『엠. 나비』에 나타난 오리엔탈리즘의 환상과 재구성

Abstract

David Henry Hwang, a Chinese American writer active in the late 20th century, worked with an interest in Asian-American race issues. One of the important aspects raised by Asian American writers of the time, including Hwang, was to challenge the ‘typicality’ of Asians, which had been created and sustained by western media such as literature, movies, and theater during the 19th and 20th centuries.
 Published in 1988, M. Butterfly is based on a true story that is both shocking and moving about the clash of east and west cultures. Hwang wrote this work after reading an article in The New York Times on May 11, 1986 about a spy crime involving a French diplomat. This article was about Bernard Boursicot, a former French diplomat in Beijing who was sentenced for stealing French state secrets to the Chinese government, and Shi Pei-Pu, an actor of the Beijing Opera Company. Interesting about this article was that Shi was a male actor who played a female role professionally, and the diplomat Boursicot claimed that he had no idea that he was a spy or not a woman, even though he had been in love with Shi for 20 years. After reading the article, Hwang concludes that Boursicot must have fallen in love with a typical type of fantasy, not with an individual.
 Through this assumption, Hwang connects a westerner who is in the illusion of ‘Butterfly’ with Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly(1914) and creates M. Butterfly. This drama begins with a scene in which the main character, Rene Gallimard, recalls his love for Song Liling, a Chinese Beijing opera actor, in a French prison. Song, a spy, instills his presence to Gallimard as a fantastic and typical image of an Asian woman in order to achieve his political purpose. In the end, Gallimard ends his life by learning the truth that his lover was a spy and even a man.
 This drama dismantles each thick layer of imperialist cultural and sexual bias. Furthermore it appeals to have a sincere relationship with each other for mutual welfare on an equal basis shared by everyone as a human being. This paper will examine the author's work of rewriting, focusing on the psychology of Gallimard.