Black Opera

by Naomi Andre

  The battle of dark and light is most dramatically played out in the boxing match at the end of the film between Husky Miller and the Brazilian Kid Pancho (an uncredited role played by Rubin Wilson).38 The fight is an indoor scene in an unnamed Chicago arena with a full all-black audience. Throughout the match the camera focuses on the fight in the ring with jump-cut shots to the general audience, Carmen and her friends (Frankie and Myrt) watching in the front row all dressed up in their finery, and Joe in the background as he sneaks around and finds the storage closet where he will later kill Carmen. The two men in the ring are strikingly differentiated by their skin colors, with Husky Miller looking lighter than he had anywhere previously and Kid Pancho the darkest person we have seen thus far in the film. Their skin color is highlighted by the fact that they are dressed for boxing (wearing nothing except boxing shorts, socks, shoes, and gloves) and we see a lot of their skin through their exposed arms, legs, and torso. Kid Pancho’s boxing shorts are a shiny bright white with a purple stripe; the bright white material of his shorts contrasts with the darkness of his skin. Husky Miller’s boxing shorts are black with a red stripe; the black of his shorts contrasts with the lightness of his skin. The fight between the two men starts out with some light sparring before Kid Pancho takes the lead in the first round. But in the second round Husky Miller is up to the task and knocks out Kid Pancho. In a scene that stages the boxing match in real time, Husky Miller fights Kid Pancho and wins in the second round after two minutes and twenty seconds. Though we have been rooting for Husky Miller all along—he is the new love interest of Carmen Jones—the defeat of Kid Pancho seems especially harsh. While we had only been introduced to him in the ring (he has no backstory and we know nothing about him except what the announcer says—a South American boxer from Brazil), he seems more like a straw man set up to be defeated by Husky Miller than a real opponent. It is easy to cheer for the light-skinned Husky Miller: he is fully integrated into the story. Kid Pancho is not even a character in the nineteenth-century French sources; his role replaces the bull that Escamillo violently defeats.

  The color politics in Carmen Jones reinforce the attitudes of its time that are still visible today. In the conclusion of Baldwin’s essay on the film he presciently writes that “it is one of the most important all-Negro movies Hollywood has yet produced … the questions it leaves in the mind relate less to Negroes than to the interior life of Americans.”39 Such a challenge and indictment help us realize that while this film might feel in some ways dated today, more than sixty years after its premiere, it still resonates boldly with the current hesitations around a black-white integration, where everyone is supposed to start on a level playing field, all voices can be heard just as clearly, and everyone is given a fair chance.

  Hip Hopera and Carmen Brown

  The term “hip hopera” was used as early as 1994 as the title of the debut album by west coast rapper Volume 10.40 The seventh track of the album, also titled “Hip-Hopera,” was produced by Baka Boyz under the RCA Records label and was released on March 1, 1994. Oxford Music Online only lists “Volume 10” and “Beyoncé” for the search on “hip hopera” (and nothing for “rap opera”). In Wikipedia the category of “hip hopera” brings up the entry for “rap opera” and lists a few examples, the most compelling being R&B singer R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet, a three-part, thirty-three-chapter saga that outlines scenes in black urban life with connecting musical material throughout.41 The work was released in various parts from 2005 to 2012. The provocative question of whether hip hop can be extended to the longer form of an operatic scale is not fully addressed in the current examples of hip hopera except for the MTV Carmen setting directed by Robert Townsend in 2001.42

  In 2001 MTV took up the bold decision to cross genre and period by transforming the Carmen story into a new type of musical dramatic performance: the intrepidly titled Carmen: A Hip Hopera. With performers who were famous (and several who went on to become more famous), the artists included the film debut of Beyoncé Knowles (while she was still part of Destiny’s Child), with the cast filled out by rappers (including Mos Def, Da Brat, Rah Digga, Wyclef Jean, Jermaine Dupri, and Lil’ Bow Wow) and actors (including Mekhi Phifer, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Casey Lee, Sam Sarpong, and Joy Bryant). Set in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, the story retains a few, and changes many, elements from the nineteenth-century French sources. As McClary has noted, overall this telling of the Carmen story is strongly reliant on Preminger’s Carmen Jones.43

