The F in Fabulous

Gender Roles

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 23:55:03 -0700

Have you guys seen this? Recently, Dr. Pepper launched this new type of drink called “Dr. Pepper 10” and it’s apparently “not for women.” This actually made me pretty angry. The soda is packaged with a wrapping with pictures of bullets instead of the usual bubbles. They emphasize that it’s made with real sugar and not the stuff in the diet drink. All the while Diet Dr. Pepper marketing is “women-friendly.” I just thought that this was related to M. Butterfly because of the gender roles that are applied. The men are supposed to be strong and mighty and able to intake all the real sugar and other ingredients. While the women can’t do that because they have to stay small and dainty and drink diet sodas. In M. Butterfly, the gender role of having a man be the powerful one also exists. What do you guys think of this ad? I suggest also watching the commercial, which can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iuG1OpnHP8

~Gabby

Grouping

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 23:38:00 -0700

We touched upon the grouping the occurs in M. Butterfly in previous classes, such as grouping all Asians and stating that they are all demure and weak, particularly the Chinese and Japanese since Song is Chinese and portrays Butterfly, a Japanese character. Something I did notice was that the entire Asian population is grouped together, but the Chinese language, in particular, was grouped as well. In China, several dialects exist. We see Song speak in Mandarin in Act 1, Scene 10, through the written pronunciation, “Kwai-lah,” which means “fast.” However, later in scene directions and through Gallimard we see the pronunciation, “chong-sam,” which is the Cantonese pronunciation of the traditional Chinese gown. By having Gallimard say it makes it seem that he is not throughly educated about Chinese language and culture. I find this funny because in Act 1, Scene 8, Song says, “Well, education has always been undervalued in the West, hasn’t it?” Do you guys think that this is grouping? What other examples of grouping did you see in M. Butterfly?

~Gabby

Fantasies in Reality

Thu, 31 May 2012 22:26:06 -0700

Throughout M. Butterfly, we see Gallimard wonder in and out of his fantasies and also confuse his fantasy with reality. For example, we see Gallimard in his fantasy world by calling Song “Butterfly” and viewing her as a stereotypical submissive Asian woman. Although, as the audience, we are aware of the line between reality and Gallimard’s fantasy in the play, sometimes the line is blurred. For example, in Act 3, Scene 2, Gallimard only says, “I am transported,” to notify the audience that this is his fantasy. And in the movie, under the same name, this scene happens in reality. I think by bringing the audience along into the fantasy is another element of “breaking the fourth wall.” By confusing the audience, it allows the viewers to confuse fantasy with reality, just as Gallimard does. What do you guys think about the effect of this confusion?

~Gabby

As I was talking about in class the other day, I noticed a...

Sun, 27 May 2012 17:43:31 -0700

As I was talking about in class the other day, I noticed a connection between M Butterfly and Thomas Beatie, otherwise known as the Pregnant Man. In M Butterfly, Song pretends to be a woman and claims pregnancy in order to reenforce Gallimard’s false belief that she is a woman. Because Song uses pregnancy to emphasize her womanhood, she asserts the idea that only women are capable of having babies. But Thomas Beatie proved her wrong by being the first man to have a child, but it turns out Beatie was formerly a woman. I have heard that physical attributes are what define the sex, but the way one feels determines their gender. Does this statement make Beatie a woman still? Or does having a uterus make someone a woman? I personally believe that he is still a man, but I know some people may disagree with me, so please respond with your thoughts!

-Amanda

Ru Paul! America’s most beloved drag queen. Many of you...

Fri, 25 May 2012 14:57:55 -0700

Ru Paul! America’s most beloved drag queen. Many of you know him from Ru Paul’s drag race. I really love this show because it has a range of drag queens. From straight men who are burly and just dress in drag for a job to the post-op now women who exude feminine ideals. I really think this pertains to M Butterfly because no one really fits the convention or stereotype but is a blend and range of many. This is what makes the play, whose story seems so distant from reality, is so relatable because no one quite fits a certain stereotype perfectly.

In the play the line “only a man knows how a woman should act” really speaks about this because only someone outside of a group can be the true stereotype. If someone is perfectly the stereotype it must be an act. A lot of theater and drama plays off of the caricatures and deveations from the steryotype. This ties into M Butterfly because not only is it a play, Song is an actor.

Song, our very own Ru Paul. What do you all think?

-Clare Schneider

In response to Allie’s post on connecting M. Butterfly to the...

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:47:00 -0700

In response to Allie’s post on connecting M. Butterfly to the media:

The idea of reversed gender roles plays a role in the Swedish film, My Life as a Dog (1987). The protagonist, a boy named Ingemar, and his friend Saga play on the local children’s soccer team. The only problem is that, because of the team’s gender restrictions, Saga has to pretend she is a boy. Upon first meeting Saga, Ingemar actually mistakes her for a boy; later on in the movie, he helps her disguise her gender.

