My middle school music teacher showed a film version of Carmen to the class, the really famous one with Julia Migenes where she keeps hiking up her skirt during the Habanera. He was probably just trying to give you all a bit of culture, but all my classmates took away from the screening and the ensuing discussion was that Carmen was a prostitute who didn’t shave under her arms, and by extension, by thirteen-year-old logic, I must also be a prostitute who doesn’t shave under her arms. They asked me about both of these things over and over again. Already smarting after a decade of Carmen Sandiego jokes, I was ready to abandon my name altogether.
When Carmen sings, she tells the men who surround her that love is a fickle thing, and they need to beware. Don José gives himself over to her, loses himself in her. When she leaves at the end, he begs her not to go. She tells him that she was born free and she will die free.
Then he stabs her, and she dies.
Confessing his crime to the gathering crowd, he throws his body on Carmen’s corpse and howls, “Ah, Carmen! Carmen, my adored one!” As though he hadn’t just killed her with his own hands.