"Vive la difference!" (4)
I. Gendered Subject and Colonial/Male
Power
-
Gallimard's experience back
home in France vs. his experience in China;
-
Gallimard's ascension to power(vice-Consul)
p 36-38; conversation with Toulon pp. 44-46;
-
Gallimard's relationship with
Song:
-
attraction by her criticism
of Madame Butterfly p. 16
-
"sour grape" theory p. 18
-
at the opera house, Song's suggestiveness
p. 20-22 ("sometimes)
-
a thirst intensified p. 27
-
first meeting at the apartment
pp. 27-31
-
Gallimard's experiment
p. 32 -- the letters
-
Gallimard's promotion -- approach
Song as Butterfly at the end of Act I
-
Act
II: Song starts his espionage; two-way espionage pp. 44 - 47
-- power deflated by the appearance of Chin pp. 47-48
-
Gallimard's loss of power
(1): Helga -- Gallimard -- Song over the issue of child-bearing -- Song
supports his male egotism by promising to give him a child.
-
Gallimard's loss of power (2):
Renee
-
Gallimard's loss of power (3)
-- goes to Song as "a vessel to contain [his] humiliation" (58)
-
Colonialism // Orientalism
+ sexism
-
examples of colonialism:
p.
44; p. 57
-
Madame Butterfly as the perfect
woman // the rape mentality of the West p. 82 - 83
-
male voyeurism
-
Marc as G's model and rival
p. 8; "her destiny to surrender" pp. 24-25
-
the roles of the Western
women: Isabella p. 32; Renee pp. 54-55 (Renee's interpretation of wars);
Helga
II. Subject and Performance of differences:
Why do the characters take on different roles in this play? Or
more specifically, why some of their roles in the play within the play
(Madame Butterfly) get reversed in the play (p. 7)? Why does
Gallimard
speak to the audience "us" (pp. 4, 12, 15, 18, 75)? Who else
in the play speaks to the audience? (p. 47; 63,67, 78-79)
Marc as Sharpless
p. 7;
Conrad Chin as Suzuki,
Gallimard as Pinkerton (and
finally as Butterfly); Gallimard speaks for Butterfly 13
Song's switching of roles: against Orientalism p. 17; want to educate
G and expand his mind; timid and nervous pp. 30-31; "Are you my Butterfly?"
39; "modest Chinese girl" Gallimard's change: 60
The doning and doffing of clothes on the stage: e.g. pp. 4; 9,
14, 86-87
III. History as competing discourses
(or re-constructions, fictions)
-
Into Gallimard's re-construction,
Song intrudes and has his own. climax p. 60 -- pp. 61; 63; p. 78;
p. 85
-
Gallimard's interpretation p.
84
-
final switching
of roles: Song: "little one" p. 86; Gallimard, "as sorry as Butterfly p.
91; Song: "Butterfly? Butterfly?"
-
The ending shows two men with
their separate imagination/fiction of their Butterflies.
IV. homosexuality:
Why does "Pinkerton vanish" in the climatic scene of Gallimard's declaration
of love for and desire to marry Song? p. 60
|