BP3: Madame Butterfly

I found the stop motion animation of madame butterfly to be eerily disturbing. To further note after having read the plot synopsis' to the original short story and the later opera, I found the animation to be greatly lacking in story context. To be fair I am fully aware of how painfully time consuming stop motion animation is. But to spend a good minute on a sex scene and not at least give more background information about the main character, Madame Butterfly, was a poor choice on the creator's part. The most tragic thing about Milton Nezvanov's stop motion re-telling of Madame Butterfly's story is how much of the actual story is missing. Within the stop motion Butterfly comes off as a naive girl who, after having a one night tryst with a sailor, waits patiently for his return. And when he does return she is all but mocked by the sailor and his new wife who, quite literally, rip her child away from her before leaving. In her despair Butterfly takes herself apart and dies at the end (3).

In the original story Madame Butterfly was a young Geisha in Japan who legally married U.S. Navy Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton. She was disowned by her remaining family for marrying him and abandoning their ancestral religion. Pinkerton, not having taken their marriage as seriously as Butterfly, leaves and does not return for years - during that time that Butterfly gives birth to their son. Butterfly's maid and a local marriage broker try to convince Butterfly to divorce Pinkerton and to  re-marry a Japanese Prince who is interested in her, but Butterfly continues to insist that Pinkerton will return one day -refusing to believe that he has abandoned her. Despite the fact that marrying the Prince would allow Butterfly to reconcile with her family and guarantee custody over her son Butterfly places her one sided love of Pinkerton above all else in her life. When Pinkerton's ship arrive back to the harbor, Butterfly and her maid prepare the house with flowers and wait patiently for him to return. But he never goes to see Butterfly, and after his ship leaves harbor Butterfly goes to the American Consul in Japan, another character who had insisted to Butterfly that she divorce her absent husband, to asks him to write to Pinkerton. There she meets a blonde American woman who, not recognizing Butterfly, identifies herself to the American Consul as Pinkerton's wife. Pinkerton's wife asks the Consul to send a message to her husband about how she had just seen his baby and wishes to take him at once, and that she would see to asking the mother about it tomorrow. In despair Butterfly runs home and tried to commit suicide. She stabs herself once, but the wound is not fatal and as she goes to do it again her maid enters her room with Butterfly's baby. Hearing her child's cries Butterfly drops the sword and grabs her child instead, and the maid goes to dress Butterfly's wound. The story ends with Pinkerton's wife going to the house to ask Madame Butterfly about taking the baby, only to find the house empty. In the Operas re-telling of events Butterfly kills herself, deciding she would "die with honor rather than live in shame"(1)(2).

The only thing I found to be really interesting about Nezvanov's stop motion was the use of symbolism and metaphors throughout the short. The use of Butterfly's umbilical cord to reference her deep connection with her child was clever. As well as the fact that both Butterfly and the child would literally fly each other like kites - further implying the love and care within their relationship. More specifically implying that the two literally and symbolically lifted each other up through the use of their bond. Given that the child's gender is that of a girl, in contrast to the short story and opera in which Butterfly has a son, it could imply that Nezvanov did so to represent the character of the maid. Since the maid was the one who cared for Butterfly, it would imply more of a caretaker role on the child's part in the stop motion. But then again, it could also just be that the creator thought that the image of a mother and daughter would show a deeper connection. The scene of the sailor literally ripping Butterfly's umbilical cord also dramatizes how he is ripping the child away from Butterfly. The scene following this where Butterfly runs off is also interesting in that as she run away it appears that parts of the actual set and cables come into the frame, implying how Butterfly is finally breaking away from this fantasy and back into reality. Only for her to stagger into a dark space where she literally begins to break herself apart into pieces - consumed by the darkness outside and within herself. Personally, while I find Nezvanov's retelling of Madame Butterfly to have done a great job with the use of symbolism and metaphors throughout the stop motion, I think that it came short when it came to retelling the actual story of Madame Butterfly (3).

Works Cited 

1 “Synopsis: Madama Butterfly.” Madama Butterfly Synopsis, The Metropolitan Opera , 4 Feb 2018, www.metopera.org/user-information/Madama-Butterfly/.

2 “Madame Butterfly (Short Story).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25 Jan. 2018, 4 Feb 2018,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Butterfly_(short_story)


3 Milton Nezvanov. "Madame Butterfly." Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 11 Oct 2006. Web. 4 Feb 2018,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E387c5RAhK4&t=76s