Postmodernism and Post-colonialism share a similarity in that they could not exist without their priors: modernism and colonialism. They both offer an entirely new way of thinking.
Postmodernism marks a departure from modernism, it is a wave scepticism towards the ideologies of the rationality of the Enlightenment and its Grand Narratives, the attempt provide a framework for everything i.e. Marxism or Darwinism. Jean-Francois Lyotard suggests the contemporary world-view should instead be characterised by ‘little narratives’. Little narratives offer local explanations of individual events but do not claim to explain everything, instead they offer non-totalising, non-teleogical or fragmented answers. Post-modernism is a resistance to totalising forces. (Bennett and Nicholas 248)
Post-colonialism is different in that it has one specific target – colonialism. Post-colonialism aims to shed light on the consequences of external controls and the exploitation of native people and their land. It examines the ideology of colonialism, taking a closer look at the cultural and political implications of the long history of global imperialism.
During this essay, I will discuss the intertwining of postmodernist and post-colonial theories in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine and David Hwang’s M. Butterfly. Both plays use elements of both movements in the creation of their stories, however, they do so in different ways. While Cloud Nine has a sub-narrative of that can be associated with post-colonialism, the colonisers are not its sole target. Churchill’s play is at war with all forms of totality. On the other hand, Hwang’s M. Butterfly is without a doubt a post-colonial play. Hwang uses postmodernist techniques in the production of the play but the overarching message of the play is a pointed attack of Western imperialism on the East.
Cloud Nine is first and foremost a postmodern play. Churchill challenges the norm by playing with time, gender and form. One of the ways in which Churchill does this is by challenging our perceptions of rigid gender roles. Churchill uses cross-casting in her first Act to point out the absurdity of gender roles, and how often society accepts these roles without question. Kate Millet writes, that one of the ways patriarchy imposes gender roles upon both sexes is to condition them ideologically. This is achieved by socialising people at a young age, making them conform to the basic patriarchal principles in the family (Millet 26).
We see this attempt at this socialisation through the casting choices of the characters in Act One. During Clive’s introduction of his family, we get our first glimpse of the Edward, who is played by a female. Clive informs us that he is trying to teach his son to grow up “to be a man”. While in Edward’s introduction, he tells the audience, “What my father wants I’d dearly like to be, I find it hard as you can see.”(Churchill 2). This highlights how the social role imposed on Edward creates unnecessary pressure, forcing him to suppress his true sexual identity. Similarly, the role of Victoria is represented by a doll, embodying a social role that has been imposed on her, depicting the social inequality practiced by the patriarchy representative, Clive. Victoria, as a young girl, has been dehumanised so much that she is reduced to the position of an object, her existence is reliant on the patriarchy (Yilmaz 52). Unlike Edward and Victoria, Betty is a full-grown woman, yet she is also cross-cast. Betty’s first lines in the play are “ I live for Clive. The whole aim of my life/Is to be what he looks for in a wife./ I am a man’s creation as you see,/ And what men want is what I want to be.” (Churchill 1). Betty is played by a man because her oppressed character is a reflection of what men want her to be. She is submissive which communicates the idea that she is a product of the male construction. Churchill makes gender visible by separating feminine visuals from the female body.
Act Two takes place one hundred years later, in London 1979, but for the characters it’s only been twenty-five years. By deconstructing real time and allowing the characters to exist in two different eras, Churchill allows the audience to acknowledge the question Churchill is asking, has anything really changed? If the narrative was linear, the transformations taken by the characters would not have such a drastic impact. Katherine E. Kelly suggests that Chirchill’s approach reflects her own rejection of linear, date focused history. Instead, Kelly suggests, Churchill’s focus is instead on the thematically driven political historiography (Kelly 648). While the characters in the Victorian Act One live in a male dominated society, the characters in the contemporary Act Two live in a world where there is more liberation for the females and the extension of homosexual characters. Betty, Edward and Victoria’s separation from the oppressive patriarchy is accelerated, with the noted absence of Clive.
