M. Butterfly: With an Afterword by the Playwright

by David Henry Hwang

Book Overview

Winner of the Tony Award for Best Play, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and soon to be back on Broadway in a revival directed by the Lion King's Julie Taymor, starring Clive Owen "A... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452272599
• Release Date: October 1993
• Publisher: Plume
• Length: 100 Pages
• Weight: 0.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.3" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

The Poetry of Cultural, Sexual, and Gender Politics

Reviewers who focus on the inplausibility of the play's premise are missing the forest for the trees. The ridiculousness of Gallimard's situation is the product of his (and through him, the West's) self-absorbed and limited view of the East, evidenced through the overly simplistic dichotomy of East & West. He has been utterly blinded by his preconceptions of gender, culture, and politics. Hwang has written a masterpiece with grace, humor, and wit. Students of literary analysis will find a text rich in archetypes and ritual. Highly recommended.

An archive performance to treasure

There seem to be more than enough interpretations of the story from other reviewers, so suffice it to say that these CDs are a unique opportunity to own a theatre gem with two superb actors on top form. What a pity this production was not recorded for DVD as the film version is very miscast. Buy this and enjoy!!

Deliciously irreverent & subversive

Since some broad-minded fellow in the bible first referred to a woman as the "weaker vessel", and most likely before that, women have been fighting the stigma of the physically and mentally weak being, only capable of caring for herself to a certain extent. Even in this day and time, with self-proclaimed sensitive males coming out of the woodwork, quiet as kept, this is still the ideal. Passivity is thought of as a female trait, and an admirable one-though it has also become popular to herald the new dawn of strong, intelligent women. Only don't be too strong or intelligent. A heady mixture of non-threatening intelligence and feminine strength is probably best.Hwang's M. BUTTERFLY skewers these concepts, attacking traditional Western views of Asian women, whom, perhaps even more than their sisters elsewhere, have the "weaker vessel", the delicate "lotus blossom" tattooed on their backsides. The character Gallimard is pulled into M. Butterfly's trap because he is enthralled with the modern western education and values she has, which he considers to be in conflict with her "Oriental" soul. It's exactly this piquant combination of an innocence and sexual prowess, which he considers culturally entrenched, that has him so in love with her. Asian girls in these types of stories are always slight, shy and beautiful, but no matter, they will eventually give in to the White Alpha Male, no matter WHAT he looks like. They are also loyal until the death, serving the White Alpha Male until their code of honor calls for suicide or some such nonsense, freeing White Alpha Male to marry a white woman, as the story wants us to believe he ought to have done in the first place. This thought is so entrenched in society, that we don't think twice when Puccini's Butterfly falls for some pencil pushing bureaucrat, renouncing offers from rich, handsome young men of her own country, and her demise at the end is celebrated. But Hwang WANTS us to start thinking, start realizing what our preconceptions about others say about US.Does anyone think that the real life Butterfly that this play is based on was as beautiful as her enamored bureaucrat thought? Or did he simply see what he wanted to see? MADAME BUTTERFLY IS A MAN! Gallimard has, and perhaps not consciously, mentally objectified Asian women so much that he is able to project his fantasies and delusions of what an Asian woman should be ON A MAN! Butterfly even STRIPS in front of him, and he sees nothing amiss. The reason the ruse works is, as Butterfly says "only a man knows how woman is supposed to act". Butterfly keys into Gallimard's own preconceptions of Asian female behavior, and uses them against him. Generally, smirking retellings of old stories where a dubious gilding of modern sociological mores is splashed over everything give me a pain. But this time it works, and HOW it works. Pick up M. BUTTERFLY today.