Summary
As Chuck Berry plays, Renee comes onto the stage, drying her hair. She compliments Gallimard's penis, calling it a "weenie." The two of them discuss different colloquial names for "penis." Renee discusses penises in detail, relating anxiety over penis size to the fact that men are competitive and obsessed with starting wars. This is futile, however, she decides, saying, "I mean, you conquer the country, or whatever, but you're still wearing clothes, so there's no way to prove absolutely whose is bigger or smaller. And that's what we call a civilized society. The whole world run by a bunch of men with pricks the size of pins."
When Renee finishes her monologue, Gallimard says to the audience, "This was simply not acceptable." Song appears on the stage dressed as Butterfly and does an elaborate dance, clearly upset. Gallimard narrates that he kept up his affair with Renee nonetheless because of the rush of power he felt knowing that Song knew, but would say nothing.
Toulon enters and informs Gallimard that "...The U.S. will allow the Vietnamese generals to stage a coup...and assassinate President Diem." Gallimard raises a toast to the news, which is what Gallimard has been advocating all along. Toulon says, "It's a test of everything you've been saying. I personally think the generals probably will stop the Communists. And you'll be a hero." Gallimard tries to confirm that Toulon shares his opinions, and Toulon tells him that he agrees with Gallimard, but that his opinions are not on the report, so if anything goes wrong, Gallimard will take the fall.
Song throws a vase on the ground, before reciting, "The whole world over, the white man travels, setting anchor, wherever he likes. Life's not worth living, unless he finds, the finest maidens, of every land..."
Gallimard narrates his frustration with Toulon, and says, "What I wanted was revenge. A vessel to contain my humiliation. Though I hadn't seen her in several weeks, I headed for Butterfly's." When he arrives at Song's, she is drunk and waking from a dream. She tells him that she knows he is straying and that she does not know "how to become another woman." Gallimard then asks to see Song naked. "I thought you respected my shame!" she cries in protest.
Song then tells Gallimard, "I thought myself so repulsed by the passive Oriental and the cruel white man. Now I see—we are always most revolted by the things hidden within us." She then tells him to undress her, saying, "Whatever happens, know that you have willed it." Gallimard crosses towards her, but stops. He narrates, "Did I not undress her because I knew, somewhere deep down, what I would find? Perhaps."
As Gallimard embraces Song, she tells him she is pregnant, and he tells her he wants to marry her.
Scene 7. Gallimard and Song's flat.
Song and Chin are having a meeting. "I need a baby," Song tells Chin, as Chin tries to tell Song about Gallimard's affair. Song tells Chin that Gallimard told her to strip, which could have ruined the whole mission, and that she took a gamble by offering to submit. "Once a woman submits, a man is always ready to become 'generous,'" Song says. She requests a Chinese baby with blond hair, insisting that that will ensure that Gallimard is hers forever. "I need one...in seven months. Make sure it's a boy," she says, and Chin tells Song to talk to Comrade Kang herself.
As Chin gets up to leave, Song asks her, "Why, in the Peking Opera, are women's roles played by men?" As Chin tries to answer her question, Song offers her own interpretation, "Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act."
We are once again in Gallimard's cell, as he speaks to the memory of Song, telling her that he could forgive her if she returned to him and became Butterfly again. "Fat chance," Song replies, telling him that the French president has pardoned her of treason. She then calls Gallimard her "greatest acting challenge."
Scene 8.
Back in the flashback, Gallimard tells Song that he will divorce Helga and they can live together and then move to France. "Marry me," he says, but Song refuses, saying she is "not worthy," and adding, "What would happen if you divorced your wife to marry a Communist Chinese actress?"
They argue, and afterwards Song goes away for a few months, before returning with a baby in her arms. Gallimard quotes some lyrics from Madame Butterfly about the child that Butterfly has. "I'm going to call him 'Peepee,'" Song tells him. When Gallimard protests, Song insists that she will raise him in China.
