Category Archives: Play

The Boundaries Of Myth

Anonymous, Euripides, Gloss, Homer, Iliad, Medea, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, Prose Edda, The, Rig Veda, The, Sturluson, Snorri, The Boundaries Of Myth

Late in Homer’s Iliad the “ghost of stricken Patroclus,” (Homer, 23: 124) appears before Achilles in a vision. In this scene the living and the dead, the realm of the mortal and the realm of the shadowy afterlife bridges a gulf which normally separates them and serves as a metaphor for a human’s desire to understand what will become of their mortal essence once they die, Achilles “stretched his loving arms / but could not seize [Patroclus], no, the ghost slipped underground / like a wisp of smoke,” (Homer, 23: 117). Humanity’s place in the universe is uncertain and dangerous and so myth attempts to address these unknowns by defining the boundaries which separate us from wild animals, or between men from women, the hero from the citizen, or between the living and the dead who, like Patroclus, continue to look to the living for remembrance. These myths guided the peoples of Proto Indo-European descent towards an understanding of how humanity should live and what humanity’s purpose is within the greater cosmic fabric of the universe.

 

The Rig Veda:The Boundary Of The Classes

For there to be death there must first come a creation and the earliest Proto Indo-European myths each deal with this subject. However, unlike later myths whose audience consisted of the ordinary citizen who might have the leisure to contemplate the fate of their own soul, these earliest myths were written by and performed for priests and the gods they prayed to. These myths show how the earliest people dealt with and attempted to make sense of the unknown, be it invaders from foreign lands, or droughts and floods which ruined the annual crops. Their world was full of immediate dangers and mystery, unlike later myth which tends to deal with more esoteric concerns, and so their myths helped make sense of what was affecting their daily lives and gave these people a semblance of control over their destiny if only they carried out the proper rituals and appeased the gods who they believed were in control of the universe.

Responsible for these rituals were the priests (the Brahmin), one of the four classes created when “the gods [created] the world by dismembering the cosmic giant, Purusa,” (Rig Veda, 29). The other classes, the warrior class who fought, the People, and the servants (slaves), were also created out of this act of dismemberment (sociogony) when Purusa (known here as the Man) was divided into multiple segments; “his arms were made into the Warrior, his thighs the People, and from his feet the Servants were born,” (Rig Veda, 31). Here the act of creating society and the class structure is born from the sacrifice of the Man and in this way all of society is connected to the Man, a sort of shared consciousness common to all classes, but also deeply relegated to their proper place within society.

From the rest of the Man, the entire universe is created (cosmogony), “From his navel the middle realm of space arose; from his head the sky evolved. From his two feet came the earth, and the quarters of the sky from his ear,” (Rig Veda, 31). What we have here, and what the priests may have ritualized in the temples to honor this act of creation, was human sacrifice. Though as grisly as this may sound to us, the act of an individual giving up their life for the greater good of society is the deeper meaning. Each of the classes must work together and within their boundaries to maintain order in society and the universe. Death is transformed into life and the boundary between the two is no longer two separate states, but rather one continuous existence, “With the sacrifice the gods sacrificed to the sacrifice,” (Rig Veda, 31).

 

The Prose Edda: The Geographic Boundary

While the earliest, least sophisticated peoples may have taken these creation myths at their word – actual human sacrifice and all – later myths attempted to explain the nuances of creation as having a more tangible existence. In the Prose Edda, Gangleri asks Odin (disguised as three kings), “‘How were things set up before the different families came into being and mankind increased?’”, (Prose Edda, 13). Odin explains how the world was divided into three regions: foggy Niflheim, fiery Muspellsheim, and the Ginnungagap melt-zone. From the boundary between Muspellsheim and Ginnungagap, “The likeness of a man appeared and was named Ymir,” (Prose Edda, 14). As in the Rig Veda creation myth, a being is sacrificed to create the earth and order, and a hierarchy is established, “It is my belief that this Odin and his brothers are the rulers of heaven and earth,” (Prose Edda, 15). In fact the very structure of this myth suggests man’s proper place in creation where the gods rule from Heaven like a panel of judges, and man lives below, “behind Midgard’s wall,” (Prose Edda, 18) in Asgard (Troy) where Odin can, “see through all worlds and into all men’s doings,” (Prose Edda, 18).

However, unlike the Rig Veda in which the cosmic consciousness is one with all creation, including all of mankind, this later myth sets up a strong dividing line where man not only must know his place in society here on Earth, but also on the cosmic scale where he is subservient to the gods. Odin sits not only as a king, but also as a judge who is keeper of the law. This suggests, along with mankind living behind the wall of Midgard the further refinement of human civilization into cities with laws that apply to everyone and not just the laborers and slaves born from the less desirable cuts of the sacrificed Man who live under the warriors and priests that were formed from the better cuts of the Man.

Yet man does at least have the opportunity to interact with the Gods as Gangleri does when Odin holds court for him. The boundary between the two worlds is crossed (albeit temporarily) and man – here a king, not a priest –  is educated as to how the universe was created and what his place in it should be. Unlike the priests who performed the rituals of the Rig Veda in order to maintain the delicate balance of the universe, most likely in secret rituals hidden away from the average worker toiling away in the fields, the mysteries of the universe are revealed to a political elite who can then use this knowledge to order the laws of their societies in the image of the gods.

 

Myths From Mesopotamia: The Boundary Between Male And Female

The two creation myths we’ve explored so far have been exclusively a male endeavor, the Man is sacrificed to create the universe, and the Frost Giant, Ymir is another male figure from whom the physical world is ordered over which Odin, yet another male, rules and judges. These myths may have been adequate to explain how the universe was ordered on the grand scale, however, the sexual union between man and woman is how humanity creates life on Earth.

As we see in later myths, the male is responsible for creation and holds the power of creation, yet the female originally held this power. The Babylonians believed Tiamat, a female goddess, was the progenitor god, a goddess who gives birth to the gods, much like Aditi does in the Rig Veda, “Apsu, the first one, their begetter / And maker Tiamat, who bore them all,” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 233). Tiamat, an ocean goddess, is identified with the fertility symbol of the fish, and it is her mixing with the fresh waters of Apsu (symbolic of the mixing of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) which brings about life. Once again we see how the mixing of boundaries, as with the Niflheim and Muspellsheim zones, is responsible for creation.

Ancient belief also held that the female was complete in herself since she alone could give birth (parthenogenesis). This female realm is one of pure mythos where the moon (the cosmic) regulates the menstrual cycle, where she is able to self-produce milk to feed the infant, and where the baby is born from an ocean of life inside of her. Yet while Tiamat (the woman) is responsible for bearing all life, her cosmic power is usurped by the male destructive force. When Tiamat shows compassion towards the gods who disturbed her, “And Tiamat became mute before them; / However grievous their behavior to her,” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 233), this sets in motion a war that will eventually be her undoing, a war in which a male, Marduk, is able to consolidate power from the other gods in order to succeed. In fact his victory is very much like a rape, “He shot an arrow which pierced her belly, / split her down the middle and slit her heart,” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 253). Through force (overthrow) the male takes the power of creation away from the woman, or at least contains it so that he may use it for his own advantage, “He divided the monstrous shape and created marvels {from it},” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 255).

This myth attempts to explain why the male is necessary at all in the act of creation and sets up the distinction where the male becomes a creator Sky God who rules above everyone, while the woman is relegated to the realm of Earth. Together they are both necessary in the act of creation – the compassionate woman who nourishes and the powerful male who fights – yet a hierarchy is clearly established where the male reigns above the woman through force.

 

Myths From Mesopotamia: The City / Wilderness Boundary

Similar to Marduk, Gilgamesh is a male authority figure who uses his power to get what he wants from women, “Gilgamesh would not leave [young girls alone], / The daughters of warriors, the brides of young men. / The gods often heard their complaints,” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 52). Marduk is interfering with the order of his society by disrespecting the union between a lawfully married man and woman, and as we explored previously with Odin and Gangleri, the laws of society are based directly from the image of the god rulers. Yet unlike our previous characters, Gilgamesh is not a god but rather a mortal hero (however, he is still at least still semi-divine), as well as someone who probably actually existed in the third millennium B.C.E. Thus the gods are no longer at the center of the story with their cosmic struggles of creation, but the focus here is more human and the story more grounded in a reality of kings and rulers and unlike the gods who have the power to do as they please, humanity – including the hero – must abide by the laws of society.

