AS AM 5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Closeted, David Henry Hwang, Judith Butler
Document Summary
Gallimard is attracted to the story of madama butterfly. Because of the person singing and the plot. Song tells him that he needs to be careful of his fantasies of oriental women being submissive. Song is able to use gallimard"s fetish of oriental women to string him along in his plan. Uses his chinese modesty to avoid being stripped naked. The west thinks that the east wants to be dominated because women cannot think for themselves. Gallimard could not possibly imagine that song was a man because of his false pretensions of the oriental, of how the east is feminine and weak compared to the west. He was not a traditional, masculine man. Song makes him feel more masculine because of her fake feminine nature. He created excuses for himself and for song. Uses her ethnicity to make up for the differences in body anatomy.