While in M. Butterfly, Gallimard is in denial of that Song is actually a man because he is so in love with the fantasy of the submissive woman, Ingemar in My Life as a Dog tends to ignore the fact that Saga is a girl out of determination to not have a crush on her. Furthermore, it is the state of denial in these male protagonists that makes each unintentionally compliant to his “female” counterpart; in the end, Song has total control over Gallimard, and so does Saga prevail over Ingemar…

In any case, My Life as a Dog is a terrific movie, and I really recommend that you watch it!

The pictures (from top to bottom)

1. Saga in her “boy” disguise during a boxing match (she is on the left)

2. Saga accidentally revealing that she is actually a girl during a soccer game

_Mikhaila

Twist and Shout - The Beatles Haaa alright so this song...

Wed, 23 May 2012 20:10:38 -0700

Twist and Shout - The Beatles

Haaa alright so this song doesn’t really relate to what I’m going to talk about…. but hey..it’s the last blog post (I think) so what the hay

The reason I thought it *somewhat* related was because everything is getting ‘twisted’…

Anyways, there are many huge contradictions and role reversals we see in M. Butterfly. One being the stereotype of East and West. Towards the end of the play, the idea of “rape mentality” and East being feminine (desiring to be dominated, “want to be treated bad” 1.4, p 6) and the West being masculine (3.1, p 83). Along with the basis of Madame Butterfly and other references to the West’s superiority, the conclusion of the play proves otherwise. In the end, the ‘superior’ Westerner falls apart at the hands of Song, an Easterner. This also brings up the reversal of gender roles. Through Song’s actions, we learn a lot about what men think men want (and what men - like Gallimard - expect/want in a woman). But the words “just a man” in act three, scene two (pg 88) and just the fact that Song has been pretending to be a woman for twenty years brings the roles into question. We see reversals in power; we see twisted ideas of reality and fantasy - but the last switch I want to discuss is who is Butterfly and who is Pinkerton (who are the parallels between Gallimard and Song). Throughout the whole story, you are lead to believe that Song is Butterfly, and Gallimard even begins to call her that. Therefore, you would assume Gallimard is Pinkerton (even though he explicitly said he wasn’t in the beginning of the play). But, in the end we see that Song was the real Pinkerton and it is Gallimard who has been Butterfly.

This play takes many twists and turns and flops over everyone’s idea’s of right and wrong.

-Annsley

English III Themes!

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:00:00 -0700

Today in class we were discussing what the themes in class are for this year. In our class syllabus, there is a list of themes for this year separated by quarter!

Exile
Women and Friendship
Travel Narration and Colonialism
Duality

Looking back on the year, none of these themes seem to stay in their allotted quarter. We see exile in Things Fall Apart as Okonkwo is sent out to the motherland for seven year. Duality is revealed in Emma as she must make sense of imaginary relationships and reality and is the Tempest as Prospero understands his power with or without magic. Where else do we see these 4 themes break from their assigned quarter?

-Rachel F.

Right before killing himself on page 92 and 93 Act 3, Scene 3, Gallimard says, “Death with...

Tue, 22 May 2012 17:42:06 -0700

Right before killing himself on page 92 and 93 Act 3, Scene 3, Gallimard says, “Death with honor is better than life… life with dishonor. (He sets himself center stages, in a seppuku position) The love of a Butterfly can withstand many things–unfaithfulness, loss, even abandonment. But how can it face the one sin that implies all others? The devastating knowledge that, underneath it all, the object of her love was nothing more, nothing less than…a man.”

While this quote does most directly depict Gallimard’s transformation into Butterfly but killing himself due to, for simplicity’s sake, abandonment just as Butterfly in Madame Butterfly ends up doing, I think more than that he kills himself out of complete humiliation and loss. Rather than being so noble and living out his fantasy by killing himself, I feel like the shock of realizing his fantasy was nothing more than a fantasy instead of the reality he thought it was also drives him to kill himself. I also think we see a lot of shame from him when he says that death with honor is better than life with dishonor. He sees Song as having made a fool of out him. Today in class we discussed a lot about the idea of this moment being one of power for Gallimard because he gets to live out his fantasy and escape reality but I want to also consider the idea of this scene being one of Gallimard’s weakness. Throughout the book the woman is portrayed as being weak and submissive and in this scene I think Gallimard can be interpreted as submitting to his loss and humiliation through death as an escape. Do you guys think Gallimard’s speech before his suicide represents his strength or weakness?

