1. M. Butterfly - Introduction to the Text
The play M.Butterfly by David Henry Hwang is a post-colonial story, based on a true story of a French diplomat, called Rene Gallimard in the play, who had a twenty-year affair with a Chinese actor and opera singer, namely Song Liling, not realizing that his partner was in fact a man passing as a woman. The diplomat actually became aware of the deception in 1986, when he was charged by the French government with disloyalty; it turned out that his companion had been an agent for the Chinese government, and had passed on sensitive political information that he had acquired from Gallimard.
Contents
1. M. Butterfly - Introduction to the Text
2. Laughing to Keep From Crying - Introduction to the Text
3. Comparison of the Two Texts
1. M. Butterfly - Introduction to the Text
The play M.Butterfly by David Henry Hwang is a post-colonial story, based on a true story of a French diplomat, called Rene Gallimard in the play, who had a twenty-year affair with a Chinese actor and opera singer, namely Song Liling, not realizing that his partner was in fact a man passing as a woman. The diplomat actually became aware of the deception in 1986, when he was charged by the French government with disloyalty; it turned out that his companion had been an agent for the Chinese government, and had passed on sensitive political information that he had acquired from Gallimard.
The title M.Butterfly shows the connection to the opera Madame Butterfly. It is clear that the play adapts some features of the opera, for Gallimard gets the role of Pinkterton from the opera and Song is supposed to be Butterfly. But in the end, it is Rene Gallimard who is actually the Butterfly, because he is the one who fell in love and was used by Song. Hwang explores the stereotypes that underlie and disfigure relations between Eastern and Western culture, and between men and women
The story begins in a prison cell in Paris in the present that was in the 1980’s when the play came out, where Rene Gallimard retells the story of how he met Song for the first time over their relationship until the point when he finds himself in prison for passing on political information. During the play, there are several flashbacks to the decade 1960 to 1970 in Beijing, to 1947 in Aix-en-Provence and from 1966 to the present in Paris.
2. Laughing to Keep From Crying - Introduction to the Text
The text Laughing to Keep From Crying. Who’s Passing for Who by Langston Hughes is a story written from the perspective of a black artist during the “Harlem Renaissance”. He tells the story of a friend of his, Caleb Johnson, who always hangs around with some white people, inviting them to dinner and showing them Harlem. The narrator of the story counts himself to the literary ones, being not bothered with questions of colour. But he thinks that Caleb and his white “friends” are all a bore.
After the short introduction, the narrator begins to tell about the night when he met Caleb with three white people with him; two men and a woman. He and his friends would have passed Caleb with a simple nod, if Caleb himself hadn’t risen and introduced them to his white folks. They talk for a while and after a little incident, they all leave and go to a fish restaurant. After one of the three white people has left the three artists begin a talk about race passing and explain that there are many black people passing for white, and even the other way around, when suddenly, the couple says they are black either, just having been passing the past 15 years.
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- Quote paper
- Jennifer Koss (Author), 2007, How "Passing" is described in "M. Butterfly" (D. H. Hwang) and "Laughing to Keep From Crying" (Langston Hughes), Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/148932
