Madama Butterfly Animation

I'm going to skip over the doll sex portion. I liked the fish in a fish bowl visual metaphor for pregnancy. It has evolutionary undertones- bacteria evolved into fish, which evolved into amphibians and then mammals. By including this in the animation along with the seaside wait, it elevates Cio-Cio (Madama Butterfly) to a timeless, god-like status, which is emphasized when she dissembles herself and the wind, a constant element in the visual animation, transforms her into a butterfly. Seeing this animation, I'm reminded of a story I read last semester "The Dream of the Red Chamber." The main characters where immortal beings- objects, specifically a stone and a flower. The stone wanted to live as a human and the flower followed him into the red dust (the earthly plane). These two characters are forced apart by the events in their lives and upon their deaths, return to being a stone and a flower. My experience with "The Dream of the Red Chamber," this animation and having never seen the "Madama Butterfly" performance, leads me to believe that Cio-Cio might have been in similar straits. That she might have been a butterfly, reborn as a human only to die and return to butterfly-hood. My imagination has continued with this theory to the extent that the wind element is Cio-Cio's true partner (because in most Asian mythologies, everything has a complement). Back to the animation, the line that connected Cio-Cio to her son was a stand-in for an umbilical cord and symbolic for the connection between mothers and their children. I understood that when  the child was running and pulling Cio-Cio through the air, that Cio-Cio was "high as a kite," emotionally. That she was happy as a mother. After her son is taken from her, Cio-Cio dissembles herself and this scene is by far the most striking in the story because the doll is participating in a masochistic act with the goal to destroy herself completely.

First Feelings

I hope the profile I set-up is enough to answer the question who I am. Concerning ART 211's first class, I'm interested in being exposed to some of the topics and pieces Mr. Santiago had mentioned. But the classroom's chairs are really uncomfortable. I expect that by the end of the semester I'll be more knowledgeable  about the contemporary arts and will have produced more pieces for my portfolio.