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Phillip Cabral
Professor Duneer
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Inspired by true events and the famous Puccini opera u
, David Henry
his own fantasy of the perfect Oriental woman ± a woman who, in reality, turns out to be a
transvestite communist spy. The play explores a number of different themes including
imperialism, Orientalism, gender identity, and sexuality. By intricately exploring such a vast
number of diverse themes, the play invites an equally vast number of interpretations from
countless critical perspectives. In this essay, I will use the theoretical groundwork of Fish,
Althusser, and Walder to support my argument that this was precisely the author¶s intention.
In his essay, ³Interpretive Communities,´ Fish attempts to explain how ³if interpretive
acts are the source of forms rather than the other way around´ it is true that ³the same reader will
perform differently when reading two ³different´ . . . texts´ and that ³different readers will
perform similarly when reading the ³same´ . . . text´ (217). These apparent ³facts´ of reading
would seem to indicate that there is meaning inherent in any given text; that the text precedes
(and predicates) its reading or interpretation. Fish, however, argues the opposite, claiming that a
text does not exist prior to its interpretation; it is created only when a reader has interpreted it
(217). He asserts that readers make a number of interpretive decisions prior to reading (such as
what the genre of a text is) and that these decisions ³immediately predispose [readers] to perform
certain acts, to ³find´ . . . themes . . . significances´ (Fish 217). In other words, ³interpretive
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strategies are not put into execution after reading . . . they are the shape of reading . . . making
[texts] rather than . . . arising from them´ (Fish 218). Even though they don¶t V to, different
people may make different interpretive decisions regarding the ³same´ text or ³different´ texts,
or the same person might interpret all texts the ³same´ or differently (Fish 218). This is because
interpretive strategies are random and not inherent in any given text.
defines as groups of individuals who read texts in the same way; that is, who use the same
interpretive strategies to ³perceive the [same] text´ (219). These communities are not fixed,
however; they may ³grow larger and decline´ and ³individuals [may] move from one to another´
(Fish 220). For Fish, this resolves the issue at hand. He also explains that ³interpretive strategies
are not natural or universal, but learned,´ while stipulating that the ³ability to interpret is not
acquired; it is constitutive of being human´ (Fish 220). Instead, what ³is acquired are the ways of
interpreting . . . [which] can also be forgotten or supplanted´ (Fish 220). Fish concludes his essay
by adding that ³utterers´ (the ³actual´ authors of ³source´ texts so to speak) invite their readers
to apply the set of interpretive strategies to their work that they themselves would apply if they
Althusser, in his essay, ³Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,´ defines ideology as
a ³set of practices and institutions that sustain an individual¶s imaginary relationship to [their]
material [real] conditions of existence´ (693). They are merely ³illusions´ that ³make allusion to
reality, and that´ need to be ³interpreted´ in order to reveal that reality (Althusser 693). However,
people only admit that an ideology does not ³correspond to reality´ when it is not their own; only
the ³world outlooks´ of some V, ³primitive society´ is accepted as mere myth (Althusser
693). (One would have to be ³scientific´ or ³subjectless´ to acknowledge that their ideology is a
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fantasy (Althusser 699).) Thus, it could be said that people who share the same ideology form an
³interpretive community.´
Having concluded that men use ideology to ³represent their real conditions . . . to
themselves in an imaginary form,´ Althusser begins to speculate on why men needed to create
ideologies in the first place (694). He offer up one theory (which itself is an ideology and
interpretation) that ideologies were invented by ³priests and despots´ as a way of exploiting and
enslaving other men, but ultimately concludes that men do not represent their ³real world´ to
themselves with their ideologies, but their relationship to the ³real world;´ in other words, they
create such ³imaginary distortion(s)´ as, ³I am a child of God,´ to represent that in reality they
have a father, or are the product of a patriarchal society (Althusser 694-5). Such ideological
distortions (or interpretations) of reality give men a sense of purpose that allows them to be
productive. Althusser also questions ³the nature of this imaginariness;´ after all, how can an
Because an ³ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice,´ ISAs are how ideologies
are manifested; they are rituals like prayer or attending Mass (Althusser 695). People adopt
certain behaviors, perform certain ISAs, and in turn assume a certain ideology. Their beliefs are
derived from their actions and not the other way around, just as a text is shaped by its
interpretation rather than the reverse. Similarly, a person¶s ideologies adapt to changes in their
behavior just as a person¶s interpretation of a text changes as they adopt new methods of reading.
An individual can likewise be seen as a text, and their ideology can be seen as the interpretation
that preceded them. As Althusser explains, people freely choose the ideologies that best
correspond to their own conscious ideas, that are ³obvious´ to them (696-8). We all exist as
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³always-already subjects´ who are recruited by the ideology that interpellates (hails) us and that
In his essay on post-colonial theory, Walder expounds upon the ideas of Fish and
Althusser by arguing that interpretation and ideology influences the way we understand (³read´)
history. He claims that the history we are taught is only one side of the story, that our perception
of the past has been skewed and filtered through the lens of whatever dominant, colonizing
culture created the literature (³texts´) that we have been left with to interpret. The only problem
is that these texts have already been interpreted through the ideology of said ³utterer´
³interpretive community´ (Walder 1077). Thus, it is our job as ³readers´ to become ³scientific´
and interpret the fantasy of our ideologized history to get to the basis of its relationship to the
real world and what really happened. Walder argues that to do this we must become aware of and
reinterpret history from the alternative perspectives of those who have been oppressed, colonized,
and/or othered (1077, 1082). (An ³other´ being someone who has had their identity created for
them by another person, usually an ³imperialist,´ as a way of subjugating them (Walder 1076).
