![\"CatfishTheTVShow\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/files\/2014\/04\/CatfishTheTVShow-300x217.jpg\")
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One of the most difficult questions we are left with after reading M Butterfly<\/i> is how did Gallimard not notice that Song was a man?\u00a0 Or, if he did notice and not say anything, what does that say about Gallimard?\u00a0 As a fan of trashy television shows, I\u2019ve often asked myself similar questions while watching the show \u201cCatfish\u201d on MTV.\u00a0\u00a0 The show revolves around the concept of online dating and the eternal question that goes along with it: how do you know that the person you\u2019re \u201cdating\u201d is who they say they are?\u00a0 \u201cCatfish\u201d follows the stories of individuals who have never met their significant other in person.\u00a0\u00a0 The climax of each episode is when the couple finally meets and one of two things happens; either they both are who they say they are and they live happily ever after or one of them is not at all as their online profile displayed them and the other is devastated.<\/p>\n
Both M Butterfly<\/i> and \u201cCatfish\u201d question the idea of love and what it is about someone that we fall in love with.\u00a0 Whereas M Butterfly<\/i> focuses mostly on gender (is Gallimard gay because he fell in love with a man?) \u201cCatfish\u201d gives us perspective on race, age, economic status, and whatever else makes up a person\u2019s identity.\u00a0 In each of these cases, both with M Butterfly<\/i> and in every episode of \u201cCatfish,\u201d before the truth of the beloved is found out, the person that the story follows believes him\/herself to be madly in love.\u00a0 However, when they find out that the person they love isn\u2019t who they thought he\/she was, more often than not they return home, heartbroken and empty handed.\u00a0 So if these people are falling in love with personalities on the internet but the personalities don\u2019t match the bodies imagined to go with them, are these people really falling in love?\u00a0 We like to imagine that we fall in love with a soul, not a body, but if difference between a 22-yr old Caucasian body and a 25-year old African American body is what makes or breaks the relationship, can we claim that love is blind?\u00a0 It is interesting to question M Butterfly<\/i> through this lens.\u00a0 If Gallimard claims to be in love with Song, when looking at it through this lens, we have to assume he is also in love with Song\u2019s body.\u00a0 Assuming at some point he would have run into some indication that Song is a man, perhaps we can assume that Gallimard is gay, or at least bi-curious.\u00a0 An interesting twist on this is in the movie when Song strips down in front of Gallimard and begs Gallimard to love him.\u00a0 However, in the movie, Gallimard seems disgusted by Song\u2019s male body, much like the participants of \u201cCatfish.\u201d\u00a0 Using the lens of \u201cCatfish,\u201d we are able to see what sorts of characteristics (gender, race, etc.) influence love and can even take priority over pure chemistry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the most difficult questions we are left with after reading M Butterfly is how did Gallimard not notice that Song was a man?\u00a0 Or, if he did notice and not say anything, what does that say about Gallimard?\u00a0 As a fan of trashy television shows, I\u2019ve often asked myself similar questions while watching … Continue reading You’ve Been Catfished<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2032,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2014-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2032"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}