Theatrical Deception: M. Butterfly and Hwang's Postmodern Stagecraft

Abstract

M. Butterfly provides a vigorous and multi-dimensional understanding of the relation between factual identity and staged performance, together with the experience of postmodernism behind the conventional constructs of gender, culture, and reality. The subject matter of the play revolves around a French diplomat who falls in love with a Chinese opera singer only to find that she was an impersonator. This study explores how Hwang uses theatrical deception as one of the main techniques to disrupt realist assumptions about the self, especially in the light of postmodern theories that deny realism and essentialism. Song Liling herself embodies a postmodern subject that is at once cruel and vulnerable, postcolonial and postethnic, sexual and asexual, male and female—or genderless; René Gallimard, the protagonist of the play, is as trapped in a cultural dream as Liling is trapped in a theatrical one. In analysing M. Butterfly, this study draws on postmodern theories, specifically Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality and Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, to illuminate the insights the play offers. M. Butterfly reflects certain Postmodernist principles, such as the blurring of the line between appearance and reality, performativity, and stereotypes. By looking into Gallimard’s eagerness to subordinate himself to an illusion instead of embracing the truth, it is possible to identify the element of irony that Hwang employs in the play regarding the human tendency to perpetuate convenient fictions even with the information that refutes those fictions. In M. Butterfly, the postmodern doubt of whether identity is real comes to the foreground and suggests that the self or culture can be revised and remodeled as the case may be, similar to actors going through their roles in a play.