.

Gallimard moves down center.

GALLIMARD (To us): Now, you will see why my story is so amusing to so many people. Why they snicker at parties in disbelief. Please—try to understand it from my point of view. We are all prisoners of our time and place.”

Chin’s arrival marks Gallimard’s gradual loss of control over the narrative. Her presence is significant because it exposes Gallimard as an unreliable narrator. She contradicts the assertion that Gallimard and Song were in love by revealing Song’s work as an espionage agent. Nevertheless, Gallimard desperately tries to appeal to the audience to continue empathizing with him.

“RENEE: Like, I think the reason we fight wars is because we wear clothes. Because no one knows—between the men, I mean—who has the bigger…weenie. So, if I’m a guy with a small one, I’m going to build a really big building or take over a really big piece of land or write a really long book so the other men don’t know, right? But, see, it never really works, that’s the problem. I mean, you conquer the country, or whatever, but you’re still wearing clothes, so there’s no way to prove absolutely whose is bigger or smaller. And that’s what we call a civilized society. The whole world run by a bunch of men with pricks the size of pins. (She exits)

GALLIMARD (To us): This was simply not acceptable.”

Renee reveals her thoughts to Gallimard, which immediately removes (for him) all the appeal of their affair. Her preoccupation with male sexuality and its reflection of the ego flips the power dynamic, making Gallimard feel like he’s an object of study rather than an actor in a sexual fantasy. This is why, despite the fact that Renee looks superficially like a girl from one of his explicit magazines, Gallimard describes her revelation as “not acceptable.”

“GALLIMARD: Did I not undress her because I knew, somewhere deep down, what I would find? Perhaps. Happiness is so rare that our mind can turn somersaults to protect it.

At the time, I only knew that I was seeing Pinkerton stalking towards his Butterfly, ready to reward her love with his lecherous hands. The image sickened me, pulled me to my knees, so I was crawling towards her like a worm. By the time I reached her, Pinkerton […] had vanished from my heart. To be replaced by something new, something unnatural, that flew in the face of all I’d learned in the world—something very close to love.”

This passage marks the point of divergence between Gallimard and Pinkerton’s characters. Whereas Pinkerton takes the opportunity to strip Butterfly down, Gallimard sees the cruelty of the action and regrets all the transgressions he has committed against Song. This moment suggests that Gallimard actually respects Song’s personal dignity, wishing that he hadn’t violated it for his pleasure.

“SONG: Sometimes, a counterrevolutionary act is necessary to counter a counterrevolutionary act.”

Song tries to justify her request for a baby to deepen Gallimard’s immersion in his fantasy. In addition, this passage resonates with her ability to use her relationship with Gallimard as an act that serves the Chinese state, allowing her to disprove Chin’s biased beliefs and prove her value as someone who lives outside the bounds of the state’s outdated gender norms.

“SONG: Miss Chin? Why, in the Peking Opera, are women’s roles played by men?

CHIN: I don’t know. Maybe, a reactionary remnant of male—

SONG: No. (Beat) Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.”

Song indirectly alludes to her gender in this passage, upsetting the established power dynamics between her and Chin, as Song presumes that she knows more about being a woman than Chin does. Song does this to subvert Chin’s power as her superior officer, especially in the light of Chin’s antigay bias.

“SONG: I’m an artist, Rene. You were my greatest…acting challenge. (She laughs) It doesn’t matter how rotten I answer, does it? You still adore me. That’s why I love you, Rene.”

Song initially professes to seeing her relationship with Gallimard as a deception, much like any of her other roles as an actor. She quickly undermines her own answer to reinforce her power over Gallimard, however, leaving it ambiguous whether she really loves him or simply says it because it’s what he wants to hear. This underscores Blurring the Line Between Fantasy and Reality as a theme.

“SONG: You don’t understand the mind of a man.

Pause.

CHIN: Oh no? No I don’t? Then how come I’m married, huh? How come I got a man? Five, six years ago, you always tell me those kind of things, I felt very bad. But not now! Because what does the Chairman say? He tells us I’m now the smart one, you’re now the nincompoop!

You’re the blackhead, the harebrain, the nitwit! You think you’re so smart? You understand ‘The Mind of a Man’? Good! Then you go to France and be a pervert for Chairman Mao!”

