M. Butterfly
51 pages • 1-hour read
David Henry HwangM. Butterfly
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Themes
Blurring the Line Between Fantasy and Reality
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, antigay bias, racism, gender discrimination, and emotional abuse.
Gallimard’s relationship with Song emblemizes his relationship with his ego and the world. As soon as the play begins, Gallimard harps on the need to tell the perfect version of his story. He refers to the play’s viewers as his “ideal audience” and describes Song as the “Perfect Woman.” Over the course of the play, it becomes apparent that Gallimard’s idea of perfection is highly subjective. Things are only perfect insofar as they meet his expectations. He’s apprehensive of the surprise that reality brings—and the growth that such surprise entails.
The early scenes that characterize Gallimard’s relationship with women are crucial in creating the pretext for his relationship with Song. Gallimard is shy when Marc offers him the opportunity to meet real women and potentially have sex with them. This contrasts his childhood experience with pornographic magazines, when gratification rewarded the transgression of looking at explicit pictures. Gallimard becomes more comfortable in the success he imagines than the failure that he expects to come from his interactions with real women. This feeds directly into his appreciation for the opera Madame Butterfly, in which self-sacrificing love rewards Pinkerton’s transgressions.
Gallimard is drawn to Song because she physically matches his concept of the Butterfly character. During their first meeting, Gallimard admits that he “usually [doesn’t] like Butterfly” (16) but is a fan of the story. Meeting Song is as close as he can get to embodying the fantasy of being Pinkerton. Consequently, Gallimard becomes bolder the more he interacts with Song. This culminates in his decision to treat her cruelly, breaking off all contact to test whether she has any feelings for him at all. Even in his display of cruelty, Gallimard realizes that he isn’t as cruel as Pinkerton. His fantasy is not just to love Butterfly but to love her in a way that saves her from the injustice of being married to Pinkerton.
For Song to succeed in her mission, she must make Gallimard think that their relationship is proceeding exactly according to his fantasy. Her biggest challenge is convincing him that they’re in love without allowing him to see her naked. Toward the end of the play, however, Gallimard admits, “I knew all the time somewhere that my happiness was temporary, my love a deception” (88). He was willing to accept the subterfuge because he relied on appearances to tell him a truth he was willing to believe. When Song tries to convince him that the baby in her possession is his child, Gallimard doubts what he sees for a moment, briefly unconvinced that the baby is the result of their relationship.
Hwang uses Gallimard’s character arc to show that a love built purely on fantasy is illusory and egotistical in nature. In Act II, Scene 6, Gallimard meets a girl who looks and acts like the girls in his magazines do, inviting him to engage in sex on their first encounter. The girl, coincidentally named Renee, disappoints Gallimard when she demonstrates her preoccupation with male ego and sexuality. Gallimard doesn’t know how to love someone who exposes him for the kind of man he really is. This explains why the play ends with Gallimard finding Butterfly in himself. He doesn’t love Song; he loves a fantasy.
The Intersection of Gender and Politics
Hwang’s play uses gender as a metaphor for global politics. In Act III, Scene 1, Song explicates this metaphor: “The West thinks of itself as masculine […] so the East is feminine” (83). While historical political events form the backdrop for the play’s main action, Song’s metaphor invites reconsideration of the main action’s resonance with the political culture of the late 20th century.
The end of the play isn’t the first time that Song refers to the political subtext. During her first meeting with Gallimard in Act I, Scene 6, Song criticizes Gallimard’s Orientalist reading of Madame Butterfly: “[B]ecause it’s an Oriental who kills herself for a Westerner—ah!—you find it beautiful” (17). Since fantasy plays a central role in Gallimard’s relationship with women, Song’s criticism extends to the fantasy his ego creates. Song immediately recognizes Gallimard’s aspiration to dominate a “submissive” Eastern woman, and this insight shows her how she can exploit him for state secrets.
