“Passive, accommodating and unemotional”. These are just some of the many stereotypical terms used to describe “The Orient”, or “The Other”. As Edward Said claims in his fairly objective view on Orientalism, there is a common misconception that exists in the minds of Westerners in which the Eastern Orients are childlike, irrational and ignorant, while the Westerners are more civilized and educated, which makes it their duty to shelter and educate other races. This superiority complex, as well as the gendered representation and ratialization of Asian and Western identities, is revealed in John Luther Long’s captivating play Madame Butterfly. However, this dichotomy between the East and West is put into question in Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, which also depicts the negative stereotypes and ideologies associated with the Asian culture, while also emphasizing how gender roles of men and women can become reversed. David Henry Hwang’s utilization of literary devices in the forms of foils and irony is used as a means to successfully critique John Luther Long’s Madame Butterfly, as well as to affirm the dominant belief system during the 1960’s to 1980’s, which encompasses the intersectionality of race, class and, particularly, gender.
Long’s Madame Butterfly textually illustrates how Westerners often feminized and eroticized the Japanese, depicting the women and culture through the rhetoric of desire and aesthetics. Throughout the play, Pinkerton is seen as the dominant character, as Cho-Cho-San idolizes and depends on him to come back to her. Pinkerton objectifies her through his artificial Western ideal of Japanese beauty, using only aesthetic terms to describe her merely as a pretty object to be admired: “It was, too, exactly in Pin...
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...gether a theatrical performance that analyzes and critiques many widespread ideologies concerning race and gender as a method of portraying the West as a powerful and controlling entity over the East. Topics concerning cultural stereotypes and misconceptions are thematically used throughout the play and Hwang is able to understand, in every aspect, the perception that both the East and West have of each other, as he is an Asian-American playwright himself. He uses the knowledge that he has to truthfully critique the notions and principles that both the opposing sides have about one another. By thoroughly reading M. Butterfly, the reader is able to relate the characters in Hwang’s play to those of Long’s Madame Butterfly, in addition to understanding the intertextual references to the play’s use of foils and irony as a means to challenge Long’s view of the Oriental.
(1800)Topic 2: A Literary Analysis of the Historical Differentiation of Patriarchal Culture and Female Gender Identity in the Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong and the Tale of Genji
In this analysis includes a summary of the characters and the issues they are dealing with, as well as concepts that are seen that we have discussed in class. Such as stereotyping and the lack of discrimination and prejudice, then finally I suggest a few actions that can be taken to help solve the issues at hand, allowing the involved parties to explain their positions and give them a few immersion opportunities to experience their individual cultures.
In the Western world, Butterfly represents a stereotype of the Oriental woman. The stereotype of an obedient, submissive, and domestic Asian woman appeals to Westerners through other media beside the opera; for example, the “mail-order bride trade” catalogues and TV spots. The story of the white devil Pinkerton and a sub-missive Asian girl Cio-Cio-San has become a cultural myth in Western world. In M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang parodies and deconstructs this myth. In his play, a French diplomat Rene Gallimard fantasizes that he is Pinkerton and his Chinese lover Song is his Butterfly. However, as Hwang says in the “Afterword” of the play, Gallimard “realizes that it is he who has been But...
Through the actions of the male hegemony and the mother figure, both plays show the different perspectives both sexes have towards homosexuality. The patriarchal figures, show an intolerant and abusive perspective whereas the mother figures show a more understanding way of coping with the identities of their sons. By seeing the reactions of both males and females, it is to say that the maternal figures of the play show a more comprehensive attitude towards the struggles that the male protagonist undergo. Both plays are related to today´s society, because there are still families in which homosexuality is not accepted. People are still
Interestingly, the other dominant media depiction of Asian women, to a certain extent, is the opposite of the China doll/geisha girl stereotype. The dragon lady stereotype often features cunning, powerful, icy, merciless yet sexually aggressive Asian female characters. This line of stereotyping is said to originate from the fear of the inscrutable East and from Yellow Peril (Biswas, Kim, Lei, &Yang, 2008; Prasso, 2005). The history of competition for jobs in the frontier rationalizes people in the U.S. to distort the representations of Asians as evil, profit- seeking aliens feeding on the innocent White, which gives rise to the negative stereotype of the dragon lady.
...ly progressed from a way to tell stories about kings and gods to a way to tell stories about ordinary human beings. By moving our focus off of nobility, the language of plays became the language of every individual, and eventually, due to America’s “melting pot” culture, the language itself became individual. The unique language of American dramatic characters represents not only the diversity of the American people, but also the diversity of all human beings. These dramatically dissimilar differences were not typical of older plays when they were written, but now, they are what make American drama so valuable. Our acceptance and love for characters with different values than ours is representative of the love we can develop for those who are different from us. It represents the worldview that our current culture idealizes and strives to achieve: acceptance for all.
