Madame Butterfly

The use of stop animation to create this piece is very impressive. The motions are very fluid and capture real life habits, such as the jiggling of the leg or the movement of hair. I've always been fascinated by works such as this because I have never seen one be created and cannot picture how to get each movement. I imagine it must take hours to shoot one scene, let alone a whole production.

Watching the video without any background knowledge is shocking at first because there is no audio and so you cannot follow the storyline nor understand exactly what is going on. It then jumps immediately into a sex scene and that in itself is mind boggling. The story becomes more clear as it progresses and the child comes into play. When he is seen on the boat, you believe that he has finally come back for her, after all he did leave his hat and radio with her. However, when you see the woman and all the other ethnically diverse children in the car, you start to think maybe he goes around sleeping with various woman and taking the children once they are at a certain age.

Once you read the synopsis of Madame Butterfly, it then becomes clear as to how the story is progressing and why it was framed the way it was in the animation. It was an interesting interpretation to have the woman rip apart her shell and bare her frame to show vulnerability and pain because he took her child and left her with another woman. The story came in a circular ending because after they left and she was bare, she was pieced back together and the butterfly came back.