Gilgamesh’s actions creates discord within the city walls and it is these city walls which separates civilization from the unknown wilderness; within is order, law, culture, and the people who worship the gods; outside is chaos and disorder. This contrast is highlighted between the relationship between Enkidu, a wild-born man who has no concept of civilization, and Gilgamesh who rules in the city, albeit with little regard to the people he rules over. Yet the two need each other in that Gilgamesh needs the friendship of someone who is his equal, while Enkidu benefits from the civilizing force of the city. In a sense the two friends cross their respective boundaries and form a sort of marriage in which the partnership is a benefit to each other as well as to their civilization.

Overall we see a tempering of the two respective states man could live in (wild vs civilized) and by joining together both men are improved. After Enkidu has sex with the socially experienced Shamhat, “The gazelles saw Enkidu and scattered,” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 56), and “he had acquired judgment {?}, had become wiser,” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 56), in other words he becomes civilized because he now possesses reason, unlike the wild animals, and so is kicked out of the world of beasts, much like we see in the Book of Genesis, another Semitic text dealing with the attainment of (forbidden) knowledge which then separates humanity from the wilds. And with the death of Enkidu, Gilgamesh has given up his independence in favor of a mutually beneficial relationship, one which he mourns deeply when Enkidu dies, “Gilgamesh mourned bitterly for Enkidu his friend,” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 95).

 

The Heroic Boundary

The key element which makes a hero a Hero is that, unlike the gods who cannot die, the mortal can. The hero’s actions against great odds while knowing he could be killed are what makes him a hero, but this quest for heroic status – immortality – is a fictional immortality. Unlike women who can self-regenerate (Tiamat through parthenogenesis, or through just regular mortal childbirth), the male hero must find his immortality in great deeds and from the stories that are told about him after he dies.

One of the common great deeds in myth is through the slaying a monster: Gilgamesh must slay Humbaba, “Thus the weapons of Gilgamesh succeeded against Humbaba,” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 74), Indra slays the dragon, “He killed the dragon who lay upon the mountain;” (Rig Veda, 149), Sigurd kills Fafnir, “Sigurd plunged the sword up under the left shoulder, so that it sank to the hilt,” (The Saga of the Volsungs, 63), and Heracles performs his labors. This heroic state of the monster killer is contrasted to the fate of Enkidu who does not have the heroic capacity to face the inevitability of death and so his body rots into the Earth, “Vermin eat [like (?)] an old [garment],” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 123). And so even more than slaying a monster, it is the slaying of death, or the overcoming of the fear of death, which separates a hero from the rest of us. However, Gilgamesh admits that, “I am afraid of Death,” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 95), and in a reversal from earlier in the story, “I saw the lions and was afraid,” (Myths From Mesopotamia, 95), and so his journey of finding actual immortality (to become like a God) is a failure, but as a hero his immortality lives on in the fame his deeds brought him.

 

Medea: The Boundary Of The Oath

In Euripides’ play, the Nurse tells us of Medea, “And she herself helped Jason in every way. / This is indeed the greatest salvation of all – / For the wife not to stand apart from the husband,” (The Medea, 59). In this we are shown the sanctity of the union between man and woman (a sanctity which Gilgamesh earlier had disrupted), and the great power that comes when a man and woman are joined together (marriage). And as we have seen in earlier myths, this union is a civilizing force that holds society together (as with Enkidu and Gilgamesh). Though men and women differ on the cosmic scale, it is necessary for them to work together in order to reproduce and maintain the cosmic cycle of life and regeneration Female), and power and security (male). Yet Jason, though he is the man and maintains the hierarchy where women are subservient to their husbands, does not honor his responsibility to uphold the sacred bond between himself and his wife, “And poor Medea is slighted, and cries aloud on the / Vows they made to each other,” (The Medea, 59). Perhaps as the hero Jason felt himself not beholden to this earthly responsibility towards the law, but Medea, though a woman, is not as powerless as we might assume.

Medea is an aristocrat and so she understands that power comes from being ruthless as well as from possessing intelligence (a luxury afforded the wealthy in a civilized society) similar to the knowledge Shamat uses to subdue Enkidu. However, unlike Tiamat who was willing to look past the rowdy gods who annoyed her rest, Medea is not compassionate. Medea is a foreigner in her husband’s land (patrilocal society) and while she cannot rely on her own family to help (she did kill many of them, after all), aiding her is her homeopathic knowledge of poisons and potions making her a sort of perverted fertility goddess, as we see with her cauldron of rejuvenation. In other words, this makes her a dangerous person to break a vow with, which might be one of the (misogynist) reasons Hesiod describes women as, “a great affliction to mortals as they dwell with their husbands,” (Theogony, 20). Yet Medea gives voice to all women who have given up their families, their friends, and their homelands for the sake of their husbands and children. Medea longs for equality, “I would very much rather stand / Three times in the front of battle then bear one child,” (The Medea, 67) yet in spite of this she has given her life to Jason. When Jason breaks this vow, he incurs the full weight of her wrath. Medea has nothing in her world except Jason and the favor of his family; without that she has nothing left to lose.

Thus the breaking of the oath of marriage literally kills the order of the family, “Your children are dead, and by their own mother’s hand,” (The Medea, 103). And unlike previous myths from which the bodies of the slain were used as ingredients of creation, here it a sacrifice, quite literally since these were her own children, to the sanctity of the oath of marriage. Order has been restored through vengeance and death. Thus medea possess both the traits of the male hero and the female life-bringer.

 

The Boundary Of Duty And Honor

“What if I put down my studded shield / and heavy helmet, prop my spear on the rampart / and go forth, just as I am, to meet Achilles,” (Iliad, 545). As we have seen earlier with Gigamesh who also had a crisis of confidence, here Hector questions the point of the war. He wonders if it would be better, “to give back Helen,” (Iliad, 545) in hopes of saving Troy from the vengeance of his enemy. Yet unlike Medea who does not hesitate to sacrifice her family for the sake of the oath between her and Jason, Hector thinks of his son, “and raising his son he kissed him, tossed him in his arms, lifting a prayer to Zeus and the other deathless gods,” (Iliad, 211). Perhaps there is more to civilized life than war and death? The child, too seems to intuit the danger of war, “but the boy recoiled, / cringing against his nurse’s full breast, / screaming out at the sight of his own father,” (Iliad, 211), but it is ambiguous if the child is frightened by the possibility of his father’s death in battle, or is terrified by the possibility Hector might waver in his duty to fight for the family (a true hero must face death, after all).

Hector’s Hamlet-like soul-searching is contrasted with Achilles who will, “show no mercy, / no respect for me, my rights – he’ll cut me down / straight off,” (Iliad, 545). Like Gilgamesh who wavered and failed in his bid for god-like immortality, Hector, too does not meet the qualification of a true hero, like Achilles. Yet unlike Enkidu who was wild and barbarian but not of heroic stock, it is the invaders outside the city walls, the men, like Achilles, who are willing to give up their lives in a moment’s notice who are the heroes of the story. The hero is not found behind walls contemplating his mortality, but rather exists outside civilization, much like Sigmund and Sinfjotli do when they don the wolf skins and live as heroes, yet outlaws, too (The Saga of the Volsungs, 44). In fact the hero has become incompatible with civilization, as we see with Hercules whose ancient PTSD brought on by years of heroic deeds causes him to destroy his family. There is no heroic glory and immortality in the city, only temporary safety from men (men metamorphosed into wolves) like Achilles. The city is full of intelligent people who are quick to use their intelligence over the sword in an effort to preserve their lives and honor, people like Medea who used her power to uphold these virtues, and Hector who only wears the armor of a hero, “The rest of his flesh seemed all encased in armor, / burnished, brazen – Achilles’ armor that Hector stripped,” (Iliad, 552), but is really an imposter who is chased around his safe city walls by the truly heroic man / wolf. In the end Hector performed his duty, but his wavering in how to perform his duty was his downfall, a duty Achilles does not fail to uphold.

In this essay we have explored several distinct boundaries found in common all through early Proto Indo-European myths. These boundaries attempt to define humanity’s proper place within a universe that otherwise is dangerous and unforgiving. And much like the gods who rely on humanity to continually worship them and give them a meaningful existence less they cease to exist altogether, humanity relies on myth to give their own lives meaning, to create order out of chaos just as the gods did when they created the universe. By creating myth, humanity ultimately creates the whole universe, a universe of law and duty and order, a universe where humanity understands their role amidst a vast, uncertain wilderness.

M. Butterfly: Marxism: The State’s Stage Directions

Gloss, Hwang, David Henry, M. Butterfly, M. Butterfly: Marxism: The State’s Stage Directions

The opening stage directions of the play M. Butterfly are a microcosm of the Marxist power-dynamic. In just these few opening paragraphs we are not only presented with the individual’s powerlessness within the State as a being coerced by the repressive state apparatus, but also as an interpolated subject of the ideological state apparatus. In this essay I will examine only the initial stage directions on page 1 of the play as it relates to the central concepts of Marxist criticism.

