Summary
Scene 1.
The play opens in a prison cell in Paris in the "present," which, at the time the play was produced and published, would have been the late 1980s. The cell belongs to Rene Gallimard, a 65-year-old man who sits near a crate with a kettle and a portable tape recorder.
Nearby, Song, a performer dressed as a beautiful woman, does a traditional dance from the Peking opera to traditional Chinese music. Slowly the music turns into a duet from the Puccini opera Madame Butterfly, the "Love Duet." As Song dances to the music, Gallimard approaches Song and tries to call to them, but the image of Song is just a memory.
Gallimard addresses the audience, saying that his cell is four and a half by five meters, and that he has a small window. He speaks about the conditions of the prison in glowing terms, saying, "The French—we know how to run a prison." He then tells the audience that he is treated well, because he is a celebrity, because he makes people laugh. He announces, "I never dreamed this day would arrive. I've never been considered witty or clever..."
Scene 2.
Another part of the stage lights up and we see two men and one woman at a party. Gallimard watches as the group talks about him. The group gossips about the fact that Gallimard is claiming "not to believe the truth," that he fell in love with Song without realizing they were a man all along. They laugh that Gallimard is not good looking and they feel sorry for him, then raise a toast in his honor.
Scene 3.
Gallimard watches the strangers toast and mock him and tells the audience that he has "known and been loved by...the Perfect Woman." He tells us that he sits in his cell every night and plays through the events of what happened, longing for an ending in which he is reunited with Song. "I imagine you—my ideal audience—who come to understand and even, perhaps just a little, to envy me."
Gallimard describes his story as being inspired by his favorite opera, Puccini's Madama Butterfly, which premiered at La Scala in Milan in 1904. He describes the heroine, Cio-Cio-San ("Butterfly") as a "feminine ideal," and its hero, Pinkerton of the U.S. Navy, as "pretty much a wimp," like himself. He tells the story of the opera, in which Pinkerton purchases Butterfly for 100 yen.
The play now turns into a staging of the story of Madame Butterfly, with Gallimard assuming the role of Pinkerton and another man taking on the role of Sharpless, the consul. "Pinkerton" brags about having saved money that day, and Sharpless compliments his house. "Artistic don't you think?" Pinkerton says, bragging that it impresses women all the time.
Pinkerton describes Butterfly to Sharpless, bragging that she "eats of [his] hand" and that "Oriental girls...want to be treated bad!" Sharpless asks if Pinkerton plans to bring his new wife, Butterfly, back to America, to St. Louis, and Pinkerton laughs off the idea as preposterous. Gallimard reassumes his identity as himself and tells the audience that in the next portion of the opera, the two men sing "The Whole World Over," giving a rough translation of the song's lyrics, which describe the colonialist impulse to enter a country, seduce its women, and leave. Gallimard then introduces his friend from school, Marc, who played Sharpless, "the sensitive soul of reason."
Scene 4.
We are transported to the École Nationale in Aix-en-Provence, 1947, where Gallimard and Marc are in school. Gallimard turns down an invitation from Marc to visit Marc's father's condo in Marseilles. Marc is indignant, insisting that the last time they went to the condo, some girls stripped. Gallimard is disturbed to hear that there are going to be girls there at all. Marc describes how sexually liberating the trip will be, basically describing a large orgy, and Gallimard refuses yet again, insisting that the girls will not accept him. "You don't have to ask! That's the beauty—don't you see? They don't have to say yes. It's perfect for a guy like you, really," says Marc.
Scene 5.
In Gallimard's cell, he describes the next scene of Madame Butterfly, in which Butterfly, age 15, enters. Song enters dressed as Madame Butterfly, moving to the "Love Duet." As the song ends and Song disappears, Gallimard says that it is hard to find a woman who is valued at the equivalent of 66 cents and describes the first time he found a "girlie magazine" at his uncle's house. A pin-up girl appears onstage and speaks to Gallimard, taunting him about watching her. He is nervous and ashamed of looking, but arrested by the presence of the woman.
Gallimard describes the second act of the opera in which Butterfly stares at the ocean waiting for her husband to return from the U.S. Comrade Chin, another character, enters playing Butterfly's assistant, Suzuki. Suzuki gives a very modern pep talk to her employer, encouraging Butterfly to sleep with other men for money. Then Marc enters, as Sharpless, and tells Butterfly that her husband isn't coming back. Butterfly threatens to kill herself if Pinkerton does not return, and goes into another room to fetch a baby.
