Cinematic realism, reflexivity and the American ‘Madame Butterfly’ narratives

Abstract

This article focuses on two cinematic versions of the ‘Madame Butterfly’ tale. Produced near the beginning of the sound era, the 1932 Madame Butterfly struggles to co-opt Puccini's opera and thereby create a fully cinematic Butterfly. My Geisha, created three decades later, aspires to subvert Orientalist representation by reflecting back upon Puccini's and Hollywood's Butterflies with hip sophistication. Both films work simultaneously with and against the Butterfly canon in intriguing ways and both are shaped by prevailing American perceptions of race and gender. In investigating the relationship between these films and Puccini's opera, I raise broader issues of comparative genre analysis, focusing particularly on exotic representation on stage and screen. Does film, in its bid to project exotic realism in both sound and image, succeed in surpassing the experience of staged Orientalist opera?

Nations as brands: Cinema's place in the branding role

“…The scale thus developed was used to assess the role of cinema in building up a nation as a brand. Research conducted by authors such as Dinnie (2008) and Anholt (2002) has contributed to the understanding of nation branding and the conceptualisation of the role of cinema based upon works of authors such as Gunning (1986), Abel (2005), Sheppard (2005) provided the five item scale for traveller's experience. Country's image five item scale was picked from the research conducted by Bui and Pervez (2010).…”