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Title: Terms of ambivalence
Review: At first glance, M Butterfly seems predicated upon the classical narrative of white coloniazation, whereby the colonized other is constituted metonymically along the lines of categorical displacements such as femininity-Asia-otherness-desire. Inverting the premises of this chain of supplementation seems to be the point of the film. Its ambivalence in relation to the colonial discourse is contingent on the promise, and the threat, contained in the letter M: a reference implying Western reference to gender, yet ultimately betraying any claim to the existence of epistemological grounds to understanding gender. Inverting the positions of the subject, and the object, of the colonial discourse, profoundly questioning the relation between race and sex, the drama still maintains its traditional end, but adds a non-traditional twist to it.
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