Then, Gallimard tells the audience, Butterfly sees an American ship arriving, as "The Flower Duet" plays onstage. Song, as Butterfly, changes into her wedding dress. Meanwhile, Helga enters and helps Gallimard change into a tuxedo. Helga is Gallimard's wife, an older woman and the daughter of an ambassador to Australia. Gallimard narrates, "I married late, at age thirty-one. I was faithful to my marriage for eight years. Until the day when, as a junior-level diplomat in Puritanical Peking, in a parlor at the German ambassador's house, during the "Reign of a Hundred Flowers," I first saw her...singing the death scene from Madame Butterfly."
Scene 6. German ambassador's house in Beijing, 1960.
Diplomats gather, including Renee, Marc, Toulon, and Gallimard. Gallimard tells us the ending of Madame Butterly: "The ending is pitiful. Pinkerton, in an act of great courage, stays home and sends his American wife to pick up Butterfly's child. The truth, long deferred, has come up to her door." Song sings an excerpt from the opera, which Gallimard translates to mean, "Death with honor/Is better than life/Life with dishonor." As Song finishes the performance, everyone applauds.
Gallimard tells the audience that he does not typically like opera because it is all about the voice, but that Song's performance, which was nuanced and graceful, caught his attention. Song approaches Gallimard and introduces herself as "Song Liling." While Gallimard suggests that the performance of opera is usually so terrible, Song says that she thinks the story is ridiculous.
When Gallimard compliments Song's performance more, Song says, "Convincing? As a Japanese woman? The Japanese used hundreds of our people for medical experiments during the war, you know. But I gather such an irony is lost on you." He says it's a beautiful story, but she says that it must only be beautiful to a Westerner; "It's one of your favorite fantasies, isn't it?" she says, "The submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man." She suggests that if the story were about a blonde homecoming queen and a short Japanese businessman, Western audiences would not find the story beautiful, before telling Gallimard that she will never do the opera again, and will only perform with the Peking Opera. "Expand your mind," she tells him, before leaving the stage.
Analysis
The play starts at the end of Gallimard's story, after he has been put in prison. Because it does not follow a strict linear structure, it is up to the reader or audience member to piece together the events of what happened as we go along. Gallimard's imprisonment acts as a kind of framing device for the narrative, and he is our hapless, melancholic narrator; a sad irony hangs over his account of what has happened to him.
Additionally, as we discover soon enough, he is not a reliable narrator, in that his imprisonment is about his misconception of the truth. He tells us that he is still playing over the events in his mind, saying, "Alone in this cell, I sit night after night, watching our story play through my head, always searching for a new ending, one which redeems my honor, where she returns at last to my arms." His relationship to the events of his life is fanciful and longing, and he wants to write a new ending to a story that has already ended with him in jail.
Gallimard also sets up the premise for the theatrical event by telling the audience that they are "the ideal audience." In this way, he sets up a special and intimate relation between performer and viewer, creating a confidence and trust between them, and ensuring his position as protagonist. In laying out his expectation that the audience be "ideal" and that they might come to "envy" him, even though he is in jail, Gallimard centers the narrative around his experience and justifies the event. The audience, he suggests, is there to hear his side of the story, and to sympathize, in contrast to the gossiping masses.
The story of the play unfolds discreetly to reveal a complex critique and examination of colonialism and the ways that art and sexuality have contributed to colonialist agendas. After enacting a scene from Puccini's opera, Gallimard translates the text from a duet between Pinkerton and Sharpless, which elucidates Western entitlement. He translates the song's lines as "the Yankee travels, casting his anchor wherever he wants." Playwright David Henry Hwang portrays this story from the perspective of the Westerner, positioning him as the protagonist, but then creates a critique of the Westerners' position in relation to the East, highlighting their sense of privilege and disregard for Eastern subjectivity.
The echoes of such a Western entitlement and bias reverberates into the play proper, when Gallimard first meets Song and she challenges his appreciation of the story of Madame Butterfly. While he thinks the story represents a beautiful sacrifice, she suggests that the opera is simply an elaborate staging of a Western fetish: submissive Oriental woman and cruel white man. In this moment, Song is anything but a compliant Eastern woman and challenges Gallimard's prejudices and preconceptions with a powerful and concise critique.
