Stereotypes in M. Butterfly Essay

While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.

Femininity is a concept whose attributes are contingent on the culture it is in—what one culture may consider typically feminine traits could largely vary from what another culture views as being feminine. While theater can sometimes subvert theses ideals and present women who function in ways that are not typically feminine, theater can often present idealistic representations of women who exemplify that culture’s ideals of femininity. Take, for example, the female characters in both Guan Hanqing’s Snow in Midsummer and Hroswit’s Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins. While both texts come from largely different cultural contexts—Snow in Midsummer was written in thirteenth century China for a general population whereas Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins was written in tenth century Germany as a closet drama—both texts have female protagonists whose rebellions exemplify feminine ideals of the respective cultures.

Racial stereotypes have always been a serious issue in society. The stereotypes impact many aspects of our life. We more or less get carried away by our perceptions toward race, and judge people in a certain frame unconsciously, as Omi set forth in In Living Color: Race and American Culture. Taken by Hilary Swift, this photo presents an African American woman, waiting for a bus that can take her to the Kitchen of Love, a food pantry that located in Philadelphia aiming to feed people suffering from hunger, where she volunteers. It happens in dawn so it’s still dark outside. The surroundings give us an idea that it should take place in a black neighborhood (Stolberg “Black Voters, Aghast at Trump, Find a Place of Food and Comfort”). The woman is staring at the direction where the bus is coming, with a smile on her face. As a photojournalistic image, this photo is aiming to portrait a kind and helpful African American woman, however, does this photo really “positively” portrait an African American woman?

The danger of a single story is that they let the powerful downgrade the weaker because they create stereotypes, they can hurt the people, and no one gets represented from the culture.

The Shakespearean play, Much Ado About Nothing, has a unique and an interesting way of presenting the idea of gender, especially for female characters. The play demonstrates two contradictory characters, Hero and Beatrice; one being the “ideal” women during this era and the other being the complete opposite from the “ideal” women. The play challenges as well as reinforces the gender roles during this era with the comparison between the two female characters as well as the attitude of men towards women.

In David Hwang’s play, M. Butterfly, the story covers the superior attitude that Western white men hold toward Eastern oriental women which is shown through Rene Gallimard’s experiences. Throughout the story, Gallimard constantly brings up his favorite play, M. Butterfly, where an oriental woman, Butterfly, gives up and loses everything including her life for the white man she loves, Pinkerton, and despite Butterfly’s efforts, Pinkerton ends up marrying another woman causing Butterfly to commit suicide. Many white men enjoy this play because it portrays white men to look superior and gives them the assumption that oriental women would do and give up anything for a white man. Gallimard is also one of the white men who believe they are superior to oriental women and that no matter what he does, an oriental woman would never leave his side. Gallimard 's belief of racial superiority is what led him to his control over Song as if Gallimard was Pinkerton and Song was his Butterfly, this fantasy that Gallimard created for himself was false because in reality, Gallimard was the Butterfly and Song was the Pinkerton.

Frank Chin has been the most vocal critic of Kingston's who accused her "of reinforcing white fantasies about Chinese Americans" (Chin, 1991) and claimed that writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang who won approval of the American white readers deliberately distorted the image of Chinese American to reinforce stereotypes and cater to the fantasies of American readers about a traditionalist Chinese culture. (Frank Chin, 1991, pp. 3-29)

In the “Out Siders” written by SE Hinton, set in the 1960’s, is a novel focused on Two Stereotypical youth gangs, the greasers (east side people who are poor), and the Socs (Westside people who are rich). SE Hinton has included many themes throughout the novel, as the story develops around youth conflict between these two stereotypical youth sides, and how a death could mean so much to both. This is shown as SE Hinton communicates the themes, Stereotypes, family, and empathy throughout “The Outsiders”.

Asian stereotypes are a product of prevailing myths propagated by various media, from books, plays, movies, television, to even historical propaganda. Generally speaking, the stereotyping of Asian women often swing to extreme types: the docile, subservient sexual object, or the dragon lady. Asian Americans only make up a small percentage of the United States population and live mostly on the west and east coasts of mainland United States and Hawaii. Consequently, the rest of the American population will most likely get their exposures to Asian Americans through television and movies. Popular media exposure to Asian Americans lacks one-on-one acquaintance with Asian Americans. It hinders the process

Asians have the “China Doll” subservient Asian stereotype and the “Dragon Lady” stereotype. The China Doll doesn’t put up a fight, she listens to men especially her male partner. This stereotype can be compared to the Mammy stereotype but the China Doll stereotype can be sexual whereas the Mammy isn’t viewed as sexual. The China Doll and the Mammy obey and accept their submissiveness.

“Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is a play that is largely based on stereotypes. The most prevalent one is the inferiority of women over men, though the play also explores the differences between genders in general.

The most prominent woman figure in this play is Linda, but the male characters in this play also give us insight into women’s roles and help feed the feminist analyses

Susan Glaspell uses a variety of symbols in her play to demonstrate the stereotypical view and treatment of women by men during the start of the twentieth century. She intricately portrays the female characters in her story as intelligent, but passive due to the fact that males dismiss their ideas and conversations as unimportant. The play, Trifles, uses multiple symbols to show how men fail to recognize the intelligence of women, and oppress the feminists’ way of thinking throughout society.

M butterfly a play by David Henry Hwang has captivated audiences for many years! I love story with many twist and turns M butterfly describes an affair between a Chinese “women” and a French diplomat that caries on for 20 years only to discover that the Women was actually a man. A spy for the communist party sent to get information on the Vietnam war, but Gillard was to stubborn to see it until Liling the Chinese opera singer is sent to France where she is found to be a man in court. Through this we can see the relationship between Gender, capitalism and ethnicity/ nationality and sexuality.

The show and the theory are directly related by several points that have already been previously stated. The stereotypes mentioned in M. Butterfly are direct representations of the stereotypes mentioned in the theory. Though M. Butterfly is a major piece that has been directly known for its examples, other shows are known for such examples as well. “The highly profitable reincarnation of different version of the Butterfly story, from David Belasco’s Madame Butterfly to Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg’s Miss Saigon (1989), might well embody a ‘long line of Western misrepresentation of Asians, perpetuating a damaging fantasy of submissive ‘Orientals,’ self-erasing women, and asexual, contemptible men’” (Lee 13). Having more