The Cultural Revolution enacts a shift in Song’s power dynamic with Chin. When Song once again points out Chin’s naivete, Chin insults Song, using her status as an authority to sidestep Song’s argument. However, this ultimately exposes Chin’s insecurity around Song, whose sexual and psychological maturity contradicts Chin’s antigay bias. Song is at Chin’s mercy, but Chin remains afraid of Song.

“MARC: Rene, I don’t want to hear about the Oriental love goddess. Okay? One night—can we just drink and throw up without a lot of conversation?

GALLIMARD: You still don’t believe me, do you?

MARC: Sure I do. She was the most beautiful, et cetera, et cetera, blasé blasé.”

In this passage, the play reinforces the idea that Marc, until this point, was an extension of Gallimard’s subconscious. The real Marc is bored of sympathizing with Gallimard, going so far as to mock Gallimard’s recollections as “blasé.” When Marc abandons Gallimard, Gallimard finds himself at his lowest point, left with no support at all, not even from his own imagination.

“GALLIMARD: So…please…don’t change.

SONG: You know I have to. You know I will. And anyway, what difference does it make? No matter what your eyes tell you, you can’t ignore the truth. You already know too much.”

This passage marks the transition of narrative authority from Gallimard to Song. Gallimard implores Song to remain his Butterfly, which Song refuses to do because it isn’t the truth. The transformation that Song subsequently undergoes between acts resembles a metamorphosis, shedding her skin to reveal her true identity.

“SONG: 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. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated—because a woman can’t think for herself…And being an Oriental, I could never be completely a man.”

Song shares his keen insight into gender dynamics, further developing The Intersection of Gender and Politics as a theme. His commentary recasts Gallimard as a representative of Western society, longing to exert power over Song, who represents the East, because Gallimard associates Eastern culture with femininity and thus lack of agency. The question of whether Gallimard ever learned that Song was a man is moot because Gallimard’s bias is to see Song as a woman.

“GALLIMARD: I know what you are.

SONG: Do you? What am I?

GALLIMARD: A—a man.

SONG: You don’t really believe that.

GALLIMARD: Yes I do! I knew all the time somewhere that my happiness was temporary, my love a deception. But my mind kept the knowledge at bay. To make the wait bearable.”

As Song strips off his clothes, Gallimard concedes to the truth of Song’s gender. This is a key moment as it’s the only time Gallimard admits to knowing all along that Song was a man. Publicly, Gallimard claims he never knew the truth because admitting this would have added to his humiliation, given the antigay bias of the era. This admission thus represents a moment of vulnerability for Gallimard, who asks Song to spare him from his cruelty.

“GALLIMARD: You, who knew every inch of my desires—how could you, of all people, have made such a mistake?

SONG: What?

GALLIMARD: You showed me your true self. When all I loved was the lie. A perfect lie, which you let fall to the ground—and now, it’s old and soiled.

SONG: So—you never really loved me? Only when I was playing a part?

GALLIMARD: I’m a man who loved a woman created by a man. Everything else—simply falls short.”

When Song refuses to stop stripping, Gallimard laughs, revealing that he has fully divorced Song from the Butterfly he had idealized for years. He explains that he wasn’t really in love with Song but with the fantasy that Song constructed for him. Now that Song has shattered that fantasy, Gallimard is free from Song’s power over him. This scene underscores The Selfishness of Love and Blurring the Line Between Fantasy and Reality as themes.

“SONG: I’m disappointed in you, Rene. In the crush of your adoration, I thought you’d become something more. More like…a woman.

But no. Men. You’re like the rest of them. It’s all in the way we dress, and make up our faces, and bat our eyelashes. You really have so little imagination!

GALLIMARD: You, Monsieur Song? Accuse me of too little imagination? You, if anyone, should know—I am pure imagination. And in imagination I will remain.”

Song’s final words to Gallimard are full of spite. She accuses him of being a typical male, choosing to accept physical reality as it is rather than to imagine the possibility of discovering another person’s true identity. Gallimard’s rebuttal simply proves Song’s point by reaffirming a dangerous devotion to fantasy.

“GALLIMARD: Love warped my judgment, blinded my eyes, rearranged the very lines on my face…until I could look in the mirror and see nothing but…a woman.”

Gallimard admits his recognition that the fantasy of Butterfly resides entirely within him. This scene foreshadows Gallimard’s final act, in which he reunites with Butterfly by transforming himself into the Butterfly he idealizes.