The play’s first line presents us with the power the state holds over the individual, “M. Gallimard’s prison cell. Paris,” (Hwang, 1). We do not yet know who this individual is, only that the state has imprisoned them. For all we know this “M. Gallimard” is a sort of everyman, a representation of our own powerless against the power of the state. The stage directions go on to further enforce the power of the state, “Lights fade up,” (Hwang, 1) as if the unseen hand of the all-powerful state is in complete control of every facet of this individual’s life. And we the audience who are viewing this individual on stage are mimicking one of the roles of the state, that of a prison guard much like was found in the Panopticon where the individual is continually on display and, “Inspection function[s] ceaselessly,” (Foucault, 551). The play is giving us a representation of the repressive state apparatus, the force the state holds to coerce and exert power upon the individual as well as the inability of the individual to hide from or escape this power.

As the lights rise and reveal in detail who this Gallimard is, we are presented with a critique of not just the repressive state apparatus, but also of the ideological state apparatus. Whereas the former is involved in power and coercion over the individual, the later is involved with how that individual operates within the state and what is expected of that individual. Though Gallimard’s situation is humble, he nevertheless is in possession of a “comfortable bathrobe,” (Hwang, 1), and two pieces of technology. For comparison sake, upstage we can see a Chinese woman in “traditional Chinese garb,” (Hwang, 1) dancing to Chinese music. This comparison is important in that it reinforces the expected norms (as seen through Western eyes) of the two cultures and what the state expects from each individual on stage. Gallimard is presented as a man of leisure, albeit imprisoned, and he has the comforts of his culture’s technology while the indistinct Chinese dancer wears what a Westerner would assume is appropriate Chinese attire.  If we look deeper, we are presented with the image of a Western man who has (a few) creature comforts, but is ultimately imprisoned by his own culture’s ideology. Unlike the dancer who is (seemingly) at least more free than Gallimard to move about and dance, Gallimard wears “a sad smile on his face,” (Hwang, 1). There is no joy for Gallimard as he is imprisoned not only by the state but also by his state’s ideology. The focus on the objects that surround these individuals – his bathrobe, her traditional dress, the music – make up the materialism that defines these characters consciousness.

In the third paragraph of the opening stage directions of the play, we are shown how Gallimard’s cultural ideology attempts to override that of the dancer’s, “the Chinese opera music dissolves into a Western opera,” (Hwang, 1). Gallimard’s ideology, that which is the norm of his oppressive culture, bleeds over and attempts to take control of a whole other culture. And so we are presented not just with a representation of colonialism, but with the power of cultural ideology over the individual. And if we take a step even further back, the stage directions themselves are acting both as a repressive state apparatus by controlling every minute action of all the individuals on stage, as well as an ideological state apparatus by defining what the proper “roles” are for each actor on stage. In other words, we could interpret the stage directions as being a representation of the state’s power over the individual.

At this point in the play the actors have not acted and we, the audience, can only watch and interpret the images on the stage. And while we do not know anything personal about Gallimard, such as his class, we can interpret his imprisonment as not just someone who has succumbed to the power of the state, but who is an alienated being. In fact our not knowing the circumstances of Gallimard’s imprisonment heightens the alienated individuals lack of understanding as to what his place is in society. All the actor knows is that he is on stage (being observed and examined by a shadowy audience / prison guard), that some unseen force has complete power over him (the lights coming on mysteriously), and that he is trapped by a system (his prison cell) that provides for him some creature comforts, but how exactly these comforts come into existence is unknown. Gallimard’s body language – he looks tired and sits on  a crate – coupled with his apparent sadness seems to be saying that while Gallimard has accepted his condition as subservient to the state power, he is not made happy by the circumstances. Marx describes the condition of the worker in a capitalist state as being like a machine, the “capitalist goals and questions of profit and loss are paramount, workers are bereft of their full humanity and are thought of as ‘hands’ or ‘the labour force’”, and that, “People, in a word, become things,” (Barry 157). Gallimard then is not all that different than the contents of his cell, he is no more or less distinguished from the the bathrobe which cloths him, the crate on which he sits his weary body, the hot plate which cooks his meals, or the tape recorder which provides his entertainment.

Now that we, the audience / prison guard have defined this Gallimard as nothing more than a thing, a function of the state of which we keep an eye on, we get a glimpse of how this actor’s society, as well as our own, is structured. At the base is the physical objects themselves, and though we don’t understand how these objects came into existence – after all we too as the audience / prison guard are alienated beings who take part in, “repetitive tasks in a sequence of whose nature and purpose he or she has no overall grasp,” (Barry, 157) – we understand their significance as being those objects which determine everything that rests upon this base. Marx defines this relationship as the superstructure. Gallimard is acting out this relationship as he is literally resting upon one of the objects created and provided by the state: the “wooden crate,” (Hwang, 1). Gallimard’s state is defined by and supported by the State and the objects that are produced by the State. His comfort yet also his unhappiness is, “‘determined’ (or shaped) by the nature of the economic base,” (Barry, 158).

Gallimard’s state as we have defined it as it pertains to the individual may seem bleak and dehumanizing, yet from the point of view of the State, specifically as influenced by Lenin, it is necessary for the individual, here represented in the art of a stage performance, to “become part of the organized, methodical, and unified labours of the social-democratic party,” (Barry 160). Self expression is seen as detrimental to the overall health and prosperity of the State and art itself should, “be explicitly committed to the political cause of the Left,” (Barry, 160). Notice he does not say it is committed to the cause of the individual, but to a specific political ideology. Art is a function and product of the State just like the hot plate, the bathrobe, the crate, and the tape recorder. Art’s role, such as this play, is to encourage behavior in the individual that is beneficial to the State. True, the individual may be unhappy in their emotional life, as Gallimard appears to be, but their physical needs are being met by the State and so the State is able to maintain its power to continue to provide these basic needs. Thus the stage directions are akin to the State party’s orders, they tell the individual how they should behave within the State while also providing for the individual’s basic needs.

Not all of the State’s power manifests itself through outright force. Althusser refines Marx by suggesting that there is a, “much more subtle view of how society works,” (Barry, 165). Elements of society, such as art, play just as an important role in shaping us as ideological beings as do the physical objects of a capitalist society. This function of art can be heard in how the music in the stage directions has a noticeable effect on the individual. The initial piece of music is described as a “percussive clatter,” (Hwang, 1), however when the music of Gallimard’s culture is cross-faded over the traditional Chinese music, “the difference in music now gives [her movements] a balletic quality,” (Hwang, 1). Though the dancer’s culture has not changed, the way we interpret the dancer’s movement within the State is altered. What was before an undefined series of movements, the dancer’s movements now have meaning, an ideology, in relation to the music being played. The dancer takes on western, balletic qualities where before the dancer was only someone wearing “traditional Chinese garb,” (Hwang, 1) and thus the dancer is absorbed into the dominant culture’s ideology, which is “a system of representations at the heart of a given society,” (Barry, 163), in this case, Western ballet.

Also coded here is the distinction between genders in that the hegemony, Gallimard, is imposing his cultural norm upon the “other” individual. Though he is a prisoner, Gallimard is still able to exercise his power as the dominant cultural influence, a white male over a non-white female.

However, the power of hegemony Gallimard is expressing is not a free choice. Gallimard is a interpellated individual, meaning that he really only has one choice of music (art) with which to express himself. As a prisoner of the State, he’s been given a piece of music by the State (as the stage directions describe) with which he can express his culture / ideology “freely” with, or use to impose his own culture / ideology over another with. Yet Gallimard has no choice in what piece of music to express himself with nor does he even attempt to appropriate the initial Chinese music, but rather the State imposes Puccini’s Love Duet over everyone. Gallimard may think his ideology is a choice that he made or at least consciously agreed to, when, in fact, he really has no choice at all. The dancer’s movements may now have “a balletic quality,” (Hwang, 1) but that is only because that is his ideology interpreting the dance “correctly”, or to put it another way, the State is telling him how he should be interpreting the dancer. All other interpretations would then be other and “wrong” and not an accepted part of the power dynamic of his dominant culture. Gallimard’s cultural ideology is that which says one piece of music (his State’s art) is more beautiful and makes the world more beautiful (balletic) than any other. The possibility that perhaps the Chinese dancer believed the initial piece of music was more beautiful, or at least equal to the West’s never enters into Gallimard’s, let alone the stage direction’s (the State’s) consciousness.

