Katy Perry’s Performance was NOT racist!

samanticshift:

johannliebert: marinacara: It was a direct reference to Puccini’s ITALIAN opera “Madama Butterfly”, which depicted a Japanese woman (played by an Italian woman) who falls so madly (UNCONDITIONALLY) in love with a Western man that she takes her own life. Luckily some critics are cultured enough to make this connection, but unfortunately I cannot say the same for the general American public. Do some research, people, make some educated connections, and see that Perry was only referencing an extremely famous piece of theater and an extremely famous concept. did it ever occur to you that madama butterfly is a racist opera Dear god, that bold. This person is both hilariously wrong and obnoxiously smug.

Laughing forever at someone trying to rationalize Katy Perry’s racism because of Puccini.

Let’s talk about Madame Butterfly, shall we?

The music is flawless. The story is…about as disgusting as you can get. It’s about a fifteen year old girl. Let’s repeat that. The title character is a fifteen year old girl at the beginning of the story. Pinkerton, her husband, doesn’t really have a specified age, but you can damn well bet he’s a lot older than fifteen. So even without the creepy Orientalism, we’ve got some gross pedophilia-type shit going on. And before you try to rationalize that with “But she was a geisha so she’s obviously mature! Also women married a lot younger back then! Also true love!” keep in mind that the moment Butterfly announces her age, Pinkerton’s friend Sharpless immediately replies with “Dude what the fuck, she’s only fifteen. DUDE WHAT THE FUCK.” And Pinkerton essentially responds with “But she’s pretty and I like how youthful she is.” So clearly, whether Butterfly’s own culture regards her as a full adult or not, the culture she’s supposedly marrying into decidedly doesn’t.

Speaking of that “supposedly marrying into” bit…yeah, don’t try and rationalize any of the opera because of Butterfly’s undying love for Pinkerton. Pinkerton announces at the very beginning that he’s infatuated with this fifteen year old girl, and that he’s marrying in the Japanese tradition - that is, he rented a house for Butterfly for 900 years, but the contract can be cancelled monthly, just like a Japanese marriage (I highly doubt the veracity of that statement, but that’s what Puccini is saying). He intends to marry her, have sex with her, maybe stick around for a while, and then eventually leave and go back to the U.S. and get a “proper American wife.”

During their brief marriage, Pinkerton insults his wife’s culture and religion by referring to the figures that contain her ancestor’s spirits as “dolls.” He also pokes some mild fun at Suzuki for singing her prayers (at least, that’s how it can come across in the staging). He asks to see the ritual knife Butterfly is hiding from him (the one her father, and later Butterfly herself, used to commit seppuku). And it’s clear from Butterfly’s reactions that these are all insulting things to Butterfly.

After he abandons his pregnant, 15 year old wife, he doesn’t write. He doesn’t contact her at all. In fact, he flat out lies as he leaves and tells her he’ll be back after the robins have laid their nests once more. Butterfly, just before the marriage, renounced her ancestral faith in favor of Christianity, and was subsequently disowned by her entire family. She is entirely alone, except for her maid and small son. She is in near desperate poverty - Pinkerton arranged for his friend Sharpless to pay her rent for a time, but even that appeared to have ceased. To top it all off, she spends literally all day every day sitting on a rock, staring out to sea and looking at the ships and their flags to see if Pinkerton is returning.

When he does finally return, it’s in a letter to Sharpless. He’s too much of a coward to tell Butterfly himself that he doesn’t want to see her, so he has Sharpless do it. Butterfly says she cannot support herself through anything but going back to her former life as a geisha (which is pretty true since she was fucking disowned and presumably a societal outcast) and says she’d rather die, then reveals her child’s existence. Pinkerton decides to come after all. When she sees his ship has returned, she sits on that stupid rock again and waits for him the whole fucking night. When Suzuki convinces her to catch a few minutes’ rest, Sharpless shows up with Pinkerton and his new, shiny American wife.

He never had any intention of returning for her. Now, he’s only there to take her child away from her. And he’s too much of a coward to actually do it, so he begs Suzuki to instead. Butterfly rushes out, sees the new wife, listens to her earnest protestations that she’ll always be kind to Dolore (yeah, that’s right, Butterfly literally fucking named her child ‘Sorrow’), treat him as a real mother would etc. etc. She consents to giving up her child, then goes and says a desperate last goodbye to him. She literally tells him she’s doing it all for his sake - so that he’ll never have to know the shame of his mother being a forgotten, abandoned woman. Then she kills herself and Pinkerton feels sorrier for himself than anybody.

The whole point is, throughout the opera, other people call Pinkerton on his racism and his creepiness and his general asshattery. Not always to his face - though Sharpless certainly does - but it’s not excused in the text. But Pinkerton having no redeeming qualities whatsoever doesn’t change the fact that the narrative itself relies on racism, some super weird Asian exoticism, and fucking disgusting stereotypes of Japanese culture and Asian women.

Not to mention that Butterfly is almost always played by white European women, and all of the women in the show typically wear generic “geisha” makeup and clothing. The only vaguely Japanese element musically is the inclusion of a “Sakura” theme, but since that’s really the only vaguely Japanese song white people know, Puccini gets <0 credit for that. The libretto references butterflies, cherry blossoms (and tons of other flowers), and moonlight all the fucking time, to keep up with the whole “Look it’s Japan how romantic how exotic” theme. Basically, Madame Butterfly was written in the middle of an intense, massive European boner for “exoticism,” when everyone and their brother wrote an opera and set it in a far-off, fantastic land because it was more romantic and exciting etc. etc. Today, we usually replace exoticism with racism…because that’s what it is.

Madame Butterfly is an intensely complex work because it takes place very soon after Japan opened up trade with the Western world, and thus (intentionally or not) deals with themes of White Imperialism, the West being the center of the world, racism, classism, poverty, sexism, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Some of those themes are tackled admirably, others far less so. But its place in the modern opera repertoire, the beauty of the music, and the complexity of the story by no means excuse the racism it contains.

Don’t excuse Katy Perry’s racism because you believe the narrative of “submissive Asian wife dies of love for asshole white husband.” That’s both racist of you and incorrect.