Poker Face

This Saturday I’m heading to the Met HD broadcast of Carmen.  The new production, directed by Richard Eyre, got a rave review by Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times.  He particularly lauded the direction of the final scene, which he wrote was

executed with such stunning realism, a dangerous mingling of sex, rebellion and violence: the very essence of “Carmen.”

Carmen caused a scandal when it was first performed in 1875.  But in the past century-and-a-quarter it’s netted a number of high-profile admirers.  Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Debussy—many contemporary composers were quick to declare their love.  Hell, even Nietzsche thought Bizet had saved music with the opera. 

Ever since, it’s been fashionable to like Carmen for all sorts of PC reasons: its musical merit, its exploration of class, its feminism, its realism.  But let’s be real.  Tommasini is right.  Carmen is compelling because it is lurid, sexy, and ends with a good stabbing. 

Feminists of course always get upset with that last one.  If Carmen were a man, would he have to pay for his sins with his life? Of course.  That’s the plot of Don Giovanni.  At the very least he would be assaulted in his SUV with a nine iron.

But women are always more compelling than men.  Don Giovanni would be no fun without Elvira.  And Carmen would be a total snooze with just Don Jose.  In fact, it would be a bit like an extended poem by Matthew Arnold.  I’ve never been much a fan of his most famous, “Dover Beach.”

 

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night

 

As if to prove women are more interesting, Anthony Hecht wrote this brilliant parody entitled “The Dover Bitch.”

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.'
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.

Carmen must have been the perfect antidote to Arnold’s brooding—and chaste—Victorianism.  A woman who refuses to love only one man?  Arnold would have definitely thrown himself off those white cliffs.

Luckily we don’t live in such a bleak and bland world as Arnold.  We have our very own Carmens, like Lady Gaga.  As silly as the lyrics to “Poker Face” are, it’s hard not to admire Gaga’s take on a well-worn conceit.  Instead of the “rebellious bird” of Bizet’s “Habanera,” Gaga goes for the poker table.  Timely, clever, and catchy.

Can't read my,
Can't read my
No he can't read my poker face
(She's got to love nobody)
Can't read my
Can't read my
No he can't read my poker face
(She's got to love nobody)

P-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face
(Mum mum mum mah)
P-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face
(Mum mum mum mah)

I won't tell you that I love you
Kiss or hug you
Cause I'm bluffin' with my muffin
I'm not lying I'm just stunnin' with my love-glue-gunning

I can’t wait to watch Carmen do some bluffin’ with her muffin—in high def no less—this weekend on the big screen.