Subhash Kak describes the interplay between the 1904 Madame Butterfly and 1988 M. Butterfly saying that Gallimard "falls in love, not with a person, but an imagined stereotype. His Chinese lover, Song Liling, encourages this stereotype, playing the role of the Oriental woman as demure and submissive. Gallimard, who had thought of himself as the macho Pinkerton, husband of the beautiful and fragile Butterfly."[19] KBPS described the latter as an inversion of the former: "here, it is the Occidental man who becomes the Butterfly: submissive, easily trapped, and ultimately destroyed."[20]
John Gross called it "a mess, intellectually speaking" but also "very well worth seeing".[21]
Relevance to the LGBT community
In an interview with David Henry Hwang, the playwright states: “The lines between gay and straight become very blurred in this play, but I think he knows he's having an affair with a man. Therefore, on some level he is gay.” [22]
In a 2014 review for the Windy City Times, Jonathan Abarbanel states that Song Liling “may be gay but it's a secondary point raised only as a way by which Chinese government agents can control him. As an exploration of sexuality, it's about the Divine Androgyne who Song Liling may recognize and exploit, and which Gallimard certainly recognizes and embraces in the play's closing moments.” [23]
The Washington Blade refers to Gallimard as “a gay man who couldn’t be himself. He had to mask behind male bravado, cultural and religious dicta, and diplomatic constraints. But he was willing to overlook and deny everything in pursuit of love.” [24]
Hwang talked to several people with nonconforming gender identities to get better insight into the character of Song, but he ultimately stressed that the character is not transgender. “He recognized how Song might be differently received by a modern audience more savvy about the wide spectrum of gender identity.” [25]
Ilka Saal writes: “The playwright uses the figure of the transvestite to lay bare the construction and performativity of gender and culture. Yet he stops short of questioning compulsory heterosexuality at its base, and thereby fails to use queer desire in order to open up interstices, categories of 'thirdness,' in this tight homophobic structure.”[26]
In an article for Pride Source, Pruett and Beer state: “Gallimard is a man who thinks he is heterosexual, but is in fact a practicing homosexual for 20 years. Song takes on the role of a woman, but always self-identifies as a gay man, not a transgendered person.” [27]
Christian Lewis, when writing about the 2017 revival, wrote in the Huffington post that “this production does not explore any foray into non-binary or transgender identities, which is perhaps its one major flaw.” [28]
