What the...

You almost had me there Mr. Cronenberg. At first I thought this was going to be a fairly straightforward love story but that's not how you ride the horse. Your style of riding a horse would be something like this: turned upside down beneath the horse between its pairs of legs, facing and holding its "adornment".

Even more impressive, the film (based on a play of the same name) is actually inspired by a true story. Rene Gallimard (Jeremy Irons) is a French diplomat working at the embassy located in Beijing, China during the 60s. There he becomes infatuated with a Chinese opera performer, Song Liling. As it turns out, Song is a spy instructed by the Chinese…

If this intended to have some sort of commentary on the racist perceptions of Europeans/Americans in China, it failed, mixing a little bit of awareness of stereotypes and with straight depictions of other stereotypes. The writer knows the words "imperialism" and "reactionary" but never once shows the impact of imperialism (instead, we more or less find if not sympathy then less contempt for imperialists here than for communism) and the truth of reactionaries' ideologies (i.e., fascism, etc.). It simply throws the vocabulary around for flavor while demonizing China with a shallow depiction of the political climate at the time. For all the talk of the French losing "Indochina" and the Americans' intentions to bomb, not once is it really acknowledged…

M. Butterfly è un film atipico per il ciclo evolutivo "carne-parole" che investe Cronenberg dai suoi primi lavori a quelli di oggi. Ispirandosi ad una storia vera , qui il regista descrive l'eterno confronto tra occidente ed oriente sfociando poi nel binomio uomo-donna, e della metamorfosi conseguente (metamorfosi croneberghiana). Ambientato in una Cina Maoista del 1964 , il film assume toni di diversi generi , dalla spy-story al melodramma.
Renè Gallimard (Jeremy Irons) è un funzionario dell'ambasciata francese in Cina (simboleggiante l'invasione culturale occidentale) che finirà per innamorarsi di un soprano cinese dopo aver assistito appasionatamente ad una rappresentazione di Madama Butterfly del maestro Puccini.
Il confronto tra i due è reso da continui incontri sessuali che faranno nascere tra…

There's a million angles to this story, both in the text and through its creators, that make it hard to write a take with any kind of confidence. M. Butterfly strikes me as existing in a very realistic kind of grey area.

As it concerns Orientalism, I couldn't help but feel like it was trading one set of stereotypes for another. Maybe Cronenberg fucked up big time here, or maybe Hwang's experience as a first-generation Asian American gives him unique insight. Maybe as North Americans they both fucked up. Maybe I'm just wrong. I don't know. Together they crafted a very moving interpersonal romance drama, but the translation to film apparently removed a lot of the wider context. I would…

"sólo un hombre sabe como las mujeres se deben comportar"

no creo que se deba entender que Cronenberg intente con esta frase apelar a cierto código que las mujeres deben cumplir, sino que tan sólo esos comportamientos hegemónicos se entienden por aquellos que crean esas fantasías y sus dinámicas de poder. esto es "solo un hombre sabe como quiere un hombre que se comporte una mujer". no es ni siquiera una cuestión de educación, sino algo más cercano al marketing y a la venta.

M. Butterfly, al igual que Cazador blanco, corazon negro (mas o menos por las mismas fechas), habla sobre los estereotipos y tropos culturales que, al final, poco tienen que ver con la realidad de las personas.…