Brent has a Ph.D. in American Culture, specializing in film studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in the history of American cinema. In the following essay, Brent discusses the theme of male fantasies in Hwang's play.
David Henry Hwang's play M. Butterfly is loosely based on a true story about a French diplomat who lived for twenty years as the lover of a person he thought was a Chinese female actress but who was in fact a Chinese male spy. In his fictionalized story of love and espionage, based on this incident, Hwang's play focuses on the theme of Western male fantasies about "Oriental" (Asian) women. The theme of fantasy is focused on the Frenchman Rene Gallimard's perception of Song Liling as "The Perfect Woman." In his "Afterword".....
