M.Butterfly Fantasy Case

Fantasy

M. BUTTERFLY

The imagination is unrestricted by reality, sometimes known as “fantasy”. However, how powerful could one’s fantasy impact his or her real life? David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly is one of the most celebrated of recent American plays, and the first by an Asian American to win universal acclaim. It was first produced in 1988, and it is based on a bizarre but true story of a French diplomat who carried on a twenty-year affair with a Chinese actor and opera singer, not realizing that his partner was in fact a man masquerading as a woman. Rene Gallimard, the French diplomat, a westerner, carries all his stereotypes to the Asia, fantasies about this feminine, submissive “perfect oriental woman”, and deeply believes himself as the strong, tough and dominant western man. In order for him to secures his inner space of this real, masculine identity, to minimize the culture difference, and to hide the inner truth of himself, Gallimard comes to this unfamiliar oriental world, falls in love with his own images of the perfect woman and therefore with himself as the perfect man.

Gallimard steps into his own fantasy, and in the end he still couldn’t wake up from his beautiful dream. For the audience, it is not difficult to distinguish the different between one’s inner truth and outward appearance. That Song is a Chinese man playing a Japanese woman is a “truth” known from the early stage. Song plays ironically with this “truth” throughout. Nevertheless, Gallimard fails to predict the “truth” from the moment they met, and deeply believes she is the perfect woman for him. Just what Song says on the courtroom, “When he finally met his fantasy woman, he wanted more than anything to believe that she was, in face, a woman” (Hwang, 62) Gallimard’s desire for his butterfly makes him ignore the face itself. Maybe sometimes a beautiful lie is much better than a painful truth. However, is Gallimard ever suspicious the reason Song never takes her clothes? “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.” (Hwang, 47) At the bottom of Gallimard’s heart, he knows something hiding behind this perfect woman, which is probably too painful to find out. That is why he decides to ignore anything might shake his faith. When Gallimard is sent home to Paris for his diplomatic failures, he still could forget his perfect woman and waits her to come for years. In the end, Gallimard returns to his prison cell in searing finale and launches in to a chilling speech as he paints this face with geisha-like makeup and dons wig and kimono. He speaks of his “vision of the Orient”, and says his very last of this life, “My name is Rene Gallimard---also known as Madame Butterfly”(Hwang, 69) Gaillmard kills himself with himself dresses as a