After the ambiguous ending of Act One, it is unclear when or why Clive is no longer present. However, since his leaving, all the characters are now played by their “correct” genders. The suggestion that comes with their transformation is that without Clive’s oppressive presence, the characters have been allowed to become a truer version of themselves. Edward is now involved in a homosexual relationship, Victoria leaves her husband and soon discovers herself in a lesbian relationship with Lin while Betty, now single, is for the first time coming to terms with her own sexuality. However, despite the freedom from Clive’s oppression, Betty still holds some aspects of her Victorian past. Betty still accepts male as the ideal and views the world through patriarchal lenses. She tells Lin in Act Two, “It’s strange not having a man in the house. You don’t know who to do things for.” (Churchill 64). Towards the end of the play, Betty becomes more open about her inner sexuality, revisiting a moment from her childhood when she experimented with masturbation (Churchill 82-83). This is probably the most dramatic revelation amongst the transformed characters as Betty was the once who still held some of her Victorian values. It’s not until she gains her own job and financial independence that the sexual freedom follows. In scene four, Betty says after she took back control of her own sexual identity, she “felt triumphant because I was a separate person from [Clive]”. Through Betty’s openness, Churchill offers that the potential for personal empowerment can be obtained through sexual pleasure, particularly as it was previously denied by social constraints (Firat 34).
By using these character transformations, Churchill make the audience become sensitised to the possibility of transformation. The actor is given equal emphasis as the characters, highlighting the fact that it’s a performance, which then prompts the notion amongst the audience that it is possible to break away from the social factors that shape our lives (Kheng 42). Churchill uses the postmodern techniques of cross casting and her manipulation of time to raise questions about totalising of gender and sexual identity in society.
Similarly, postmodern techniques are used in Hwang’s M. Butterfly. Like Churchill, Hwang uses a non-linear narrative, along with direct address and a unique stage design which allows him to dramatise the intersecting discourses of race, nation, sexuality and gender.
The original set design, designed by Eiko Ishioka, was inspired by Kabuki theatre. She combined Kabuki elements with a Chinese setting to reflect Gallimard’s obsession with the Orient and his Oriental confusion. The most notable Kabuki element of Ishioka’s set is the ramp, resembling a hanamichi bridge, which allows the actors to enter and exit the stage. The Kabuki setting is also a nod to the transvestite theatre used by both the Peking opera but also Kabuki theatre (Low). The unfamiliar stage to a Western audience immediately distances them from the performance.
The play is a journey through the memories of Gallimard and so, it is he who directly addresses the audience and guides us through the performance. The effect of the direct address is that it limits the audience’s emotional involvement with the scenes that are played out, especially when Gallimard interrupts the action to tell the audience something, for example scene eleven of Act 1, where Gallimard reads letters he has received from Song. Gallimard turns to the audience to comment on the tone of the letters or how he reacted to them. By doing this Gallimard destroys the theatrical illusion, reminding the audience that they are watching a performance. This allows the audience to be objective when viewing instead of being drawn in by the emotional aspects of the play. The purpose of this is that it allows Hwang to deconstruct the stereotypical, romantic myth of the East that is being acted out on stage.
While M. Butterfly uses postmodern techniques, it’s main purpose is to act as a post-colonial play. The most obvious concern of the play is the relationship between the East and the West, M. Butterfly centres around the binaries of the West and the East along with Male and Female, Reality and Fantasy and Coloniser and Colonised. Hwang explores the Western stereotypes of Asian people and the preconceptions that have affected global perceptions of nationality, race and gender.
The work functions as an examination of “Orientalism”, a concept thought up of by Edward Said in which he states,
“The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. […] The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined” (Said)
Orientalism captures a broad spectrum of Western attitudes towards Asian people and cultures. The concept of Orientalism and its impact is probably the most important element of the play. Gallimard’s stereotyping of Asian women as passive and subservient makes it possible for Song to manipulate him for so long, if Gallimard were not so obsessed with his imperial fantasy, he may have come to terms with the truth sooner.
Gallimard has a twisted sense of reality, he sees what he wants to see. When he meets Song at the German Embassy, he expects the same girl he saw on stage, “a Butterfly with little or no voice – but she had the grace, the delicacy”, but when he approaches her, it’s a different story. Instead, it is Gallimard who is left with no voice when he finally talks to Song. He tells Song he believes Madama Butterfly to be a “very beautiful story”, to which Song replies “Well, yes, to a Westerner.” (Hwang 819). Song goes on the “Westernise” the story of Madama Butterfly into a tale that will shed light on the realities of the story. Song explains the equivalent would be a white beauty queen turning down a Kennedy in favour of a working class, Japanese sailor and then killing herself when she learns he has remarried. In response, Gallimard addresses the audience, saying “So much for protecting her in my big Western arms.” (Hwang 819). To Gallimard, the idea of a helpless Asian woman being besotted by an American man is entirely plausible but when the genders and races are reversed, it’s ridiculous.
