You are here
MADAMA BUTTERFLY: THE MYTHOLOGY OR HOW IMPERIALISM AND THE PATRIARCHY CRUSHED BUTTERFLY'S WINGS
| Title: | MADAMA BUTTERFLY: THE MYTHOLOGY OR HOW IMPERIALISM AND THE PATRIARCHY CRUSHED BUTTERFLY'S WINGS. |
 60 views 34 downloads |
|---|---|---|
| Name(s): |
Nieves, Adriana, Author Warfield, Scott, Committee Chair University of Central Florida, Degree Grantor |
|
| Type of Resource: | text | |
| Date Issued: | 2014 | |
| Publisher: | University of Central Florida | |
| Language(s): | English | |
| Abstract/Description: | As a popular historic work with constant and worldwide performances, the sexist and racist narratives disseminated by Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly causes harmful social and political ramifications. Many scholars point to this opera specifically when discussing the fetishization of Asian females, and mention the title character as the quintessential example of damaging stereotypes. Thus, I conduct a postcolonial and feminist reading of Madama Butterfly, through analysis of the opera's libretto, the libretto sources, and the opera's score. I unravel the Orientalist assumptions that make up the foundation of the Butterfly narrative, and trace them as they make their way into Puccini's opera. I re-read Madama Butterfly as a metaphor for imperialism, and its effects on the colonized psyche. I examine Lieutenant Pinkerton and Butterfly's characters with specific attention to the power dynamics of their relationship in the context of colonization. I emphasize gender, race, and class tensions evident within the white male and white female gazes on the bodies of third world women of color. I present Puccini's musical choices in the operatic score as supplementary to my postcolonial-feminist reading. Puccini's use of pentatonic scales to evoke "Oriental" sounds, as well as his appropriation of Japanese folk tunes and "The Star Spangled Banner" into the score serve to supplement my basic contentions that Madama Butterfly is a product of Oriental discourse and a metaphor for imperialism and its effect on the colonized psyche. | |
| Identifier: | CFH0004716 (IID), ucf:45400 (fedora) | |
| Note(s): |
2014-12-01 B.M. Arts and Humanities, Dept. of Music Bachelors This record was generated from author submitted information. |
|
| Subject(s): |
Madama Butterfly Giacomo Puccini Luigi Illica Giuseppe Giacosa Madame Butterfly postcolonial theory feminist theory feminism postcolonialism imperialism Orientalism Edward Said Frantz Fanon American imperialism Japan fetishization sexism racism opera music intersectionality intersectional feminism colonialism colonization psychoanalysis John Luther Long David Belasco Pierre Loti Madame Chrysantheme |
|
| Persistent Link to This Record: | http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0004716 | |
| Restrictions on Access: | public | |
| Host Institution: | UCF |