In only a few lines of text at the beginning of the play we can see the power dynamic of a Marxist system being acted out. The power of the State is all-encompassing, like the rounded Panopticon which sees in all directions at once, it is also all-powerful in that it provides everything for the individual, whether or not they want it. In this system the individual is reduced to a product that can be moulded into whatever the State requires while at the same time allowing the individual to believe they have free choice in this process. However, the power of the State is complete and we, like Gallimard, are a prisoner to it. The State, like the play, provides the stage directions for our life and our ideology with which we then must act out.

 

Works Cited

 

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press. 2002.

Gollapudi, Aparna. Discipline and Punish – Foucault. https://writing.colostate.edu/files/classes/11609/File_F116078B-E65C-4A17-313CFBBB77C9A128.pdf. Accessed 07 December 2017.

Gollapudi, Aparna. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus-Althusser. https://writing.colostate.edu/files/classes/11609/File_F11207FD-B8A7-0B23-BEB71E6781C76D72.pdf. Accessed 07 December 2017.

Hwang, David Henry. M. Butterfly: with an afterword by the playwright. Plume, 2006.

M. Butterfly (opera): Postcolonial: Colonial Expansion vs. Native Orthodoxy

Gloss, Hwang, David Henry, M. Butterfly, M. Butterfly (opera): Postcolonial: Colonial Expansion vs. Native Orthodoxy

One of the more interesting aspects of the opera is that while America is acting as a colonial power (metropole), such as Pinkerton’s attitudes towards Japanese (colony) traditions (the concept of marriage), as well as the aggressive stance of the US Naval gunship presence in Japanese waters, the Japanese themselves (other than Butterfly) revert to a more traditional / orthodox “Japanese-ness” towards the American presence. So much time is spent in Japan with no real colonial power as a representative, other than Sharpless (who seems quite sympathetic to the Japanese anyway), that we could read the opera as offering us a glimpse into the mind and culture of a society that is attempting to refuse colonization. From Butterfly’s Uncle who disowns her, to Prince Yamadori who attempts to set up a traditional marriage, the Japanese are mostly unified in their mistrust of the Americans and in their own desire to remain Japanese.

Of course the Japanese in the opera are not wholly on board with antagonism against the Americans. Goro, for example, while he plays the traditional role of a matchmaker, has been influenced by the American idea of capitalism and greed (the imperialist influence). In fact we could look at Goro and Sharpless as two subtly distinct discourses about colonial influence on Japan. Both men take part in the devaluing of Japanese culture, however Sharpless is hesitant and seems to struggle with the morality of Pinkerton’s actions, whereas Goro has no such qualms and sees only a business opportunity.  Sharpless at least sees Butterfly as a human being; Goro sees a dishonored object to be sold to the colonial power. Ironically, Goro is acting as a pure capitalist that does not value the individual over profit. And perhaps the reason why Sharpless is hesitant is because he can see both sides of the issue within his western discourse because he is a westerner whereas Goro either does not have access to this discourse, or at least chooses not to take part in it.

When we dig deeper, we should next ask ourselves what does it mean to be Japanese (as opposed to a colonial power)? Is there an essence of “Japanese-ness” like there is a supposed feminine essence? This question seems to be at the heart of the Japanese attitudes towards the colonial power, as well as the American’s attitudes towards the Japanese. For example, Butterfly’s uncle represents the traditional mindset of family honor and duty and Butterfly’s willingness to be appropriated by an American is unacceptable to the uncle. This essence is bound up in duty and honor and family, and can be seen in contrast to the essence of the westerners who value profit, and leisure. And this identification with a Japanese essence is what motivates the more orthodox members of the society to rebel against the colonial imperialist influence and this idea of an essence creates a discourse of what it means to be Japanese. Ultimately, the characters are creating their own discourses based on what they feel is the essence of their culture, but as we see everyone seems to have a unique take on what this means.

In contrast to the Japanese in the opera who hold on to an orthodox, anti-western discourse towards the west, is Butterfly. She allows her Japanese essence to be colonized by an American discourse. She, like Goro, sees an opportunity in Pinkerton to better her life. However, unlike Goro who is using the situation for purely financial gain, she is doing so because the Japanese discourse she has grown up in has let her down. Duty to her family has only landed her in a geisha house with little prospect for honor in her culture and so she sees Pinkerton as an escape. She is buying into the colonizer’s discourse: that of becoming a typical American housewife who is free from the oppressive orthodox traditions of Japan. She appropriates American culture in her manner of dress and the locks on the doors, and she sees the west as being exotic (other) much like Pinkerton sees her as exotic. However, the truly sad part of all this is that Pinkerton is misappropriating Japanese culture by using Butterfly and not taking her seriously. He just wants to have fun (he devalues her and her culture), whereas for her the choice to give up one discourse for another is nearly a matter of life and death for her and the child.  

In the end Butterfly cannot escape her own culture no matter how many American dresses she wears or locks she attaches to the doors because no matter how many individual choices she makes that run counter to her Japanese culture, her life is not self-determined, she is at the mercy of the power structure of her own culture as well as the fetishization of a western male who does not value her or her people’s past and culture. Once she finally accepts the truth of her situation she, like many of the people around her, reverts to orthodoxy and commits seppuku, which ironically is also the only truly self-determined action she can take.

Stepping back from the opera, I think this idea of how cultural appropriation and colonization leads to the people in a community to revert to an orthodoxy is a driving force in current world politics. The massive divide between Western and Muslim beliefs seem to only entrench each side further and further into orthodoxy whenever one side attempts to interfere with the other’s culture. For example when the west overthrows the leader of a middle eastern nation, like Saddam Hussein, the moral justification may be for human rights reasons, but the people who actually live there, even knowing they live under a tyrannical leader, do not accept western influence and in the void left by a lack of leadership they revert to the orthodoxy of their culture. The same is true in the west when someone of Muslim faith carries out a terrorist attack and in the aftermath the voices who are the loudest are those who are the most conservative.

The irony is that the more a culture attempts to colonize another, the more likely the result will be a strengthening of the colonized orthodoxy. The more the colonizer devalues the colonized culture and people, the more the colonized will hold onto and value their own culture. Even in the case of imperialism where it seems a culture benefits by more economic opportunity (like Butterfly and Goro in the opera), there comes a point when people begin to question these materialist values and may begin look to a more traditional discourse that gives their lives more meaning, even if it comes at the expense of the comfort and leisure capitalist colonialism provides.

M. Butterfly (opera): Marxism: Power Relationship Nodes and Connections

Gloss, Hwang, David Henry, M. Butterfly, M. Butterfly (opera): Marxism: Power Relationship Nodes and Connections

I thought it might be fun to do a map of some of the connections found in the Madame Butterfly opera and explore how these relationships relate to historical and materialist criticism. I stuck to only a few major relationships, however many, many more could be explored. I had also intended to do a map for Pinkerton as well, but Butterfly’s alone was so in-depth that I’m just sticking to this one example. I intentionally left out Pinkerton and Sharpless (and their corresponding connections and nodes) so I could limit my focus to that solely of culture / society / the state (the power structures).

For Butterfly’s map of power relationship nodes and connections I placed Japan at the top and Butterfly at the bottom since I felt this best explains the pressures Butterfly feels in the opera and this gives us a good visual shorthand visualizing how complicated her situation is as well as how powerless she seems to be with so much weight bearing down on her. Marx explains how the individual can often feel alienated or oppressed from the world in which they are participating and this map shows how Butterfly might feel about the world / society she wishes to divorce herself from.

As we learned at the beginning of the unit our condition is affected by our environment and shapes how we interact with the world. In Butterfly’s case she is greatly influenced by her being Japanese, as we see with a line directly from Japan to Butterfly, and this is a major factor in how she interprets her world. Even her desire to break free of this power structure is informed by her Japanese-ness, and not an American-ness (such as the ideal of American individualism / rebelliousness) of which she knows very little outside of magazines and Pinkerton’s relationship to her. In this sense Japan is what Marx calls the base and everything that follows (below on my map) is the superstructure of which that society (Butterfly’s world) consists.

I’ve next made a split below Japan into Family and Society. These are smaller units of the larger Japan and are directly related in both directions, but they are distinct in that Butterfly would identify with each in different ways. For example Suzuki and her son, Sorrow are part of her intimate network of caregivers and providers while her Uncle, though a blood relation (unlike Suzuki) is a reminder of the pressures of Society. Both nodes also represent unique ideologies: Family is that which Butterfly is trying to create anew – the dynamic of Butterfly, the servant Suzuki, and the fatherless child is not a traditional family – and Society is that ideology from which she is trying to free herself from, as we can see with nodes such as Goro, Prince Yamadori, and the Geisha House all falling under that heading.