  The use of a narrator, similar to the French narrator in the Mérimée novella, frames the MTV hip hopera. However, rather than the outsider to gypsy culture, here we have a black female rapper (Da Brat) bringing us into the action. In an opposite function to Mérimée, Da Brat as the narrator presents us with an insider to the world of the drama who outlines the main themes for us from her standpoint. The opening prologue introduces us to the norms of the work in terms of the story and the sound world of the hip hopera. The vocal track consists of Da Brat’s voice setting up the story; for those who are not familiar with the opera, her opening lines let us know that this is “a classic story retold” and sets up the “tragic tale” and “free spirit” of our leading heroine. With the final line of the opening, “as we fade to the car,” we are brought into the main action of the story as the scene changes to police car with Derek Hill (our Don José) and his partner driving around the streets of Philadelphia.

  INTRODUCTION [PROLOGUE] BY DA BRAT

  Huh, yeah

  A classic story retold,

  Carmen, a Hip Hopera

  watch the drama unfold.

  The tragic tale of a girl

  Tryin’ to capture the gold

  With a free spirit, brothers stready tryin’ to hold

  What would you do for love? (uh huh)

  Is the cost too much?

  For the object of your desire

  you’re tryin’ to touch

  Sometimes beauty is best to be observed from afar

  Rise and fall like a star,

  as we fade to the car. …

  Though this introduction, functioning like a prologue, lasts less than two minutes, it sets up visual and aural guides for how this hip hopera works. Aurally, the track of Da Brat’s vocal rap is accompanied by the acoustic sound of orchestral instruments (the strings and timpani). The vocals do not start until about forty seconds in. Within the first thirty seconds we are presented with a repetitive violin melody of steady sixteenth notes supported most prominently by an orchestral string section. Deep in the background there are sustained chords with horns and winds filling out the texture that provide a contrapuntal richness to the overall sonic fabric. The string melody is joined by the timpani playing a V-I cadence that supports the orchestral texture both harmonically (grounding the music in a home key) and rhythmically with a steady dotted-figure that helps the listener feel the crisp downbeat.

  Visually we have two image tracks that are interspersed as they are juxtaposed. With establishing shots of the iconic statue of William Penn and the Ben Franklin suspension bridge over the Schuylkill River, the action is placed in Philadelphia with an aerial view panning across the full city and gradually focusing on the black neighborhoods, showing aging brownstones, run-down storefront businesses, and areas of urban blight. The camera then focuses on Da Brat with her instrumental ensemble surrounding her on the city street. We see her in the middle gesturing dramatically and waving a makeshift conductor’s baton (that turns out to be a single rose—the flower reference to Carmen that cuts across multiple settings of this story), commanding her orchestra of a few violinists, a couple sets of timpani, and music stands standing in for the other players.44 The screen shifts between a black-white image and filters with different colors (rose, yellow, blue), almost as though it, too, were warming up as it finally moves into regular, full-stereo color by the end of this opening sequence. A crowd begins to form as Da Brat tells her story with a setting in the urban neighborhood, literally in the stre
ets of the people. This introduction guides the audience—the people gathering on the street and those of us in the theaters—and helps orient us to a new musical texture that combines the unsung quality of rapping voices and the reminders of a traditional operatic overture with the full orchestra signaled by the strings and timpani.

