Killing Carmen: Thoughts on a Classic

I’m lucky. It has never been a requirement of mine that I like or even particularly admire anyone in order to find them fascinating enough to want to watch or read about. This is true of fictional as well as historical (or even currently alive) persons.

I think somehow many of us feel “guilty” for watching things like Carmen because we’re preoccupying ourselves with a central character possessing so little, if anything, perceived as redeemable. But, Carmen is an eternally interesting character, so, as with many colorful criminals or outcasts of society, we may become fascinated . . . even mesmerized, by the way they work in lives vastly different from our own.

As with any stage creature, Carmen opens herself to a wide variety of interpretations, and while many view her as being an archetypal character (in the Jungian sense), I don’t think she is. Not at all, in fact.  I believe in Carmen less as a symbol, and more as genuinely, deeply flawed character living her days according to her own set of principles, the rest of the world be damned. While she may come across as over-the-top, nothing she does, according those principles, is ever really too much so as to make her the comically unbelievable character many see her as. Still, all of the symbolsim we typically associate with the archetype of such a character can actually add to our enjoyment, even when we don't fully grasp it, or disagree with one another as to what it all means.

When first we meet our Carmencita, she’s working at the cigarette factory, and we like her.  We like her mostly because she's colorful, and likes to sing and dance a lot. But, ah, she also likes to fight. She's what some might call a spicy lady.  While she may seem like a girl who just gets into the occasional bit of trouble, the fact of the matter is this:  from the outset, Carmen is criminal.  

The most famous number in the opera, the Habanera is simply Carmen taking in the lay of the land, scoping out a possible escape from the trouble she's already planned on getting into. She can't help herself.  As she sings and mesmerizes the crowd, she identifies Jose as someone she can use; a man to trick and manipulate into doing whatever it is she needs him to do. And likely do it most willingly.  Does she sense his weakness? His criminal past? Ever shrewdly attuned to all that is around her, Carmen senses this from the very beginning.  It's not too far a stretch for us to believe she'd use the factory fight to this end, and so it becomes a preliminary exercise in gaining Jose's assistance for her subsequent escape from a situation of her own creation.  It's all part of her game, and quite possibly a test to see how strongly her hold will be on this deeply troubled man, using the military to escape his own murderous past.

I'm convinced Carmen always looks ahead to the future and always foresees trouble there. Of course she does . . . it's almost all she knows.  

I've never bought into Carmen being as carefree as she pretends to be, or always singing about. There are reasons she consults and holds stock in the tarot.  She is bound by fate, and ever aware of that fact.  I believe that those who believe in the romance between Jose and Carmen are buying into something that just isn’t there and thus, not unlike Jose, seduced by something unattainable on either of their parts.  

Like so many criminals, Carmen appears to be an adrenaline junky, always and obsessively moving on to bigger things, bigger risks and highs to feed and satisfy her addiction. The adrenaline rush which comes from criminal activity can certainly be experienced by other means, for example, extreme athletics . . . risk-taking activities such as cliff diving, or parachuting and, of course, sex.  Adrenaline junkies are forever looking for that rush, so are ever pushing themselves further and further, often right to the point of their demise.  The ultimate rush.  I hold this is precisely what happens to Bizet's anti-heroine.

Now, Carmen’s attraction to Escamillo is something entirely different.  I believe it is an instant one because here, for lack of a better word, is an Übermensch; a man who, advantaged through superior intelligence and artificial weaponry plays a game involving fighting to the death another physically powerful animal – a male from another species. Escamillo is a creature who, like Carmen, appears to have no natural fear of death, he challenges it . . . and wins. In this regard, as exciting as it sounds, winning the bullfight would seem to be only the penultimate orgasmic experience, the ultimate rush achieved only through death itself.

Carmen, is the same, and we can look at her actions her self-orchestrateing her orgasme final and, for whatever reasons, has chosen Jose as her executioner. By taunting and humiliating him, she increases the element of danger and violence to a point where, physically and psychologically, they have arrived arrive at the blistering point of no return.  Now there is nothing left for her to do other than that which she set out to, very likely from the start.  

 That Carmen often uses sex to get everything she “wants” is, at minimum, symbolically interesting, not to mention more than just a bit disturbing. One needs only consider how her demise is achieved by: (a) the violent plunging of a dagger into her; and (b) outside of the bull (i.e., masculine) arena.

Carmen never asks to be liked, but, like a beautiful, poisonous spider, she lures us into her web, making us think she may have something pretty to offer. She doesn’t. That appearance, much like the music Bizet gives her, is all façade. What she really offers is a bloody, violent, unromantic, and ultimately irredeemable, look into our own baser nature which, while perhaps not pretty, is endlessly fascinating.

(Photos: Kate Aldrich as Carmen/Jonas Kaufmann and Richard Troxell as Jose).