The Madame Butterfly Effect
March 12th, 2008 by Dan HillAustralia is increasingly seeing itself as an Asian country, switching focus from the US and UK to the giant markets on its (extremely large) doorstep. This is certainly a good thing, enabling a rich cultural exchange (as well as untold riches in trade too of course). Yet it can sometimes be an uncomfortable relationship, and this programme is sometimes an uncomfortable listen accordingly. It concerns the contemporary so-called ‘yellow fever’; or rather the nature of white Australian men who are persistently drawn towards ‘Asian women’. Some of the attitudes on display here are more neanderthal than oriental, you have been warned.
Masako Fukui, the producer and narrator, bravely puts herself in the frame too, wondering if she might even be part of the problem, but also “fearful that there won’t be much left of me … if I rid myself of my exotic identity.”
It’s not necessarily the most academic investigation of a slice of psychology that could either be fathoms deep or impossibly shallow, yet it’s a frank, sometimes funny, exploration of a particularly awkward genre in human relationships.
(Oh, and the ABC are syndicating the exemplary and moving Don’t Hang Up, as you’ll hear on the end. Remember, you heard it first(-ish) at Speechification. Don’t touch that dial etc and so forth.)