In other words, they have had an ideology thrust upon them that they did not freely chose; that
they did not self-recognize with.) Hwang seems to be in perfect agreement with Walder on this
The play is loosely based on the real life case of Bernard Bouriscot, a French diplomat
who was tried for treason after falling in love with a Chinese male spy whom he had mistaken
for being a woman (Hwang 4). Hwang claims that he was inspired to write the play after reading
a ³two paragraph story in the New York Times´ about the trial (85). From this brief article alone,
Hwang quickly formed his own interpretation of what had happened and decided that Bouriscot
had been operating under the Orientalist ideology present in the opera u
(85-6).
Although he had never read or watched the opera before, he decided to frame his play as a
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deconstruction of it based on his personal perception (interpretation and imagining/ideology) of
the story. (Thus, the play can be seen as an interpretation of history filtered through an
Rene Gallimard, the play¶s central character, can be viewed as something of a parallel to
his story. Throughout the play Gallimard makes frequent references to
, or rather, V
interpretation of it (³We now return to my version of Madame Butterfly´) (Hwang 13). He uses
it as a way of framing his commentary on his own plight. (In fact, as the play is V narrative, we
get his commentary ± his interpretation ± on just about everything that is said and done!) It
play are his interpretive community): each move he makes is governed by the opera¶s ISAs and
he imagines those around him as characters in the story, personally self-recognizing with its anti-
hero, Pinkerton (Hwang 10). He doesn¶t just want his life to be like the opera, he thinks that it
audience while performing scenes from it in his own little fantasy world (ideological state). All
the while, and for almost the entirety of the play, various arias from the opera play in the
background so that we, the audience, become fully immersed in Gallimard¶s ideology. Lyrics
from the opera are also often sung or quoted, in Italian, only to be immediately translated into
English by Gallimard. (It is important to note that translation is itself a form of interpretation,
its characters speak Mandarin and French. Thus, the ³truth´ ± the ³scientific´ reality ± of the play
the title role (Hwang 18). (Gallimard mistakenly interprets Song as a woman when in fact ³she´
is a man.) He rubs ³her´ the wrong way, however, when he praises her performance and
professes his love for the opera, provoking Song to go off on him for his imperialistic attitude
towards Oriental women. She gives him (and the audience) her own interpretation of u
(filtered through a post-colonial lens not unlike that of Walder), deriding it for its
sexism, racism, and hypocrisy. She even goes so far as to re-tell the story with an American
Butterfly falling for a Japanese Pinkerton to point out its absurdity before vowing to never
Eventually Song cools down and begins an affair with the married Gallimard some weeks
later after he attends (half out of curiousity, half because Song¶s challenge to his ideology has
fascinated and unnerved him) the Peking Opera. His attendance signifies a willingness to adjust
his imperialist ideology by looking at things from the perspective of the colonized ³other.´ Song,
however, questions the genuineness of his motives, asking him, ³You¶re a Westerner. How can
Throughout the course of their relationship, and for the remainder of the play, Song
voice of the other, and, seemingly, the voice of truth, as she forces a reluctant Gallimard to tell
the truth against his will on a number of occasions. This might seem like Hwang¶s way of saying
that the other¶s interpretation of events is always right, but in fact he does have Song caveat her
commentary by asking Gallimard, ³Do you believe everything I tell you?´ (22).
The play concludes with Song stripping off ³her´ clothes before Gallimard, revealing to
him that ³she´ was really a man (Hwang 65). This ³strip-show´ is symbolic of what Althusser
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might call a ³scientific dissection´ ± cutting away the layers of Gallimard¶s ideology to reveal
the reality underneath. Confronted with the truth ± that his beloved Butterfly was actually a man
all along ± Gallimard seems to descend into madness. He rejects his real world condition and
retreats completely and irrevocably into his fantasy world, choosing to live within the limits of
his ideology rather than face the cold hard truth. As he tells Song shortly after his disrobing,
³Tonight, I¶ve finally learned to tell fantasy from reality. And, knowing the difference, I choose
perspectives, and that is itself based on an interpretation of the ideology of the ideology of
another play, and of historical facts, Hwang is clearly trying to emphasize a point about how
these things influence not only the way in which we read a literal text, but also the way in which
we read history and, more importantly, how we read each other. In M. Butterfly Hwang is using
the theoretical concepts developed by Fish and Althusser to stress the importance of Walder¶s
argument that it is essential to examine all stories from the point of view of everyone involved,
and to then take those views and interpret them in as many different ways as you can. For only
then can you strip away the makeup, wigs, and robes of ideology to get at the naked man of
uninterpreted, scientific truth, which is the only way there can ever be any real justice in the
world.
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Althusser, Louis. ³Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.´ ´ VV
.
Eds. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 693-702. Print.
Michael Ryan. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 217-21. Print.