The Art of a Coy Woman, a Manipulator...

Opening Scene of Act III:
Modern Set, with an inclusive audience, where, downstage the audience is seated, while the large middle aisle is empty wood planks with old theatre lights on the cusp of the stage, while upstage is cold metal stairs with a balcony serving as the judge and witness stand of a courtroom. Empty stage aisle. One performer is standing center downstage. Dark, but warm yellow and red shadows envelope the stage. As the opening chords of “Music from the “Death Scene” blare[s] over the house speakers” (84), we see the back of aged white hair with the opening light, and the character is in a frozen position; half-crouched, eyes closed, looking up, a painful expression with hands reaching, fingers open, a sign of desperation. The figure, we realize is Gallimard, falls to the ground, sobbing, “crawing towards song’s wig and kimono” (84), while the melody to “Con Honour Muore” is still playing, but softly. Clutching the ornate delicate fabric and overly soft hair, the two objects are what Gallimard clings to in his overly emotional state, for they are the only remembrance of his Song, his “Butterfly” (84), whom he cries out for. “Hwang has purposely structured the play in a way that highlights and explains the racial stereotype that western men hold over eastern women” (Katie Tyring, Blog, April 8, 2009). Throughout Act III, scene 2, Hwang uses structure of the play; music, stage direction, and dialogue to create powerful performances that leave an impression on the emotions of the audience, leaving them questioning the “Stereotypical belief of Eastern women…that western men hold over eastern women” (Katie Trying, Blog, April 8, 2009). As Song in Act III, scene 2 speaks to Gallimard, the dialogue he uses imitating his role as a woman demonstrates his control over Gallimard. Song: “(Reprising his feminine character, he sidles up to Gallimard) “How I wish there were even a small café to sit in. With men in tuxedos, and cappuccinos, and bad expatriate jazz.” Now you want to kiss me, don’t you?” (86).Gallimard (Pulling away): What makes you-?Song:- so sure?Demonstrated by this dialogue is Song’s control over Gallimard, solely exhibited by acting, by fulfilling the role of the ideal Eastern woman. In the beginning of the scene, before Song fully reveals himself as a man by stripping, in Gallimard’s eyes, Song is still a woman, so there is an evident power on Song’s side and vulnerability on Gallimard’s side. Hwang conveys that by identifying with the western male role, one is vulnerable, because they have allowed themselves to be overtaken by believing in the image of the fallacy of the “eastern woman” (Katie Tyring, Blog, April 8). Hwang expresses the irony that to believe in the fallacy of the ideal eastern woman gives the western man who wants to “protect” (16) the eastern woman in his “western arms”(in class video, based on Act I, scene 6) a false sense of power. When Song strips, revealing himself as a man, the power play within the scene is changed, Song having the diminutive, vulnerable role, and Gallimard, his role now as the woman in the scene, exhibiting power. Song’s questioning of “What?”(89), and “So-you never really loved me? Only when I was playing a part?” (89) places him no longer in the confident and controlling role, but as the partner who must rely on the other for affirmation. Songs’ further dialogue “It’s all in the way we dress, and make up our faces, and bat our eyelashes” (90), expresses Gallimard’s shallowness of vision, and how he must believe in the eastern stereotype of a woman to find love and fulfillment, and how he cannot live any other way. Through the death scene, Hwang expresses that “ Gallimard’s stereotypical beliefs of Easten woman turned against him for the worst” (Katie Tyring, Blog, April 8, 2009), when at this point Gallimard cannot live without the reassurance of his stereotype and must take his own life, as Madame butterfly chooses to in the “Death Scene” of the opera Madame Butterfly.