Song’s subversion of the Western Bloc isn’t limited to stealing sensitive information; it also extends to feeding Gallimard information that misdirects the bloc’s foreign policy. A recurring subplot in the play involves Gallimard’s attempts to analyze China’s position on the events in Indochina. Gallimard tells Toulon that the Chinese masses are sick of the Communist state and secretly yearn for the society they lost to the Revolution. However, Gallimard’s assessments are based exclusively on what Song, the “perfect” Eastern Woman, tells him. Gallimard thinks the Chinese people are tired of Communism because Song tells him that she wants to go to nightclubs and listen to jazz. Whether Song really feels this way or these details simply help her immerse Gallimard in the fantasy is ambiguous. His impressions align with the Western Bloc’s delusions of defeating Communism in the East, foreshadowing its surprised when Vietnam successfully overcomes the colonial influence of the US and France. This leads to Gallimard’s disgraced status in the narrative frame of the play. Now convicted for perpetrating a massive political scandal, Gallimard is seen less as a criminal than as a global laughingstock. The world looks on Gallimard as a fool for failing to observe the most obvious truth about Song.
However, maintaining that the dynamics between men and women represent the relationship between East and West would be reductive, as Hwang asserts through his depiction of Song, whose character arc suggests a more complex vision of political identity. Song exists between the bounded definitions of Western and Eastern culture. Song’s preference for Western nightlife may be part of her disguise, yet that doesn’t invalidate her resentment for the state she serves. Through the character of Chin, the play reminds the audience that the Chinese government looks down on Song for defying the social conventions of gender. Chin represents the antigay bias of the Chinese Communist state, yet despite Song’s exclusion she submits to rehabilitation and expresses a willingness to serve her state. Her mission continues for 15 more years, even if she lives outside her home state’s boundaries and influence. Song’s politics evade easy categorization because she knows that to live thoughtfully as a political agent means to accept that society is more than a struggle between simple binaries.
The Selfishness of Love
The play challenges the audience to consider the objectives of love. On the surface, love is a selfless act, enabling one person to pledge service and devotion to another. On closer examination, love becomes a selfish act the ultimate purpose of which is self-preservation. People fall in love to satisfy their egos and to fit into the social lives of their larger communities.
The relationship between Gallimard and Song can properly be termed an affair because both parties are acting against interests in which they’re already invested. Gallimard is cheating on his wife Helga, though their marriage is a loveless one that he entered into for convenience. Song, conversely, is devoted to the Communist state’s ideals but is betraying its rules against gay sexuality by deepening her relationship with Gallimard. Gallimard’s feelings for Song are authentic to a point. Though he’s willing to divorce Helga and raise the child that Song presents as his, Gallimard only loves Song inasmuch as she represents his fantasy. Gallimard doesn’t really love Song; he loves the fantasy that Song fulfills for him. Similarly, Song may not really love Gallimard but may just love the power it gives her to force a Western man to undermine his own state.
Loving Song has an unexpected effect on Gallimard’s character. He becomes bolder and even cruel, which he never imagined he could be in all his previous interactions with women. He gains the approval of his superior at the embassy, Toulon, who promotes him to vice-consul because of how his boldness translates at work. Gallimard’s immediate reaction to this news is to rush to Song and formalize their affair. He relies on his relationship with Song because he sees himself as a lesser person without her. Similarly, Song uses the results of her espionage to justify being a self she can’t otherwise be in everyday society. In Act II, Scene 7, she argues to Comrade Chin: “Sometimes, a counterrevolutionary act is necessary to counter a counterrevolutionary act” (62). Chin is unable to refute her arguments until Gallimard is forced out of the country.
Act III exposes the illusion of selflessness in Gallimard and Song’s relationship as Song reveals the truth of his gender to the audience and the world. Song’s revelations exonerate him while painting Gallimard as an inherently selfish lover. In the act’s second scene, Song finally strips off his clothes for Gallimard, fulfilling a long-delayed request to get him to admit the truth. Song expects that Gallimard will say that he still wants Song as a man. Instead, Gallimard reveals the truth about their relationship: “You showed me your true self. When all I loved was the lie” (89). Song is upset because up until the end, he believed that Gallimard’s admission would prove that he was more than just another man in love with his own desires. Gallimard fails to transcend this expectation in a radical way. He not only refuses to admit that his love for Song was real but also enacts his own physical transformation, acknowledging that the Butterfly he loves is his creation and, as such, reflects a part of himself. Gallimard’s love is therefore selfish rather than selfless.
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