Other connections we could make might be economic, such as the Geisha House which can provide her with a source of income if she is willing to submit herself to that life again, but also the economic situation of her own House which, with the money quickly running out, is a source of stress and oppression which, if unresolved, could force her, literally, from one house (her House under the Family node) to the other (the Geisha House under the Society node).

All-in-all this map represents the state and State in which Butterfly lives in. The state is broken up into two categories: the repressive state apparatus which coerces power, such as the nodes Goro and Prince Yamadori, both of whom actively try to influence her behavior. We could also look to the dream sequence in the film as a coercive apparatus where the black and white newsreel imagery of a modern and powerful (military) Japanese society is, as Freud might tell us, is actively influencing her through the subconscious.

The other category is the ideological state apparatus and an example from our map that fits here would be the Family. The Family is, of course, related to Society in that Society is informing the Family members how to behave (as Japanese) – as we see with the Uncle’s influence / warnings – but it is also a separate node in this case because Butterfly is part of a non-traditional family – she is married to a foreigner, she is a single mother, and her only close companion is someone from a lower class, Suzuki. This ideological state Butterfly exists in also helps us understand how, as Althusser questions, change can take place within the State (capital “S”) because we can see how her circumstance isolates her and informs her decisions to insist on this Family ideology over the Society ideology.

Yet even though she is favoring one ideology over another, we can see how these ideologies are interpolated and how Butterfly is an interpolated subject (and Subject) within the overall ideology of Japan / Japanese-ness. Althusser wonders how is it that societies remain stable and why do people chose to remain submissive to their state and State, and these interconnections explain how a person is defined by their state (State) and how complicated it can be to extract oneself from these ideologies – if that’s even possible at all.

One final point, and one which is not on our map, is that of the magazines Butterfly reads. For her these magazines are a source of education and information that she uses as motivation (power) to free herself from her current ideological state (and State). This information she has access to runs counter to the ideology of Japanese society by showing how western women should look and behave. She is consciously privileging this counter-narrative (binary) and she is interpreting this information in a way that she believes will give her power. For example, she begins to dress as an American thus privileging one interpretation of Society (American) over another Society (Japan). From this information she has constructed a narrative in which she is the good American housewife and this gives her a power of will to endure the absence of Pinkerton, an absence which is not just emotionally painful, but also economically (the lack of money) and socially painful (the shunning of her Uncle’s Family).

Finally we can trace Butterfly’s discourse, or the limits of her experience as it relates to her state / State. Butterfly’s relationship to the ideology of the State is unique and she seems to be actively rebelling against her condition within the State, however she is not doing so as, say, a modern feminist who is challenging the hegemony (such discourse does not exist for her, even if some of her actions do coincidently align with that discourse). Butterfly’s discourse is chiefly social / societal because her previous life as a practical slave in the Geisha House (which came about because of her family’s fall from respect and a need for money) is something she refuses to return to. She has existed within the machine of Society and she wants to free herself from that oppression, and oppression so powerful it actually took her real name, Cio-Cio-san, away from her (loss of identity via the State). She has seen how alienating and oppressive the State is, she bears the scars of her state, and so she reacts against these states by attempting to forge a new narrative / ideology / identity. Yet her tragedy is that she cen never really escape her state / State and in the end suffers the ultimate alienation of all states: Death

M. Butterfly: Feminism: Is Gender Identity Natural / Innate or Socially Constructed?

Gloss, Hwang, David Henry, M. Butterfly, M. Butterfly: Feminism: Is Gender Identity Natural / Innate or Socially Constructed?

Is gender identity natural/innate or socially constructed? Are specific bodies linked to specific behaviors/appearances/identities male= masculine, female= feminine?

 

Considering how contentious both sides of this debate is I believe the answer is “a little bit of both”. For example, in the film Song is constructing a feminine identity designed to please a Western male, while Gallimard (the Western male) possesses many innate feminine characteristics. Both sides of the debate are presented here amid a backdrop of social revolution to show how fluid and complicated the distinction is while hinting at a “radical” possibility of a world in which there is no distinction to be made (the communist state where everyone is “equal”). The film is using the characters as binaries to help us understand gender by differentiating between them and then mixes them together until the distinction is so blurred that we can no longer tell where one end and the other begins.

When we look at the essentialist argument we are presented with biological differences: a woman’s body is (usually) reproductive, whereas a man’s body is (usually) more muscular. Just inhabiting a certain physical body can influence how we interact with the world, such as someone who is blind will interact with the world differently than a sighted person. The essentialists believe that “[w]omen are more caring,” (Rivkin, 530) but also can be defined as that which is “not male”, a nonidentity expressed through ecriture feminine that is fluid and non-rational. The problem here is that, as with my example of someone who is blind, it seems to be creating a hierarchy where there might perhaps be a preferred state of being (sighted is preferred over blind), or with the ecriture feminine that women will fall into the stereotype of being mysterious as opposed to logical.

From the constructivist side of the argument it seems the essentialists are “taking an effect to be a cause” (Rivkin, 530) where biology is used as a sort of excuse to subordinate women. The argument is taken even further to say that in a capitalist society women are assigned from birth, based on their sex, to behave in a way that benefits the state by staying at home and performing as “domestic laborers,” (Rivkin, 530). In other words gender is a social construct and therefore can be deconstructed or thrown out altogether. However, this is also problematic in that it has the possibility of leading to there being no distinction at all between men  and women and that our biology plays no role in our gender.

The film presents this problem of competing ideologies by showing us that gender exists on a spectrum, that gender is a representation of a reality, a reality we construct but that it is also based on the hyper-real in which there is no absolute ideal model or form to base it on. Both Song and Gallimard construct their reality out of what they think defines their gender.  Song looks at fashion magazines, Gallimard looks to Puccini, but in both cases they are drawing on constructed identities and not anything concrete and specific, it is all imitation where there is no original.

All this then leads to the performative nature of gender, “the way in which gender is constructed through specific corporeal acts,” (Butler, 2). The most extreme examples of this is within the media where we are influenced and stereotyped into performing a specific gender script. The models in Song’s magazines are grotesquely feminine with their gaudy makeup, and the characters in Puccini’s opera are embarrassingly stereotypical. Yet both Song and Gallimard have been heavily influenced by these images and initially act out according to what they believe is the script they should be following. It is no wonder then that they both wind up being punished by society for breaking away from these “putatively regulated cultural fictions,” (Butler, 4). Society believes Song and Gallimard are gender “imposters” who have been exposed and must be punished for going against the roles they have been assigned.

Yet what and who is this society that is imposing these roles on the actors? Again, the film seems to be commenting on this society by giving us characters who are both male. Typically males have held the dominant role in society (hegemony) yet here both males are struggling with what it means to even be male. Gallimard does not fit the role of the typical male in that he is ridiculed by his colleagues, is ineffectual in his attempt to assert his political views, and winds up falling in love with a biological man. Song, too is a critique of the male hegemonic system in that Song as a biological man seems to know more what it is to be a woman than a biological woman does. Song controls the relationship, demands a child be given to her/him, and puts Gallimard in a subservient role in the relationship. In short Song acts very masculine while putting on the staged trappings of the feminine. And again we have a blurring of the lines of what it means to be masculine in that during the time we believed Song to be biologically a woman we accepted her seemingly masculine actions as being “normal” because she was a foreigner who acts different than we do. But when Song is exposed as a biological male, Gallimard turns against Song even though the only thing that has really changed is the biology – Song’s actions had always been quite masculine but once the male essence had been added to the male biology then Gallimard rejects Song even though he had been attracted to a very masculine identity in every other way other than in the biological sense.

This is an interesting critique of the patriarchy in that it shows how fluid and malleable this institution really is. And in the end there does seem to be – from Gallimard – an understanding that the patriarchy has been in control the whole time and has dominated his view of what a relationship can be. The entire time he has been manipulated by a biological male who has control over him and so by setting up Gallimard as a more feminine male we can really see how this affects biological women because we see how the power dynamic oppresses and penalizes women in this system through the lens of taking away the power from our example of a biological male (Gallimard). In other words by exposing a male as feminine and then oppressing this male, we can see how men use power to emasculate other men as well as oppress women by attempting to make them inferior. This also exposes the troubling subordination of homosexuals in society.

