"If you can't live with glory, you'd rather die with glory." - These are the words engraved on a short knife left to her by Mrs. Butterfly's father, Mrs. Butterfly, who broke with her family for love, and finally broke with her lover Pinkerton. Abandoned and killed himself with this dagger. Similarly, at the end of the film, the actor cuts his carotid artery in prison with a mirror that reflects his poor makeup. Based on the novel of the same name by John Luther Long, Madame Butterfly, Puccini's moving opera premiered in Milan in 1904. Just as the phrases in an opera contain tragic motives from the very beginning, in this film the lust for life and the death of love are intertwined, and the cultures of the East and the West clash violently. The title of the film in mainland China is translated as "Mr. Butterfly". "Mr. Butterfly" is the antithesis of "Mrs. Butterfly", which also shows the fate of the male protagonist - destined to be disillusioned, destined to be shattered.
"The East is watched for its almost inexhaustible sources of offensive behavior and eccentricity; Europeans are the spectators, condescendingly surveyed with their sensibilities, and the Orient has become the theater of eccentricity. ", Said attributed the arrogant, condescending messianic mentality and colonial consciousness of Westerners towards Eastern nations and cultures as "Orientalism", the East exists as an "other", and everything in the East is in the discourse of Westerners. All are curious and silent, the Orient is "feminized", they are arbitrarily controlled and distorted.
Just as Gao Renni (Jeremy Irons), the Frenchman sitting in front of the stage, stares at Song Liling (Zun Long) for the first time on the stage, the Oriental woman sings Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" in front of the well-dressed Westerners "The song. After the performance, Gao Renni made a friendly gesture to Song Liling and praised her for her performance - "(Mrs. Butterfly)'s death is moving and a pure sacrifice, that man (Pinkton) is not worthy of Mrs. Butterfly. I didn’t expect this sentence to offend Song Liling, she replied, “Submissive Eastern women and cruel Western men, this is your favorite fantasy.” In fact, Song Liling and Gao Renni’s first love The dialogue has already determined the power relationship between the two, and Song Liling cancels Gao Renni's subject status by exposing the relationship between the two "viewers" and "viewed".
The second dialogue took place in the Peking Opera Theatre. Song Liling performed "Drunken Concubine" - surrounded by palace maids, she shook the folding fan gently, and she paused every word. The admiration comes from the so-called imperialist charms (imperialist), but the admiration is mutual." She lured Galeni to her house, but turned him away.
The third conversation took place after Gao came to Song's house. Song pointed out that "France is a country whose ideas are ahead of the times, while China's ideas are deeply rooted." It seems that compared with France, China's traditions are rotten, while Song Liling is anti-customer-oriented. Using traditional etiquette as a rhetoric, he rejected Gao Renni's show of love again. So far, Song Liling has completely dominated the relationship between the two. This is also a kind of perversion in the film - the perversion of power relations. There is another correspondence in the film. Gao Renni and Jenny Jia Lima had an affair at the Friendship Hotel. She exposed her body unscrupulously, while Song Liling was the opposite. She refused to reveal it, not only because of her male identity, but more importantly Ground - refusing to be seen, becoming "the other".
Until the end, in court, Song Liling corrected Gao Renni as a man, and it was actually difficult for the audience to understand Song Liling's motives here. Is this because of a humiliation from history, a revenge for this humiliation? In the beginning, Song Liling's sense of humiliation as Madam Butterfly stemmed from the national disaster brought about by Japan's invasion of China, and secondly, during the Cultural Revolution, he was persecuted and sent to work - always in a state of being humiliated and displayed, This was a crazy era, and it was a historical error, but the perversion still happened. After Gao Renni returned to France, he borrowed wine to ease his worries one day. When he walked out of the tavern, he was surprised to find that the French Those fanatical left-wing students on the streets still hold Mao Zedong's head high and exercise in the streets. What was originally a historical tragedy in China has instead become the object of imitation by French left-wing radical social activists. This is the perversion of history. Song Liling's private life, starting from this era, has been completely destroyed, his love is monitored, his love is traded, it is through the destruction and the love between Gao Renni that he liquidates and washes away, the entire history remains. dirt on his body. Fiction tends to follow a certain logic, while reality is always more absurd. Song Liling's prototype Shi Peipu and Gao Renni's prototype Bursico have lived together for more than ten years. Did Bursico never find out that Shi Peipu was a man disguised as a woman, certainly not. Gao Renni lives in an overhead emotional space. Even if he is engaged in intelligence work, he has never had any heavy historical awareness. His love for Song Liling is instinctive and simple, so he cannot understand Song Liling's betrayal. His disillusionment is a simple love appeal. Facing the disillusionment of heavy historical causality, just as Pinkerton turned his back on Mrs. Butterfly, he became Mrs. Butterfly with only love in his heart, and became Mr. Butterfly. Song Liling burst into tears on the plane, becoming a cold, distant oriental fantasy in Gao Renni's heart, and disappearing into the air as a butterfly.
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