| David Henry Hwang(1957-), born in California, is a playwright with great reputation. His works, just like those of many other Chinese-American writers, mainly concentrate on the living conditions and social status of Chinese Americans and Asian Americans in the modern world. Ever since his first play Fresh off the Boat, David Henry Hwang has focused on the matter of cultural identity of Chinese Americans, and strived to reveal and criticize the longdeveloped prejudice against Chinese in American society. Transcending the cultural differences and integrating traditional Peking Opera perfectly with Italian Opera, he makes Chinese history and tradition highlighted. His technique characterized by the combination of Chinese and Western styles has been well received in the drama critics’ circle.M. Butterfly, as one of his representative works, tells an espionage case between Gallimard, a French diplomat, and Song Liling, a Peking Opera actor in the context of the Cold War. Taking Madama Butterfly, a famous opera by Giacomo Puccini, as the prototype, it aims to explore cultural issues including nation and race, East and West, sex and gender, identity and self-identity, colonialism and post-colonialism, etc. The gender identity of Song Liling, the leading “lady”, is always the most attracting as well as doubtful topic in this play. It is about a twenty-year love affair from 1960, when Gallimard fell in love with Song Liling at the first sight, to 1986, when Song Liling showed his body nakedly by stripping himself to Gallimard’s face.Is it possible that Gallimard has no idea of Song Liling’s male identity? Or does he just evade this fact intentionally? Based on theories of cultural hegemony, homosexual orientation, inferiority complex, and castration anxiety, this thesis focuses on digging out why and how they reach a tacit agreement on Song Liling’s male identity from three levels, that is, culture, society, and individual psychology.The thesis consists of three parts. The first part is the Introduction. It includes the introduction of the author, the play M. Butterfly, its overseas and domestic research status, as well as the significance of reexamining it from new perspectives.The second part is the main body of the thesis, which consists of four chapters. Chapter One points out the fact that the male identity of Song Liling is not a real secret but a taboo topic between Gallimard and Song Liling. The last three chapters elaborate the reasons why they choose to evade the fact without prior consultation from cultural, social, and individual psychological perspectives—Chapter Two, on the basis of cultural hegemony, illustrates the cultural gap between Gallimard and Song Liling, two representative figures of the West and the East; Chapter Three delves into the dilemma Gallimard and Song Liling are facing in the society of compulsory heterosexuality and with unequal occupational status; Chapter Four explores their different goals to pursue in love through the analysis of Gallimard’s inferiority complex and castration anxiety, coupled with the specific psychological impairment Song Liling has suffered in his growth experience without father.The third part is the conclusion. The thesis makes a thorough analysis on the tacit agreement between Gallimard and Song Liling, and points out that this love story, although seems to be an accidental event, is actually destined on account of the complicated cultural, social, and psychological causes. Its purpose doesn’t lie in degrading the play from a so-called espionage case to an unacceptable homosexual love story. It, in fact, aims to highlight the complicated situations people are living in. There must be thousands of key or trivial reasons behind each choice that has been made in our life, hence it cannot be simply judged by right or wrong. |
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