Through all this it is no wonder that society seems to be comfortable in creating very rigid and specific roles to play because at least by having a script we aren’t left to have to figure out how to navigate gender with no guide whatsoever. Connell says that, “[t]here is likely to be a ‘fit’ between hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity,” (Connell, 61)  because having these defined stage directions in our script is, “more familiar and manageable,” (Connell, 61). In other words we do not have to worry about being placed on trial or sent to a quarry to break rocks as long as we stick to the roles given to us.

M. Butterfly (film): Psychoanalysis: Audience as Superego

Freud, Sigmund, Gloss, Hwang, David Henry, M. Butterfly, M. Butterfly: Psychoanalysis: Audience as Superego

The film M. Butterfly allows the audience to actively participate in the role of the Freudian topography as a representative of the superego. An audience plays a major role in the film, not only as a character on screen but the filmmakers are counting on the audience’s reaction when confronted with a revelation counter to what we accept in normative society. In an effort to explore the audience’s preconceived biases, the filmmakers attempt to revolutionize the audience’s thinking to go beyond the current “normal” to suggest the possibility of a new, progressive “normal”. In this essay I will explore the different types of audience as presented in the film and will explore how the role of the audience as a superego shapes the characters as well as how these characters shape the audience in return.

The first example of an audience playing the role of superego, which Freud corresponds to the conscience (Barry, 97), is at the beginning of the film when Gallimard attends the embassy performance of Madame Butterfly (M Butterfly 00:05:10). In this scene Gallimard admits to having never seen the opera and is thus ignorant of its content. He is self-conscious of this fact and this exposes his alienation from the rest of the audience who is familiar with the opera. Gallimard is positioned as an outsider within his own culture, however he is not totally alien to the morals and norms of his Western European culture as we learn in the following conversation with Song when she argues against his reading of the opera. He says, “You made me see the beauty of the story. Of her death. It’s pure sacrifice… It’s very beautiful,” (M Butterfly 00:07:57) which she counters as his reading as being “… one of your favorite fantasies isn’t it? The submissive oriental woman and the cruel white man?”  (M Butterfly 00:08:36). Gallimard’s reading of the opera is assumed to be in line with that of the audience of the film, but Song is showing us that perhaps the audience’s reading is in error, perhaps we as an audience, a superego who are judging the characters, are not infallible and thus are capable of reevualating the normative pressure we impose on the characters (society).

The next example of the importance of the role of the audience is when Gallimard attends the traditional Chinese theater (M Butterfly 00:14:37). Here Gallimard is completely a foreigner since he cannot understand what the actors are saying as well as his being the only Westerner in the audience. Yet when he goes backstage he is given the opportunity to see how manufactured, how unreal, even chaotic this performance is, (M Butterfly 00:16:18). In a sense this is similar to the process of psychoanalysis when the patient – Gallimard plays a dual role as both the patient and as a proxy for the audience in this scene – begins to strip away the layers of repression (in this case the artifice of culture, here represented as the theater troupe) in an effort to expose what lies underneath. We have learned Gallimard’s reading of the opera (and thus the Chinese as a whole) is from a typical Western European point of view, and so this is his (and the audience’s) opportunity to see past these preconceived biases, to uncover these repressed and troubling biases about how we view a foreign culture and deal with them in the open.

Through the course of the film from this point forward we the audience become highly active in our role as the superego. We watch as Gallimard’s and Song’s relationship grows into what we, at first, assume will be a traditional relationship between a man and a woman, albeit across vastly different cultures. All this, however, takes place not in front of the audience of society, but tucked away in secret with only we the film audience watching events unfold. In a way we have been separated from the cultural norms of society as we undertake more in depth and private psychoanalysis of our “patients”.

While we are surprised to learn Song is biologically a man because our biases as a normative superego may initially reject this relationship possibility, yet having spent the duration of the film learning about these characters we’ve been given an opportunity to rethink our position as a normative influence on these characters. We are then presented with a choice: we could decide to continue to insist on a culturally normative relationship between a man and woman, or we have an opportunity to rethink our analysis, to have our minds changed, to engage in a revolution of norms and accept this new possibility.

And so we as a film audience who have undergone the psychoanalysis of the film where we have uncovered this repressed secret, join back up with the audience of society and we are confronted with how we will decide to judge these characters as represented in the courtroom scene, (M Butterfly 01:18:00). Here society as an audience literally judges Gallimard, especially when that audience learns he did not know the biological sex of Song, (M Butterfly 01:21:50), and thus that audience (society) finds him guilty. Gallimard deviates from the norm of French society and the rule of law insists he is to be punished for spying, in effect, on the alternative lifestyle. Yet we as an audience in the theater have been revolutionized, we were given the opportunity to know more than just the base facts in the case because we have grown with these two people and understand how this misunderstanding (either willful or from ignorance) could have ever taken place. We have seen backstage, just as Gallimard had earlier, and thus we are in conflict with French society. We now have conflicting superegos and we, too are to be judged.

This leads to the final example with an audience consisting of actual prisoners (themselves outcasts like Gallimard) who watch and judge Gallimard as he transforms on stage, (M Butterfly 01:29:27). They, like us, are captive to this transformation and not only have no power to stop the metamorphosis, but seem to accept it, a far cry from Gallimard’s previous audience of a jury in the French courtroom who cast him out. In this case one audience (French society as a superego) has been replaced with another audience (prisoners as an opposing, revolutionary superego), and while we might initially identify with the former, over the course of the film in which we are a captive audience, we wind up empathizing with Gallimard’s plight and therefore we as the superego are transformed into something wholly new.. No longer are we the normative societal force that frowns on Gallimard’s behavior, we are a different normative force who accept this transformation.

When we began the film we assumed a traditional interpretation of the characters: Gallimard is a man, Song is a woman. However, we are held captive to this traditionally accepted reading. Society (as a superego) forces us to conform to a certain standard of what constitutes a “proper” romantic relationship.

Yet why must this be so, is there no possibility of revolution in society, as there is in both China and France during the film? Can’t the superego, strict as it is as a normalizing influence be a reshaped? However, once it is reshaped, does it not just become the replacement normalizing force? Has the power now only shifted from one power structure to another? In the film the Chinese have undergone a cultural revolution where everyone is supposed to be equal, yet we see how even in this new system the new norms are enforced with strict punishments that are meted out when an individual runs afoul of them.

Who then is left to say our new, revolutionized judgment is any more authentic or legitimate than our previous biases? Are we as society’s audience also prisoners of society who judges based only on available, and often limited information? Ultimately, could this uncertainty as to the legitimacy of the authority of the superego lead to such a breakdown of an individual that they are no longer able to function in society, to which Gallimard reacts by literally killing himself, an extreme example of psychosis where the relationship with an external reality (the superego) “breaks down altogether,” (Gollapudi)?

 

Works Cited

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press. 2002.

Gollapudi, Aparna. Principles of Literary Criticism. https://writing.colostate.edu/files/classes/11609/File_858E65CB-B94C-34D8-2112AC98F38F64D5.pdf. Accessed 30 October 2017.

M Butterfly. Dir. David Cronenberg. Warner Bros. 1993. Film.

M. Butterfly: Psychoanalysis

Freud, Sigmund, Gloss, Hwang, David Henry, M. Butterfly, M. Butterfly: Psychoanalysis

Each of the major characters in the opera can not only be slotted into each of the three topographic landscapes of Freud’s theory – Id, Superego, and Ego – but that the overall structure of the opera is representative of the entire model Freud is positing where there is a) desire, b) a mediating conscience, and c) an individual who must decide what to consciously pursue and what to repress.

One possible assembly of these pieces could consist of Pinkerton as the Id, Suzuki as the Superego, and Butterfly as the Ego. Here Pinkerton represents that which Butterfly desires to have: a husband who will give her life new identity and take her away from her previous, unsatisfactory life. However, Suzuki, who is always close at hand (much as we can’t ever escape our ever-nagging conscience) and whom is necessary for Butterfly to do pretty much anything in the home, represents the Superego who is attempting to instruct Butterfly that her decision to pursue Pinkerton is doomed. Finally, Butterfly is the Ego which must try to negotiate between the two, and on a few occasions verbally threatens Suzuki because Butterfly does not like being confronted with the painful advice being given when Suzuki tries to get Butterfly to really consider the consequences of her desire, or in other words to confront the possibility she is repressing her fear that this relationship is doomed.

Within this Freudian dynamic we can see the pleasure principle at work in Butterfly. She substitutes the pain she feels – the loss (lack) of Pinkerton’s physical presence, but also the pain of the repressed fear she has as to his actual intentions – with a reality she can control: a delusion of certainty that he is absolutely coming back (transference). Pinkerton’s absence is similar to the Fort-da game Freud describes in that Butterfly is processing this unusually long and painful separation as a sort of pressure gauge whose eventual relief will produce an even greater pleasure upon his return. In this sense she might believe Pinkerton’s absence is actually a voluntary renunciation she has control over because she tells herself it is her duty as the wife to support her hardworking husband even while he is away. She is, in her mind, the good American housewife who will be rewarded for her sacrifice.

