Desire, Misogyny, and Official Power in Mark Dornford-May's U-Carmen eKhayelitsha

Abstract

As the most frequently adapted narrative in film history, the story Carmen – based originally on Proper Mérimée’s 1845 novella and George Bizet’s 1875 opera of the same name – offers differing response to various intertextual debates concerning feminism, sexual freedom, interracial relations, high versus low art, and urbanism versus ruralism. This paper situates a recent Xhosa language, cinematic adaptation of the Opera, Mark Dornford-May’s U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha (2005), in response to these various cultural critical debates, while invoking previous critical discussions of American Carmen adaptations, by Charles Vidor and Otto Preminger respectively, as templates for furhter analysis. I argue that Dornford-May’s film offers a self-reflexive, and indeed progressive, response to the Carmen narrative’s contradictory ideological stance on issues of female sexual empowernment and misogny. U-Carmen also downplays the themes of interracial romance and rural nostalgia present in previous Carmen adaptations, so as to hone in on the various intra-township dynamics at work within the Khayelitsha communiy that the film depcitrs. U-Carmen offers a cynical depiction of the post-apartheid township society in which romantic and sexual freedom are presumed to be at odds with the forces of official power. When placed within the context of the post-apartheid Khayelitsha mileau, the failure of Carmen’s rebellious, anti-authoritarian, and romantic disposition comes to symbolize the unfullfilled promises of the post-apartheid era.

Keywords:

• Carmen
• U-Carmen
• film
• vernacular
• adaptation

Notes

¹  U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha, Directed byMark.

²  Karmen Geï, Directed by Ramaka.

³ Thieme, Post-colonial Con-Texts, 2.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Stam, Beyond Fidelity, 64.

⁶ Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea.

⁷ Coetzee, Foe.

⁸ Mérimée, Colomba, and Carmen.

⁹ Tiffin, ‘‘Postcolonial Literatures and Counter-Discourse,’’ 23.

¹⁰ Powrie, Carmen on Film, 253, 259.

¹¹ Ibid., 17-33.

¹² In this instance, the term “Romantic era” refers to the continental musical tradition of the nineteenth century.

¹³ McClary, “Carmen as Perennial Fusion: From Habanera to Hip-Hop,’’ 207.

¹⁴ Ibid., 206-8.

¹⁵ Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the Popular.”

¹⁶ Powrie, Carmen on Film, 17.

¹⁷ Ibid., 18.

¹⁸ Davies, “The Male Body and the Female Gaze in Carmen Films.”

¹⁹ Ibid., 188.

²⁰ Mulvey, ‘‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.’’

²¹ Mulvey, ‘‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,’’ 491–2.

²² Powrie, Carmen on Film, 21-2.

²³ Ibid., 22.

²⁴ Ibid., 23.

²⁵ Ibid., 24

²⁶  Carmen Jones, Directed by Preminger.

²⁷ Furman, “Screen Politics,” 125–6.

²⁸ Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son.

  ²⁹ Ibid.,124.

³⁰ For instance, in “Living in the Interregnum” Nadine Gordimer comments on the sense of obligation, experienced particularly by black writers during the second half of the apartheid era, to compose hard-hitting, unambiguous narratives about the political situation. While Gordimer sympathizes with such an impulse, she also laments the way in which the apartheid master-narrative frequently limited the scope of writers’ literary endeavours. Zakes Mda's novel The Heart of Redness (2000) offers a unique example of a post-apartheid text that self-consciously evades direct engagement with the apartheid narrative. Mda's novel moves back and forth between the Xhosa Cattle Killing of the nineteenth century, and the post-apartheid era, while referring to apartheid in passing, and always evasively, as “the Middle Generations.” The Heart of Redness is hardy apolitical, since it is deeply concerned with the dynamics of colonialism and the machinations of post-apartheid, neocolonial economic power, which is itself an apartheid legacy; however, the text deliberately avoids immediate representations of the apartheid struggle.

³¹ Powrie, Carmen on Film, 18.

³² Ibid.

³³ Samuelson's work draws on Stephen Gray's “Third World Meets First World”; Samuelson, ‘‘The Urban Palimpsest: Re-presenting Sophiatown,’’ 64.

³⁴ Samuelson, ‘‘The Urban Palimpsest: Re-presenting Sophiatown,’’ 64.

³⁵ Ellapen, “The Cinematic 360 Township.”

³⁶ Ellapen, “The Cinematic 360 Township,” 126.

³⁷ Evans, “Putting the Blame on Carmen.”

³⁸  Vidor, The Loves of Carmen.

³⁹ Ibid., 116.

⁴⁰ The canonical text on this topic is, of course, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963); however, in “Beyond the Feminine Mystique” (1993), Joanne Meyerowitz offers a nuanced appraisal of Friedan's book. She argues that, despite the presence of a strong conservative element in postwar society that exerted constraining pressures on women's lives, one can also locate numerous resistant articulations within the realm of popular culture. While Meyerowitz agrees with Friedan's assertion that the postwar era was characterized by a sense of unfulfilled promise experienced by American middle class women, she also argues, contrary to Friedan, that such frustrations did receive expression in mainstream cultural narratives. Meyerowitz's analysis enables one to view the cynicism expressed in The Loves of Carmen as emblematic of larger trends within popular culture.

⁴¹ For an eloquent, elegiac comment on the unfulfilled promises of the post-apartheid era, which attends to pervasive issues such as corruption, crime, flagging social services, racism, sexism, and classism, see Breyten Breytenbach's “Mandela's Smile.”

⁴² Carmen can be considered a member of the informal economy insomuch as she is involved with an underground gang of smugglers. Moreover, the shebeen itself (by definition a place where alcohol is sold without permit) is an informal space.

⁴³ Magogodi, “Sexuality, Power, and the Black Body in Mapantsula and Fools.”

⁴⁴  Mapantsula, Directed by Schmitz; Xala, Directed by Sembène; Fools, Directed bySuleman.

⁴⁵ Maingard, ‘‘Framing South African National Cinema and Television.’’

  ⁴⁶Ibid., 116.

⁴⁷ Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.

⁴⁸ For an incisive comment on “occult instability” in post-apartheid South African literature, see Susan Vanzanten Gallagher's “The Backward Glance.”

⁴⁹ Thompson, A History of South Africa, 201.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 201-2.

⁵¹ Sparks, Beyond the Miracle, 229.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ It should be noted that even though Jongi does eventually join Carmen's gang of smugglers, he does so only when coerced at gunpoint.

⁵⁴ Dias, ‘‘Carmen: A Migration,’’ 91.