As its title suggests, "M. Butterfly" is essentially a play about metamorphosis. It is, firstly, the metamorphosis of Giacomo Puccini's famous opera "Madame Butterfly" into a modern-day geopolitical argument for cultural understanding. Author...

Based on a true story that stunned the world, M. Butterfly opens in the cramped prison cell where diplomat Rene Gallimard is being held captive by the French government - and by his own illusions. In the darkness of his cell he recalls a time when...

In David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, Song Liling and Rene Gallimard engage in an extramarital affair that positions male against female, and East against West. Hwang uses the affair, along with its power dynamics, to challenge traditional notions...

In both society and literature, fetishes and sexual fantasies constantly find themselves rooted in racial differences. The philosophical concept of the “other” is one that addresses the idea of fetishization, in that we find ourselves idealizing...

David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly draws links between sexism, racism and imperialism. Hwang’s play, which is loosely based on a scandal involving a French diplomat and his lover, a male Chinese opera singer, utilizes postcolonial ideas in order to...

The establishment of imperialism can be condensed to the rift between the Self and the Other. One can only believe that he or she possesses the right to will the destiny of another by assuming that there is an essential devaluation of that human...

The figurative use of masks in She Stoops to Conquer and M. Butterfly is present in both the characters and the themes to define genders and deceit. Goldsmith and Hwang use mockery and satire in the two plays interchangeably through time and space...

A visual paradigm shift known to many: the rabbit-duck illusion. At first glance, the image is a rabbit, long ears unmistakable. A slight tilt of the head, however, and those characteristic ears morph into a beak—no longer a rabbit, but a duck....