Yet Butterfly’s separation (lack) from her desire (Pinkerton), the object she desperately needs in order to complete or at least maintain her constructed identity as a dutiful American housewife, is really a separation from a desire she can never really possess. For her Pinkerton is the key to her shedding the Japanese identity into the ideal American housewife, yet which itself is something she has almost no concept of other than what she imagines that to even mean. Probably she has never even met an American woman before and has based her identity on what Pinkerton has told her it could be like. Ironically, Pinkerton might not even know what the ideal American housewife is supposed to consist of!  

It is in this misunderstanding that we can see Butterfly attempt to symbolize her desire through a sort of created language when she wears the American style dress and sets the house up with western locks (symbolic of her repressing her Japanese-ness). She’s trying to approximate a meaning to a system she’s practically ignorant of (American culture). And the further she commits to this reasoning the more she’s invested into it because the consequences would be shame and the ridicule of everyone in the village. How her family and the villagers see her drives her on to separate herself from that identity, in effect her identity is being influenced by the outside world, an influence she rebels against.

Butterfly is living a highly fragmented existance, she is neither her old self nor is she the self she desires to be, she’s become, in effect, the uncanny in that he looks like Butterfly, but she also no longer resembles Butterfly. Not to mention the name Butterfly being problematic itself. She is a prosthetic, what we call the Ideal-I, a being existing somewhere between the experiential I she is and the ideal person she can never be.

Lacan explains we can never really posses what we desire, yet Butterfly does wind up back in Pinkerton’s embrace, literally the embrace of her desire. Yet in the Freudian sense to completely indulge that desire, to let that animal nature we repress to fully embrace and nurture us (as Pinkerton does as he holds her like a helpless child as she dies from her wound), would be to strip away our humanity and figuratively cause our death, a psychic death dramatized in the opera as her suicide since that accepted embrace of the repressed desire (the animal nature) is a form of suicide. She has attempted to return to a sense of wholeness, but by accepting the embrace of this Ego, it is a perverted and unnatural act that strips her away of her ultimate identity as a living human being.

Freud: Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Euripides, Freud, Sigmund, Freud: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Gloss, Heracles

Freud mentions the “compulsion of destiny” as something that “seems intelligible on a rational basis,” (174) or in other words what the ancients called “Destiny” is little more than our inability to break from the habit of “‘perpetual recurrence of the same thing'”(173), our own repressed compulsions manifesting (what Freud calls transference) themselves over and over through the same (or seemingly similar) outlets.

One example (and in keeping with the theme of the ancients) is that of Heracles in Euripides play Herakles. Hercules is a warrior, he has been on numerous dangerous missions (the 12 labors) where his life was in great danger, and in fact he was even in Hades right as the story begins. Hercules has taken the lives of countless men and beasts, he is death and he brings death wherever he goes. Heracles is, in effect, a killing machine.

The play, tragically, ends with Heracles killing his own children in a fit of rage, or what we would now call something akin to PTSD. All the killing he has done, because that is his “Destiny”, causes him to continue to kill, which is his inescapable “Fate”. He repeats the same terrible acts over and over, even against those he loves because he can’t escape this destiny: a repressed compulsion to kill that he tries to keep repressed but which manifests itself in the most terrible ways possible, even against his conscious will and desire.

Hercules wishes he could live a normal life with his family, but he’s doomed to express his repressed “Destiny” (killing) because he has no other outlet and it becomes a compounding issue: the more he kills the worse his PTSD becomes and thus the more he kills. But he was born to kill, not to be a family man sitting at home smoking a pipe and listening to Perry Como on the hi-fi. He can’t repress his desire and though the actions of his desire to kill are terrible to him he repeats them over and over and, in effect, becomes sicker and sicker.

Euripides: Heracles: Heroic vs. Moral Courage

Apollodorus, Euripides, Euripides: Heracles: Heroic vs. Moral Courage, Gloss, Heracles

“… Heracles was struck by madness through the jealousy of Hera, and threw his own children, who had been borne to him by Megara, into the fire,” (Apollodorus, 73)

“Heracles after his marriage with Megara, daughter of Creon, had children by her. . . . Leaving his sons in Thebes, he himself went to Argos to accomplish his labors,” (Euripides, 283)

The most common telling of the Herculean myth – part of the wider series of cult myths which were told all through ancient Mediterranean culture, perhaps as a regional / societal reflex to the civilizing force that had shifted these native Mediterranean cultures away from their more “barbaric” pasts into a somewhat more unified (possibly through trade) city culture – is found in Apollodorus of Athens’ encyclopedic retelling of the labors: Hercules kills his children and must undertake a dangerous task to make amends for his crimes.

Why would Hercules kill his own children? Apollodorus only tells us that “Heracles was struck by madness through the jealousy of Hera,” (73), but what exactly is this jealousy of Heracles that fuels Hera’s rage? A possible answer is that Hera is attempting to keep Zeus’ seed from spreading and influencing the region any further. However, Hercules’ crime leads to his need for an expiation of his guilt through the undertaking of the labors. These labors have a strong civilizing force in that not only is Hercules carrying out the commands of Eurystheus, the ruler of Tiryns who is using Hercules to rid the surrounding lands of dangers to his kingdom, but by his very travels he is influencing these lands with his (and by proxy, Zeus’) presence (religion). Therefore we have a civilizing force working on behalf of a city that is successful because of his relation to Zeus. Hera is ultimately unsuccessful in thwarting her husband’s plans and is eventually reconciled (hierogamy) with Hercules after “he obtained immortality,” and “married her daughter, Hebe,” (91).

Interestingly, we are seeing the evolved remnants of some of the themes we have covered so far: overthrow and creation. In previous myths we have seen how the younger generations have overthrown their parents (Zeus, Marduk), yet Hera reverses this trend and now wishes to kill her husband’s offspring because of her jealousy. She is a more complex character because we are now getting another point of view, just as we see in the Rig Veda when the Maruts disagree with Indra (Rig Veda, 167) over who has rights to a sacrifice (power struggle). We also see the remnants of the creation myth in that Greek civilization is “creating” the Mediterranean world in its own image through Hercules’ slaying of the terrible monsters. Yet we and the contemporary audience of this myth have already moved into a world of pure mythos to explain the creation of the world because the world already exists, it’s just uncivilized and therefore needs a civilizing force to tame it, not to actually create it out of the corpses of the slain monsters (such as Marduk slaying Tiamat).

And it is this moving out of a world of pure Logos (priestly myths exclusively for a priestly class) and into a world of Mythos (a world of regular people living in cities) that leads us to Euripides’ retelling of the Herculean myth. Euripides changes one key aspect of the basic story: Hercules kills his children after he has completed his labors and gone down into to Hades.  Hercules is changed from a character who only possess great physical courage which allows him to complete the labors into someone more psychologically complex who also possess great moral courage to endure the pain he has caused. Hercules initially wants to kill himself (a reflex of his previous form), but his friend, Theseus talks him out suicide because talk of killing oneself is “the words of an ordinary man,” (Euripides 330). Hercules is not an ordinary man not just because he will not kill himself (as an ordinary man would do), or because he is the child of Zeus (semi-divine, and in that sense not at all like anyone in the audience listening to the play), but because he has the moral courage to endure this terrible pain, his “last worst labor,” (Euripides 331). Hercules must and can serve as an example not just as someone who is physically strong and can protect the city (civilization), but is also morally strong and can serve his fellow man, similar to how Gilgamesh devoted his life to serving his city after his failed journey.

This psychological complexity is important because for a warrior, such as Hercules or Gilgamesh to live in society, he has to channel his great powers into something that does not disrupt the delicate balance of living within a city (civilization). Civilization has rules and laws that must be imposed on even a semi-divine hero, like Hercules, to maintain order. The warrior’s code of self-rule is overruled by codified laws (such as Hammurabi). Though his actions have helped create civilization through the act of “All those wars I fought, those beasts I slew” (Euripides, 331) he most certainly suffers from what we would call PTSD (no longer is it Hera’s rage, but rather something mental and interior to the individual; a Freudian repression) and must figure out how to live alongside the common people / his neighbors. This is a new kind of hero who serves the city and can cope with the burdens of life by channeling (what Freud calls Sublimation) the destructive impulses (recall that Hercules is a reflex of Zeus; Zeus’s thunderbolt and Hercule’s club are similar projections of male violence) into something more constructive, and less terrifying for his neighbors.

