Calyin’s description of M. Butterfly was very dead on. I felt as if I was uncomfortable and I was certainly not suspecting the amount of sexually explicit language and dialogue. It is so graphic at some points that I felt awkward reading it. I definitely felt awkward talking about it in class.
The main part of her blog posting that I would like to respond to is the part at the end where she mentions that the play is calling into question the stereotypes that Western culture holds about Japanese women. Indeed, in Act 1 Scene 6, the reader is called to imagine the original play if the roles were reversed.
I have to admit I found that if the roles in the original play were reversed so that a young western women fell in love with a short Japanese woman it would not make sense to me. Especially that she would not marry into royalty after years without seeing her husband. Then she would commit suicide to escape the pain. This is a stereotype that I was unaware I held towards Japanese women. It would seem ludicrous to me if the original plays roles were reversed. M. Butterfly forces the reader to acknowledge, that although they may be unaware of it, they may actually be prejudice towards Eastern women. I myself was unaware that I held any types of prior thoughts about Eastern women until I read this scene.
No comments:
Post a Comment