Ashley

Rapelay, the video game that takes a mentality to far

Tue, 22 May 2012 17:17:38 -0700

So today in class I mentioned a video game called rapelay (http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-30/world/japan.video.game.rape_1_game-teenage-girl-japanese-government?_s=PM:WORLD) And everyone was shocked and a bit appalled, but this video game is some interesting commentary on a mentality, the rape mentality, that is very prominent in M. Butterfly.

Over and over we see the West is greater then the East. We also see that Gallimard wants to be dominant over song due to his lack of dominance in other situations. In our society today we as Americans love to be the dominant one we scream “We are Number 1” and we feel that every other country needs our help and needs us to control them. In sports matched we root for our favorite teams to be dominant over the other. This video game is atrocious, but it also brings up the point of how we as humans like to feel superior to others in some way.

What do video games like this do for our society? Even when the mentality of dominance is already there.

-Sierra

Rene(e)^2

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:24:50 -0700

InM. Butterfly, Rene Gallimard has an affair with a forward, western woman also named Renee. Her sexual habits are so modern that she instantly takes control of their relationship, immasculating him with her aggressive sexual conquests. After they have fooled around, she tells Rene that he has “a nice weenie”. Is it a compliment? Rene certaintly doesn’t think so. In class, people brought up the idea that the reason these two characters share the same name is to blur the lines between typical gender roles. While I do agree with this I also think that David Hwang chose these two names to show the reader that Renee is actually Rene’s worst fears speaking through the thing that he aims to control, a woman. Throughout the play, Rene attempts to control Song by not responding to her letters, leaving her alone for weeks at a time in order to assert his manly dominance over her; when he meets Renee he is instantly immasuculated and she is is the physical representation of his deepest and darkest fear.

AMY

“Inside every girl there’s a boy. That came out...

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:38:06 -0700

“Inside every girl there’s a boy. That came out wrong but you know what I mean”

So besides the fact that She’s the Man is my favorite movie of all time, I want to share the trailer because I feel like it connects to M Butterfly. Both Viola and Song disguise themselves as the opposite gender, and though they go about these missions in different ways, they do so for their personal gain—Viola wants to pursue the soccer team, and Song wants to steal information from Gallimard. Both the play and the movie use elements of humor to add a little comic relief to the twisted plots, and both investigate gender stereotypes. What other connections can you make between M Butterfly and something in the media?

ALLIE

“No. Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act”...

Mon, 21 May 2012 18:44:59 -0700

“No. Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act” (pg. 63)

In M. Butterfly, the ideas of gender roles/fantasies come up a lot. Gallimard has created his own vision of how a perfect women should look, act and treat him. In this passage, Song is explaining that only the opposite gender knows exactly what it wants from the other. Similar to Beyonce in her song “If I Were a Boy,” she (a woman) explains that if she were a boy, she would know exactly how to treat a woman. Similar to Song (a man) knowing exactly how Gallimard would want his woman to act. Not only is Beyonce perfect, she also helps us relate English topics to real life! What are your thoughts? Is the opposite sex the only sex who truly knows what it wants/needs from the other?

COURTNEY

East vs. West East vs. West is a common theme throughout this...

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:05:08 -0700

East vs. West

East vs. West is a common theme throughout this play. Song despises the western women and speaks about her delicate eastern charm, but she also reveals that she feels inferior to western women.

These two images are the first things that pop up when I search “American women” and “Chinese women” Such differences between the two, but they both portray the side of women as being sexual and not strong. This is the picture I feel that Hallimard might have of all women in his head.

The photos are very different, one showing much more then the other. But are they the same?

Is there any place in the novel where our stereotypes of western and eastern women are challenged? where are they supported?

Are these women actually showing strength anywhere?

Sierra

"I stopped going to the opera, I didn’t phone or write her. I knew this little flower was..."

Wed, 16 May 2012 23:55:07 -0700

“I stopped going to the opera, I didn’t phone or write her. I knew this little flower was waiting for me to call, and, as I wickedly refused to do so, I felt for the first time that rush of power—the absolute power of a man. (M. Butterfly, 32)”

- As we have started to discover the themes of M. Butterfly, power, and the contrasting difference between the east and west. In this seen Gallimard is describing his first experience feeling power as a man. Although he feels this power over Song, the Chinese opera singer he is starting an affair with, he is also abusing her; shown when he describes his actions as wicked. He also refers to Song as a flower, portraying her as a delicate, breakable thing. This role he has given her not only makes her inferior to him, but also categorizes her into the “oriental girl,” or eastern native girl. By demonstrating his power as a strength and comparing it to the delicacy of Song as a flower, the theme of East vs. West is also brought up. The “absolute power of a man,” representing himself and the west creates a huge contrast to the “little flower,” representing Song and the East. This huge contrast illustrates the divide shown throughout the book of the Eastern and Western lifestyles.