Gallimard appears to be apologetic after Song puts him in his place, however when he goes back to his white wife at home, the sincerity of his statements seem to disappear. Gallimard complains about the Chinese not liking Madama Butterfly, suggesting it is a case of “sour grape”, his wife Helga echoes his sentiments, “Politics again? Why can’t they just hear it as a beautiful piece of music?”(Hwang 819) . Despite the play being set in the 1960’s, Gallimard and his wife cannot get rid of their imperialistic mentality, all the while holding onto a colonial fantasy. Gallimard’s insincerity shows his lack of his imperialist mindset does not allow his to recognise the autonomy of the colonised people. This apparent again, when Song and Gallimard discuss the naming of their child, Song suggests the name “Peepee”. Gallimard is outraged, suggesting Song is not “serious” asking her, “Can you imagine the time this child will have in school?”. Song replies with “In the West, yes.”. Gallimard only ever sees things from a Western perspective, with little consideration for his partner in the East.
Sexuality is closely associated with colonialism in this text. Hwang deals with the constructs of gender throughout the play as the question is raised – How did Gallimard not know his lover was a man? Dorinne Kondo suggests that, Gallimard adheres to stereotyped images of women and the Orient, he assumes a transparent relationship between outer appearance and inner truth of self. Because of her outer appearance, Gallimard never doubts Song’s essential “femininity” (Kondo 15). When Chin asks Song the very question, Song replies, “Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.” (Hwang 831). Gallimard has a certain idea of what a woman is supposed to be, especially an Asian woman. Song suggests the reason Gallimard believed it for so long, was because he so desperately wanted it to be true. “…When he finally met his fantasy woman, he wanted…to believe that she was in fact a woman… I am Oriental. And being an Oriental, I could never be completely a man.” Song notes the “international rape mentality” that the West has towards the Eastm in which the “mouth says no, but the eyes say yes”, in which “the East, deep down, wants to be dominated”. Song links this mentality to Gallimard’s twenty year attachment to Song, the woman. Hwang suggests that Orientalism links the construction of gendered imagery to the construction of race and the imperialist mission to colonise and dominate. .M. Butterfly would lead us to recognise that if the Orient is a woman, then women are also the Orient, underlining the simultaneity of gender from geographic, colonial, and racial systems of dominance (Kondo 25).
The play concludes with Gallimard’s suicide. But before he dies, Gallimard must transform into the butterfly, a kills himself with a dagger, echoing the death of Madama Butterfly. Speaking of his “vision of the Orient”, Gallimard dwells in his fantasies one last time before ending his life. Song enters in his male form and suddenly, the gender/racial powers are reversed, forcing the audience to reconceptualise the topography of identity (Kondo 19).
Act One of Cloud Nine takes place in Colonised Africa in the Victorian era, with the master of the house being a “colonial administrator”. Clive is characterised by Victorian ideals, he believes it is his duty to civilise the “other” in colonised regions. Like Song, racial roles are thrust upon Joshua, the black servant. Joshua, is played by a white male with Clive “complimenting” him by saying, “You’d hardly notice the fellow is black” (Churchill 1). This demonstrates the artificial nature of social conditioning (Firat 34). Joshua is utterly committed to his colonial master, trying very hard to fit the moulds that his master desires. When Joshua’s parents die, at the hands of British soldiers, Joshua tells Clive he is not sorry, because his “mother and father were bad people” (Churchill 42). This is part of the social conditioning, this scene exposes the separation in the identity of Joshua cause by the internalisation of colonial values. Churchill highlights the parallels that are drawn between the oppression of women and the oppression of the colonised people. Women, like Betty, are tamed so that they internalise oppression and become obedient to the patriarchy much like Joshua has been internalised to obey the coloniser.
Churchill shows how these rigid social norms lead to resistance in the behaviour of individuals. Churchill undermines the system from the “outside” through parody, whereas Joshua decenters it from the “inside” by shooting Clive (Firat).
Both plays use elements from both postmodernism and post-colonialism but to achieve different outcomes. Churchill uses cross-casting to challenge assumptions that are made based on gender and racial roles. Her cross-casting increases the conscious awareness of the doubleness of representation, questioning what is true and what is false in terms of these roles. While there is definitely post-colonial themes that run through the play, challenging the colonisers is not the main agenda of the play. The post-colonial theme runs parallel to themes of gender and sexual repression, Churchill is waging a war on totality – not colonialism. Hwang’s play uses postmodern techniques but only to dramatise his main agenda. He places a target on Western colonisers and aims to debunk, criticise and deconstruct the stereotypes, myths and falsities that have been attached to not only Eastern culture but Eastern people. Hwang dramitises the concept of Orientalism and shows how damaging it is not only to the people of the East, but also how it can affect the people of the West.
Cloud Nine is postmodernist and M. Butterfly is an example of post-colonialism. While their cores are different, both plays are equally effective is shedding light on the absurdities of societal norms.