Is that because the macho West viewed Asia as feminized (thereby ascribing to Vietnam the wish to be dominated - what a character calls the "international rape mentality toward the East"), the arrogant assumption that the United States would easily win the war was a crucial mistake.Īs Hwang points out, "The stereotype always hurts the stereotyper more than the object stereotyped for example, at the beginning of WWII, the West thought that Japanese eyes were too small for them to be good pilots."īut the political relevance the play had in 1988 has inevitably altered with time. Politics and gender inform each other: One of the central points of Then Hwang adds more masks - but no need to give all the secrets away. , is playing a Japanese woman while the Frenchman is playing the role of her American lover. AndĪdds a few layers of its own, since a Chinese man is playing a Chinese woman who, in a performance of which is, he points out, an opera written by an Italian, based on a French novel, about a Japanese woman who falls in love with an American man.
The title reveals not only the plot's gender-bending (the "M." is the abbreviation for "Monsieur") but also Hwang's witty, incisive spin on Puccini's
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