-Christine

The Power of Power

Wed, 16 May 2012 23:35:57 -0700

In most of the books we’ve read this year, power and control have been major themes. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad discusses the power of language and the gift of expression (along with Kurtz’s enchantment/control over the natives and whoever else heard his voice). In Things Fall Apart, one of the most important things in life (if not the most important) to Okonkwo was being strong and powerful. He was intensely afraid of weakness. Now, in M. Butterfly, we see that the lack of power Gallimard experienced all his life will make him eager to accept any situation that gives him power. He tells the audience that he was always the shy, wimpy, pimply guy who was afraid girls would reject him. Finally, he “gained power over a beautiful woman” (1.11 pg 36) (and acts like a complete jerk…but that’s besides the point). This helps explain why Gallimard could have been able to ‘overlook’ or just refuse to see the truth about Song. He “knew this little flower was waiting for me to call, and, as I wickedly refused to do so, I felt for the first time that rush of power—the absolute power of a man” (1.11 pg 32).

Even in the second scene of Act 1, we see that society pities Gallimard in a sort of inferior way. They laugh at him, call him ignorant, and say he was “overly anxious”, but in reality he wanted a sense of power. A sense of power that these people prove (by looking down on him in a pitiful tone) he had no where else but in his relationship with Song.

And, since Song is a spy and has her own agenda, she understands what this feeling of power can do. She plays up her helplessness in order to keep Gallimard interested. Together they prove the incredible power of having power.
-Annsley

Can We Ever Root for the Underdog? In class today, Sierra...

Wed, 16 May 2012 23:26:52 -0700

Can We Ever Root for the Underdog?

In class today, Sierra brought up the notion of “The Underdog” and how this condition applies to various characters in M. Butterfly. We see the transition of one underdog, Gallimard, as he changes from being oppressed to being the oppressor - a typical outcome for many underdogs, as we have seen in the books we have read all year. While Gallimard has from boyhood always been the subservient one in relationships, with Song, he has for the first time the change to have total control. But his control is merely an illusions, and furthermore, one that is manufactured by the person he supposedly controls. The issue becomes now that he has been the underdog for so long that he can no longer have a rational judgement of the world around him.

Today, can we, then, invest faith in underdogs at all, or is it best to leave them to struggle?

_Mikhaila

"No. (beat) Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act" (2.7.63)

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:49:06 -0700

This is the scene where Song is finally revealed as not only a man, but as a Chinese spy as well. (Sorry for the spoilers, it’s in tonights reading!) I thought this quote fits perfectly into the theme of gender roles that we were talking about in class. By switching power roles, Song manipulates Gallimard to reveal top secret information about the Vietnam War. Even though she may seem submissive, she is actually the one in power, because Song plays on Gallimard’s weakest points: his unattractiveness and his lack of confidence. She lets him play out his fantasies on her because she knows that he has never had power over women and over his life. Because Song is actually male, she knows that men want women to be submissive and to make them feel powerful.

How is playing into a weakness displayed elsewhere?

-Amanda

Tradition

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:50:22 -0700

The last two books we have read, Things Fall Apart and M Butterfly, have really brought up the theme of tradition, breaking tradition, and how history plays a role on an individuals life.

Both of the cultures come into contact with imperialization and the effect of westernization on the culture plays out differently. With Things Fall Apart, we see the presence of guns and such in the background just as in M Butterfly we have the tuxedoes and jazz music. Yet as both cultures accept small parts they usually revile and reject the new culture.

Do you think that Song is truley a part of traditional Chinese culture or do you think she really identifies more with western culture?

-Clare Schneider

Gallimard: "I had finally gained power over a beautiful woman, only to abuse it cruelly." (M. Butterfly, Act I, scene 11)

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:05:03 -0700

Gallimard says this after having received letters from Song and he realizes that he has her completely wrapped around his finger. Gallimard relishes this power, because he has never had it before. For example, when he describes his first “experience,” he was in the submissive position, and he only got the girl because his friend Marc helped him out. Having gained this power over a woman all by himself, naturally, the first thing he does is abuse it. He leaves Song hanging for weeks on end only to wait for her to desparately admit that she belongs completely to him. His realization of his power leads us to wonder if he will ever be able to relinquish it. However, knowing this story is based on a real life event, the entire situation is completely ironic since Song is really a man and is playing the role of butterfly to get Gallimard wrapped around his/her finger and to get information from him because he/she is a spy. What do you guys think of Gallimard’s power over Song, or his lack thereof? In this quote does he appear as the “man” or “woman” in his relationship with Song?

-Ashley