Simply by switching the order of events – the labors as a penance for the killing of his children into the labors as the reason why he killed his children – we see the evolution of heroic myth from that of a hero clad in lion skins and swinging a giant club at anyone who gets in his way in a barbaric society and who merely possess great physical courage into the city poetry that worships someone who is morally courageous and therefore someone more recognizable and imitable by the common people rather than just the priests who ritualize the mythos of creation in the temples, someone who can rationalize a problem rather than simply apply violence to every situation and can unite people through example rather than brute force. In this way the evolution of the Herculean myth is a combining of both the characters Gilgamesh (civilized, city) and Enkidu (wild, barbaric) into one new vision of the heroic example.

M. Butterfly: Post-structuralism: ‘Textualized’ subjects of post-structuralism and other ‘metanarratives’

Gloss, Hwang, David Henry, M. Butterfly, M. Butterfly: Post-structuralism: ‘Textualized’ subjects of post-structuralism and other ‘metanarratives’, Play

Consider the characters of the movie and/or the opera as ‘textualized’ subjects of post-structuralism – that is, as subjects whose ‘reality’ is always referential, never absolute.

I keep coming back to the scene when Butterfly is wearing an American style dress during the height of her resistance to the “reality” that Pinkerton is not coming back when Prince Yamadori shows up instead to marry her. Her identity is referencing that of a what she believes is of the typical American housewife, albeit one who is rather fancy and quite wealthy judging by the quality of her dress. She tries her best to “dress” herself in this identity, but it’s an obvious mask everyone sees through, in fact nobody even comments on her change of clothes because they are seeing right past what she is referencing and are seeing only the Butterfly underneath the foreign garb. This is interesting because she looks totally out of place in this dress, too. She seems to be playing dress up the way children would with dolls, though based on her experience as a geisha, putting on a costume to inhabit a role of fantasy (for male customers) is nothing so foreign to her or, for that matter, to any of the Japanese. Technically, she is simulating a reality in an attempt to create for herself a new reality, but as with all simulations, she falls short.

This, in turn, reveals another layer of reference because under her American dress is the girl they call Butterfly, which isn’t even her given name. To Prince Yamadori she is just a prize to be had, a conquest to add to his harem. He sees her as a prostitute to be bought but does not see the Cio-Cio-san underneath. But then with these onion-like layers, we have to wonder then if everything is referential, is there any identity at all? Who is the “real” Cio-Cio-san under the American dress and behind the Butterfly persona? Here then we are presented with an example of différance in that this individual woman can be called “Butterfly”, or “Cio-Cio-san”, or “Housewife” and in each instance she takes on (or attempts to take on)  a new reality that is different from her other realities. We are seeing Butterfly in a different reference; she no longer is wearing the traditional Japanese dress, she’s identifying herself with an other in defiance of what she no longer wishes to be associated with: a Japanese woman.

Yet she can’t help but expose a slippage back into her other identity because she is, after all, a Japanese woman living in Japan. She can’t fully inhabit her new binary because she isn’t a white, American, blonde, woman (like Pinkerton’s American wife). However, we do need to be careful here because if she had been raised in America from a small child (like her son will be), and was only ever raised with American culture, and dress, and American speech was all she knew and inhabited, then her mere biological characteristics would not necessarily preclude her from “legitimately” identifying as a typical American housewife, albeit as someone who also possesses Asian physical characteristics.

In fact this leads into part of the next question from the take-away: How reliable is what we think we know about the characters and cultures in the opera? If I had been born and raised in, say, the Amazon and had never been influenced by any culture outside of the deep Brazilian rainforest, I might not make much of any distinction between who is Japanese and who is American and what either of these two foreign cultures might represent or mean. I, as this supposed foreign observer, would not be interpreting the situation through the lens of what I think “Japan” is vs what I think “America” is, or what “honor” is vs what “individualism” is, rather I might see a contradiction in that the male in the relationship is acting one way whereas the female is acting another and that they are not adhering to my own (foreign) concept of what a relationship “should” be about.

To take it even further, if I was aware of what honor is I might think she is using honor as an excuse to not face the “reality” that Pinkerton is not coming back and that she’s just being stubborn and not because she really is honorable, as is the prefered reading of “honor” in this case, doing so because she truly believes absolutely in what she is doing with no doubts at all. All-in-all everything becomes relative, not absolute, but always from the point of view of another observer. To Butterfly or Pinkerton their reality may seem perfectly “absolute”, but  from a relative point of view those realities fall apart.

 

And this idea of how a reality might seem absolute to the individual experiencing it leads us to the next topic:

Postmodernism

What other ‘metanarratives’ do you see in the movie and opera? What role do they play?

The metanarrative which most interested me was that of the importance (or not) of telling the truth as we understand it. I was first struck by this during the courtroom scene when Gallimard is asked, by a incredulous judge, how he could not have known Song was a man. According to the court Gallimard must be telling a lie, right? How could anyone be so unobservant? Yet we the audience who have spent nearly 2 hours riding along in this situation did not know either! We too were fooled and if we had been quizzed by a legal tribunal as to whether or not Song was a woman, most of us would have rolled our eye at such a boneheaded question: of course the truth is that Song is a woman!

Yet suppose we were to place the characters in the film into an impressionist painting. Would we then be able to clearly distinguish who was whom, and which gender any of these figures posses? Would we be lying if we said we were certain a figure holding a baby was a woman? Or a figure on a motorcycle was a man? And if we changed our answer would we then be telling the truth?

And so like in an impressionist painting, the characters are creating and inventing their own truth about their identity. Perhaps Song is more willing to be fluid while Gallimard is more resistant to slippage between identities, but is the possibility that either of them are lying even necessarily a “bad” thing? Yes, we favor the “truth” and, like the judge are initially incredulous to any idea outside of Song being a man and Gallimard being a spy, but are these “facts” actually the real truth?

Both characters live very post-modern lives in that they are lonely and isolated and live in worlds that is seething with energy to reinvent themselves (mostly through political revolution), a world neither of them seem to fully comprehend, either. Both characters reject traditional “realism” in an effort to invent their own “truths”, and not necessarily because either of them are lying, but because they are more open to other possibilities, even if it comes at the expense of willfully (or unwittingly) failing to investigate their reality much further under the surface reality they’ve created – in other words, neither seem willing to undress their reality and expose it in its naked condition, until the very end.

Yet even in the end when Song strips naked and Gallimard takes on a persona of Butterfly, are they still any closer to the truth, or are they just inhabiting a new truth as they define truth now?

Ultimately it comes down to how the characters are creating their own reality by creating a real from an unreal. Gallimard, in his role as a diplomat (inept as he is) believes he is telling the truth about how the Chinese and the Americans will behave in the current political crisis in Southeast Asia. He may not be totally confident in his beliefs and is hiding behind a dismissive, almost arrogant attitude, but he has to look good in front of the ambassador and his less than friendly coworkers. Song too believes she is truthful in being a woman because, as she says, “only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act”. She’s become more woman than woman, she’s become a meta-woman, the ultimate simulation of a woman based on what she thinks a woman is supposed to be. She too has to put on a good show to convince Gallimard and in her own way is also telling the truth about the reality she is inhabiting.

Yet as with any specific reading of a text, these characters readings of their reality and what they believe is truth is unreliable and artificial. From Comrade Chin’s point of view Song is decadent and a disgrace to the cultural revolution. Song should inhabit the established cultural roles and norms as imposed by Chairman Mao and anything deviating from that is a lie, perhaps even treason! Comrade Chin sees Song as a deceitful liar, albeit a useful liar for China’s political gain. The same holds true for Gallimard. He’s a meta-Westerner, an educated, arrogant, in-over-his-head colonialist who thinks all Asians are exotic butterflies and the Chinese take full advantage of this reading of him as if this is an accurate, truthful reading of Gallimard the individual. Gallimard begins the story believing this narrative of himself and very much wishes to inhabit that defined reality, yet he’s not nearly qualified to really be of any political use to the Chinese because he really isn’t a meta-Westerner after all, it’s a lie, and like the impressionist painting, he and the Chinese made a poor reading of who he really was.

Ultimately how then can anyone ever really be telling the truth when our own realities can be so easily thrown into doubt or are at least fluid? Song is more woman than woman, so is she lying when she says she’s a woman? Gallimard loves Butterfly and so is he telling the truth when he says he didn’t know she was (at least physically) a man? Even if we could read the minds of Song and Gallimard we might still be no closer to determining who is telling the truth here because what is the truth?