  At the end of the main action in the hip hopera, the familiar “overture” music with the acoustic strings and timpani once again returns with Da Brat delivering her epilogue; this time there are flashbacks from the movie interspersed that recover the broad strokes of the plot. Unlike the fourth part of Mérimée’s novella, this conclusion deals directly, not covertly, with what has just been presented. The supposed impurity of the Romany language Carmen speaks is not turned into an exegesis on the inferiority of Carmen’s people, nor do we view the guilt of a man driven too far. Da Brat as the narrator poses questions that help the audience come to its own interpretation: “Who will take responsibility?” Is Hill “the one that she needed or the one that got her killed?” “Or is it Carmen to blame for her own downfall?” Da Brat treats Carmen neither as victim nor predator, but as a possible instigator whose actions should be seen as having consequences. Unlike Mérimée’s narrator or Bizet’s Don José, we have the voice of the protagonist, a black woman, summing up the action and posing the moral questions at the end. We are not told that we have been contaminated by the Other or have witnessed the downfall of a good soldier. Instead, we are given a eulogy for this new “immortal Beloved.”

  OUTRO [EPILOGUE] BY DA BRAT

  Uh

  And that’s the story, no life, no more, just the loss.

  Caught up in between the negative and positive force

  Carmen Brown, sad tale of a life cut short.

  Who will take the responsibility when the guns go off?

  On one side you have Hill, he got to live with the guilt

  Is he the one that she needed or the one that got her killed?

  Or is it Carmen to blame for her own downfall?

  Did she play with his heart and never loved him at all?

  It doesn’t matter now because she is resting in peace

  And all the playas in the game have to live with the grief

  It’s only now that she’s gone, you will truly discover

  The Immortal Beloved Carmen Brown, there will never be another

  The connections between Carmen Jones (Dorothy Dandridge) and Carmen Brown (Beyoncé) reflect a deep portrayal of African American women at the middle of the twentieth century and at the turn of the new millennium. As we saw, the reception of Preminger’s Carmen Jones is situated in the midst of the United States after World War II, at the dawn of the civil rights era. Themes of postwar prosperity, the continuing Great Migration to the north for better opportunities, important symbols of black achievement (seen in the star-studded all-black cast with Dandridge, Belafonte, and Bailey, as well as appearances by Max Roach, Alvin Ailey, Carmen Lavallade, and others) show less of an exoticized dangerous “gypsy” world and more of a “separate but equal” vision of midcentury black culture.

  Walter White’s concerns about the NAACP publicly endorsing the film dealt with the all-black, non-integrationist setting of the film. Yet ironically, Carmen Jones also did a lot to promote an integrationist agenda, albeit covertly. Before the United States was ready to see bodies of different races come together peaceably onscreen, the nation needed to see black bodies at peace onscreen—living lives that were relatable to the white majority audience. Carmen Jones laid that groundwork. While there were still stereotypes (for example, poorly spoken English, letting loose in wild dancing), the film showcased glamorous, talented African Americans employed and working to achieve the American dream of career advancement (Joe being chosen for flight school) and access to capital and socioeconomic status (visible in Husky Miller and his entourage). Carmen Jones promotes an assimilationist agenda that aims to demystify and de-exoticize America’s great Other—black people.

  Carmen Brown continues this journey to fit into the American dream at the dawn of the new millennium. Caught up in the bling of the opulent lifestyle Hollywood and hip hop culture seem to offer, our title character now has aspirations to “make it” and achieve the same basic types of success—career recognition and material wealth—that we saw hinted at midcentury in Carmen Jones. In Preminger’s film Carmen Jones resisted, in part, the buy-in to such an agenda. She showed up late to work, was known as a flirt, and focused on seducing good-looking men. In the added scene (no equivalent in the narrative in the nineteenth-century French sources) when Carmen Jones and Joe are detoured at her grandmother’s house en route to the jail at Masonville, we see Carmen dusting off Joe’s uniform, cooking him dinner, and talking about his being honest and not like the others (without any irony or condescension, he is a real credit to the race). They banter about his getting married and he says he can imagine her settling down and having children. Though Carmen Jones denies that future for herself, it is clear that she is perfectly familiar with that assimilationist culture and sees its importance for others, like Joe and Cindy Lou. It is not hard to see that Joe suspects that one day Carmen will probably change her mind and become the type of housewife she envisions for him. This is plausible not only because of the ease with which she starts to get dinner ready but also in how she shines his shoes and seems to slip effortlessly into the part of the now-classic 1950s housewife.

