데이비드 헨리 황의 『엠. 나비』: 제국주의적 환상 깨뜨리기

David Henry Hwang, a Chinese-American playwright, shows that imperialistic fantasies exist between the West and the East in his best play, M. Butterfly(1988). These fantasies are formulated in ideas such as the West considering the East as a woman and Western men thinking Eastern women to be submissive, modest and shy. These stereotypes of the Orient and Oriental women originate from Orientalism. Hwang thought that Westerns have imperialistic fantasies about the East and such typical cultural prejudices can be found in Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly (1904). He tries to reverse the basic structure of Madame Butterfly in M. Butterfly. In the opera Pinkerton is a cruel white man and Cho-Cho San (Butterfly) is a submissive Japanese woman who sacrifices herself for the love of a worthless western man. Rene Gallimard, hero in M. Butterfly, a French diplomat in China meets Song Liling, a Peking opera singer. Gallimard considers himself as Pinkerton and that Song is like Cho Cho San. However at the end of the play, Song turns out to be a man as well as a spy who passed critical information on to China from Gallimard. Finally, Gallimard realizes that he is a Butterfly and Song is Pinkerton and commits hara-kiri. Hwang tries to break imperialistic fantasies through such issues, as Song an Oriental man acting as an Oriental woman, transvestism, and reversal of roles. Hwang aims to demolish the stereotypes of Asian Americans and to find the proper identity of Asian Americans. It is doubtful that Hwang succeeded in achieving his initial aims, but he contributed to causing white American audiences to be more interested in various kinds of problems between the West and the East.