castration

M. Butterfly

diva, crossdressing, castration, inverse orientalism, opera stylization, and depiction of the Cultural Revolution should have appropriated model operas like and nixon in China. You should reload after reading Henry David Hwang's original work. Zunlong has a head like John the Baptist in a golden plate, like a plucked fruit. After destroying the other party, he was as submissive as if he had been washed away by sin, which was completely two extremes from Cheng Dieyi.

The use of opera at the beginning seems to be a counterattack against Orientalism for Song as the representative (symbol) of the East. But in fact, it can be argued that Orientalism only belongs to the West, and it is not listed for the time being. Like the actor's dubbing of Madame Butterfly, Song is both a performer on stage and a mime puppet dubbed by a real opera actor. This passage alludes to Song's "castrat" ​​status and is an interesting metatextual interplay: Song's appearance at the very beginning indicates that he is an actor (rather than a symbol) in the film who plays a female character, or even Dongfang itself. On the one hand, in order to shape Song's subjectivity to break the fantasy of Genet's orientalism, on the other hand, it is full of deliberate self-contradiction between the self-gazing and recognizing oriental values ​​under this subjectivity, creating a series of hard-to-find songs by Song. Rehearsal, back and forth. The performance of the symbol of Song thus becomes the evidence of the self-contradictory and self-interpretation of the East.

The most dramatic aspect of the film is that Song only turns to spy status after being tipped off by a maid; note where the "spy" is in the film: the folded space for lies. The director deliberately let the audience see that Song Liling is a man. It is a means of cross-performance performance in the drama, and it is also the embodiment of the pseudo-ness of Peking Opera (WEI HONGBAO). When the maid peeps Song and Rene making love, the audience is in the position of the maid, breaking the fourth wall. After that, the maid went to inform, that is to say, the stage logic became that Song had a relationship with Renai only for the maid to go to inform, making himself a spy, and continuing this relationship. Lies hide in the dark side of truth and can be so absurd.

The film keeps implying that Genet created Song Liling, a woman through her own imagination, and Song's characterization further antagonizes the ambiguity of the text.

I have to think again about the images of Genet and his wife, and Mrs. so-and-so.

The prison car scene to suicide retains the persuasiveness of the image, but it also breaks with the dramatic picture.

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