  Looking back on this scene, many might want to believe that Carmen Jones has a shot at such a future. The assimilationist model of Carmen has her give up the “bad girl” image, but the question is, What would she become? Is there a middle-class midcentury model for a black Hollywood female character? Perhaps a domesticated Hollywood Carmen Jones would suffer from the same pitfalls white women of this postwar period would face; the “problem that has no name” that Betty Friedan would later articulate in her groundbreaking 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique. Some in the audience want to assimilate Carmen Jones into that gendered space where women who had had access to employment as “Rosie the Riveter” during the war effort were now displaced as the men came back, and expected to return back to the home (and it would still take a generation for some women to begin to find paths to college). But the realities for black women (and other women of color) were not tied to this same narrative. Though Carmen Jones may move beyond her original exotic bohemian roots, this film also reveals that there is no room for a middle-class black Carmen Jones outside of the factory or domestic sphere for raising children; not only does it not follow the story of Bizet’s opera, there is no room for such a character in 1950s Hollywood film. While Carmen Jones is more domesticated from her original roots, the reality of the 1950s Hollywood film allies well with Mérimée and Bizet’s story. As the marginalized “Other” Carmen Jones still needs a narrative that is different than the acceptable feminized model allowed for white womanhood.

  Carmen Brown, on the other hand, is a more modern woman who lives in a different time. She is a liberated Carmen and has other options available that include a career and access to financial gain. This is a Carmen who has dreams—aspirations—as we see when Hill takes her back to her apartment, ostensibly so she can change into sweatpants before he takes her to jail. While she is re-dressing in the bedroom, we see Hill looking at the books on her coffee table about how to break into acting and several affirmations framed across the mantel: “Never Give Up, You Can Do It!!! Keep your eyes on the stars and you’ll be one; Live each day like it’s your last.” Here is a Carmen who has fully embraced the late twentieth-century dream of capitalism and the pursuit of fame. As audiences look back on Carmen: A Hip Hopera, there is an added story of who the voice and body behind Carmen Brown has become: Beyoncé, whose rise to fame as a singer, performer, and media presence truly attained the success of superstardom.

  Both Carmen Jones and Carmen Brown are first presented to us in a highly sexualized scene for their entrance number, the Habanera. In Carmen Jones, “Dat’s Lov
e” is sung by Dorothy Dandridge in a tight red pencil skirt with a plunging neckline on a black peasant blouse; it is an outfit that is inappropriate for her day job in the parachute factory and unlike anything the other women at work are wearing. For its time, the hip-hugging bright red skirt and low neckline sexualize Carmen Jones as she sings about love, freedom, and sexual energy. When Carmen Brown first appears in Lou’s Pub in the hip hopera (“If looks could kill, you would be dead”) the effect is similar, but turned up several notches. The camera scans over her body several times; first we see her feet, then her feet and thighs, then her feet, thighs and bust and finally her full body. The camera’s movements act as though they are caressing her image and this motion forces our eyes to visually paw and grope at her body. We see that Carmen is wearing a body-clinging red sequined dress that looks more like it was drawn on than being removable as clothing. In the neighborhood after-work hangout bar for policemen and their girlfriends, Carmen Brown’s presence is almost X-rated.

  Yet even in this highly sexualized scene, Carmen Brown challenges the image of only being eye candy. Her entrance starts out as a solo and then move to more of a trio texture in the dialogue with Lieutenant Miller (played brilliantly by Mos Def) and his partner Nathaniel (the late Sam Sarpong). As Miller and Nathaniel are trying to come on to Carmen Brown, she thwarts their efforts,