The issue of cultural stereotypes and misconceptions thematically runs throughout David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly. The play is inspired by a 1986 newspaper story about a former French diplomat and a Chinese opera singer, who turns out to be a spy and a man. Hwang used the newspaper story and deconstructed it into Madame Butterfly to help breakdown the stereotypes that are present between the East and the West. Hwang’s play overall breaks down the sexist and racist clichés that the East-West have against each other that reaffirm the Western male culture ideas. The stereotypes presented in the play revolve around the two main characters, Gallimard and Song. The play itself begins in the present with Gallimard, a French diplomat who has been incarcerated in a Beijing prison. He relives his fantasies for the past with his perfect woman and shares his experience with the readers throughout the remainder of the play. Upon Gallimard’s arrival in China, he attends the opera and meets Song, and Gallimard immediately describes Song as his “butterfly”. Gallimard falls in love with the “delicate Oriental woman” that Song portrays (22). He then buys into the Western male stereotype that Eastern women need protection by strong, masculine Western men. Gallimard ends up falling in love with Song and has an affair with her to fulfill the stereotypical idea of a dominant Western male controlling an Eastern woman. Throughout Gallimard’s relationship with Song, the readers discover that Song is in reality a male spy for the Chinese government. Song had manipulated his looks and actions to mirror those of the ideal Chinese woman in order to earn Gallimard’s affection. M. Butterfly’s main issue arises from the cultural stereotypes of the masculin...
Living with their traditional Chinese culture in American society, these eight Chinese-American women suffer the problems of cultural conflicts in compliance with their gender. Asian women were looked at as being "positive, subservient, compliant, quiet, delicate, exotic, romantic and easy to please" (Mulan). They are nicknamed "China dolls" or " lotus blossoms", which are sexually loaded stereotypes of Asian women. These stereotypes discriminate against women by degrading their worth as people. By men taking advantage of their obedience and submissiveness they are showing that these women are not valued and that they have no voice. Judith Butler responds to these roles by saying, "Gender is an act, a performance, a set of manipulated codes and costumes rather than a core aspect of essential identity". By the middle of this century, Chinese women had been playing this manipulative, subservient role for m...
In the 1964 play Dutchman by Amiri Baraka, formally known as Le Roi Jones, an enigma of themes and racial conflicts are blatantly exemplified within the short duration of the play. Baraka attacks the issue of racial stereotype symbolically through the relationship of the play’s only subjects, Lula and Clay. Baraka uses theatricality and dynamic characters as a metaphor to portray an honest representation of racist stereotypes in America through both physical and psychological acts of discrimination. Dutchman shows Clay, an innocent African-American man enraged after he is tormented by the representation of an insane, illogical and explicit ideal of white supremacy known as Lula. Their encounter turns from sexual to lethal as the two along with others are all confined inside of one urban subway cart. Baraka uses character traits, symbolism and metaphor to exhibit the legacy of racial tension in America.
In analyzing these two stories, it is first notable to mention how differing their experiences truly are. Sammy is a late adolescent store clerk who, in his first job, is discontent with the normal workings of society and the bureaucratic nature of the store at which he works. He feels oppressed by the very fabric and nature of aging, out-of date rules, and, at the end of this story, climaxes with exposing his true feelings and quits his jobs in a display of nonconformity and rebellion. Jing-Mei, on the other hand, is a younger Asian American whose life and every waking moment is guided by the pressures of her mother, whose idealistic word-view aids in trying to mold her into something decent by both the double standards Asian society and their newly acquired American culture. In contrasting these two perspectives, we see that while ...
Chang’s position of discomfort and self-torture could possibly be interpreted as a metaphor for the relations that Berger makes between, gender, nudity and the power that coincides with both of them. Women undoubtedly lose power when they become “the surveyed” or the victim of the male gaze. In the position of “the surveyed”, women simply become objects for men to enjoy and their power as individuals decreases, especially if they are exposed by nudity. These three traits are all illustrated in not only Chang’s piece but also in Western pop culture as a whole, which proves the intelligence of Chang’s piece in it’s ability to encompass an entire social issue in one dialogue-free performance piece.
I think this play is a lot about what does race mean, and to what extent do we perform race either onstage or in life:
In a person’s lifetime, one is able to see the cause and effect the world around the individual has on one’s life. People are affected by the culture in which they live in and are affected by the history of their homeland. One can see these effects in the real world and in the fictional worlds of books, plays, and poetry. In the land of fiction, readers can find several examples of how a character’s psyche has been shaped by the culture and history that surrounds the character. One such example would be Madam Lubov Ranyevskaya from Chekhov’s famous play, The Cherry Orchard. One can see how her cultural and historical context has shaped her behavior, her relationships with those around her, and her family dynamics.
I would like to begin my analysis first with Marchetti’s essay, “White Knights in Hong Kong” taken from her book Romance and Yellow Peril: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction. In this piece she studies the two films Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (Henry King, 1955) and The World of Suzie Wong (Richard Quine, 1960). Her main argument ...
…My idea in Orientalism is to use humanistic critique to open up the fields of struggle, to introduce a longer sequence of thought and analysis to replace the short bursts of polemical, thought-stopping fury that so imprison us in labels and antagonistic debate whose goal is a belligerent collective identity rather than understanding and intellectual exchange…