《蝴蝶君》:从边缘走向中心

David Henry Hwang's M.Butterfly: From "Margin" to "Center"

在传统的美国戏剧舞台上,表现东西方爱情戏剧的一个突出现象是剧中的西方男人总是身处突出的中心地位,而东方女性总是身处边缘。当代美国剧作家黄大卫努力重新建构遭美国式的东方主义话语所压抑的亚裔美国文化。他在其代表作《蝴蝶君》一剧中跨越传统戏剧的框架模式,将剧中男"女"主角的关系作了象征性的转换,从政治、文化、哲学以及男女性别诸方面颠倒了传统东西方角色关系,使东方女子的形象挣脱了"边缘"枷锁的束缚,从"边缘"走向"中心"。同时,剧作者希望该剧能够纠正种种文化和性别的错误感受,抛弃旧有的刻板印象,由对立、对抗转为对话和交流。

One of the dominant themes of the love play on the traditional American stage is that the Oriental female characters are always portrayed as being marginalized while the Occidental male characters are frequently placed on the center of the stage. David Henry Hwang,the contemporary Asian-American playwright,tries to reconstruct the Asian-American culture in term of the identity and status of the Chinese in his master piece M.Butterfly. In this play,however,he goes beyond the traditional mode of the love play by reversing the male and 'female' role,and he breaks the bondage of the Orientalism from the viewpoints of politics,culture,philosophy and gender and successfully presents the Chinese characters from margin to the center in the play.