Scene 9. 1966.
Gallimard narrates that as Mao got older, "his cult became very strong." Two dancers in Mao suits do a crude performance of revolutionary violence. Gallimard narrates that the Vietnam War went badly as well.
Toulon enters and tells Gallimard that he is being sent home. "In general, everything you've predicted here in the Orient...just hasn't happened," Toulon says, explaining that Gallimard suggested that China was open to Western trade and that Americans would succeed in Indochina, and neither has happened.
Song is dragged onstage wearing a Mao suit, beaten. Gallimard narrates, "I don't care to recall how Butterfly and I said our hurried farewell. Perhaps it was better to end our affair before it killed her."
Chin enters the stage with a banner that says, "The Actor Renounces His Decadent Profession." Chin humiliates Song and gets her to admit that she has sinned against the Communist party by living a Western lifestyle and getting sodomized by Gallimard. At the end, Song yells, "I want to serve the people!" which satisfies Chin. A banner is unveiled that reads, "The Actor is Rehabilitated!"
Scene 10. A commune in the Hunan Province in 1970. Song tells Chin that he has worked in the fields of Hunan for four years and has served the Revolution. Chin disagrees and only degrades Song more, calling him a "homo" and telling him that he has to live off his own money now. Chin tells Song to go to France and ask Gallimard to support her, extracting more information from him in the process. "That's crazy. It's been four years," Song says, but Chin won't take no for an answer, ordering Song to "go to France and be a pervert for Chairman Mao."
Analysis
Curiously enough, it is the bawdy Renee who makes the most direct connection between sex and war, a connection to which other characters vaguely allude throughout. In a post-coital moment with Gallimard, she suggests that questions about penis size are at the heart of why wars get fought. She hypothesizes, "If I'm a guy with a small one, I'm going to build a really big building or take over a really big piece of land or write a really long book so the other men don't know, right?" In her estimation, conquering and takeover in the military sense have everything to do with a man's fixation on the phallus and his desire to prove the superiority of his own.
In this section of the play, we see that Gallimard's actions as a vice-consul begin to have a consequential bearing on the sociopolitical stakes of the Vietnam War, and that his betrayal of the region coincides with his romantic betrayal of Song. This betrayal is theatricalized in an abstract way to lead the audience through the emotional stakes of the circumstances. Song comes onstage dressed as Madame Butterfly and performs a song and dance, an abstraction of her feelings, as Gallimard gets word of the imminent assassination of Diem.
Complicating matters even further is the question of whether Song shares Gallimard's romantic feelings or if their connection is, as she purports, her "greatest acting challenge." Once it is revealed that Song is a spy, it seems that her connection to Gallimard is purely to help the Communist cause, and she gloats at him while he is in his prison cell, reminding him that she has been pardoned and moved on entirely. It remains ambiguous whether she ever returned Gallimard's feelings.
Part of what keeps Song's subjectivity so ambiguous and mysterious is her status as an actor. She can slip in and out of parts seamlessly, from man to woman, from Western sympathizer to Communist spy, from ally to traitor, all in the blink of an eye. Song's liminal identity ultimately lands Gallimard in jail—it is her greatest betrayal of him and greatest victory as a spy—yet it also makes her an untrustworthy subject under Communism, and she is punished by Chin and the other Communists as well.
Song's political position is an impossible one, complicated both by their status as an actor and as a homosexual man. While it was acceptable that Song posed as a woman to extract information from Gallimard, the fact that Song was sodomized leads to punishment after Gallimard has been sent home. What's more, Song is such a good actor that his spying has led him to adopt the decadence of Western society, and Chin humiliates him for this. There is no room for actors under Communism, and banners inform us that the actor must be "rehabilitated" from "his decadent profession." Thus we see that as easily as an actor can assume an identity and become the role, that role can be stripped from him, a beautiful woman can become a shamed man, a wife can become a spy, and the performance ends.
