Carmen, oh Carmen. Where to begin!

In my little black dress and blackberry lipstick, I was so excited to be seeing an opera. But nothing could prepare me for what I saw at the Met Tuesday night. I was expecting something pretty or fancy, but my expectations were shattered. What I saw was much more than what could be considered fancy or pretty; it was luxurious. I had never seen a carpet so clean in my life! Not to mention the fountain and the chandeliers, oh the chandeliers! But the part that made feel like true royalty was the orchestra. I found myself using my overpriced rented binoculars just to watch the flutists almost more than the actual opera! But that’s not to say the opera itself was any less wonderful. I really enjoyed the plot and admired Carmen’s sexiness. I’m honestly a little mystified at how perfect everything seemed to fit.

The extravagance of the Met coupled with have never seeing an opera before, filled me with emotion. I’m sure to the trained ear, and those not sitting in the family section, there were plenty mistakes in Carmen’s singing or the acting. But to me, I had never seen something more beautiful and perfect.

I would definitely go to another opera again anytime. I had so much fun, even if I didn’t really understand all that was going on. But hopefully, when my best friend becomes a professional flutist, I will get VIP tickets to all the operas shown at the Met; and I won’t get a headache from using the rented binoculars.

As for opera being a dying art form, I disagree. I acknowledge that its popularity has declined over the years but with so many people in our world, there has to be someone who won’t forget opera when everyone else seems that they have. I find it hard to believe that opera will just eventually disappear one day. It is too admired and too valued by so many people to be forgotten. And as for opera only being for a section or a certain class of people, I can’t disagree any more with that. I can’t be the only young, relatively educated, middle class woman out there in the world who felt like a princess at the opera. It’s like saying, “only little children like peanut butter.” – it’s absurd to ascribe a whole genre of entertainment, or anything for that matter, to a single type of people, no matter how large or how small.

But I would like to say that I wish people at the opera were more welcoming to others. More specifically – the older generation. Trust me, I get it, I get a little testy too when people say they’ve started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer because its “my thing.” But I wouldn’t discourage people from enjoying the series like I do. My point is that I think the older generation shouldn’t feel that the opera is only “their thing.” Granted, the majority probably don’t feel this way; but to the gentleman sitting behind us, our leaning forward was not an excuse to almost dislocate my friend’s shoulder with your rough tapping.

Hey! Yes, you! Do You like Hip Hop? How about poetry?

Even if you’ve just answered no to both these questions, I still would urge you to see A Sucker Emcee, staring muMs, aka Craig Grant. Without any costume changes, smoke machines, special effects, a backdrop or elaborate props, there he stands. With seemingly perfect rhythm and a whole lot of emotion, he begins to tell us his story. Behind him is Rich Medina, an elite DJ, he too is in regular street clothes. And together, they formed a performance I knew I wouldn’t forget any time soon.

Going into the performance, I admit, I didn’t have high hopes for it. I had already taken numerous field trips to see Hip Hop themed poetry acts, back in high school, so this really wasn’t going to be an amazing performance to me. Or so I thought. A Sucker Emcee wasn’t only comical, sad and hopeful but also raw. With the exception of the colored lights behind him and Rich’s music, muMs was completely on his own with his performance. The absence of all the fancy things I mentioned above is what made the performance complete.

muMs’ story wasn’t a unique or spectacular event in itself, but they way he recited it back to the audience was. His body language and facial expressions made it seem like he was actually reliving the moment in front of us. His tone and word choice made it exactly clear what he was trying to share. Even his screw-ups made the performance all the much better because we could relate to this normal person on a stage rather than a flawless celebrity on stage. He spoke with varying tempo, which at some points did make it hard to understand. And as someone not as well versed in Hip Hop culture as others, I did have a little difficulty understanding some of the references. But thinking back, I don’t think the intention was to have the audience understand every bit of his story. Or even understand it at all, but the intention was to make us feel it. I couldn’t empathize with the way he grew up or his experiences with drugs, but I could feel the emotions he had which then in turn stirred my own influx of feelings within me.

So back to my original question, I just want to say that even if you aren’t in love with Hip Hop or poetry, that’s no reason not to go visit this performance. Although I can’t say I took a life lesson out of his act, I’m still glad I was there anyways. A Sucker Emcee really appeals to everyone of all ages, all backgrounds and all preferences. Lovers of poetry can appreciate his tempo, rhythm and diction. Haters of poetry can value the story-telling quality muMs has. Lovers of art can enjoy his cultural references and the music; and haters can welcome the harshness and realness of his life experiences. Heck, even people who hate music can’t deny how well Rich’s soundtrack amplified the quality of the show. So I urge you to tell your friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers about the raw, yet sophisticated performance of A Sucker Emcee.

American Psycho (2000)

Wall Street (1987)

Up until recently, when I thought about uptown/wealthy New York, my mind always conjured up a scene from American Psycho (2000), staring Christian Bale.  I recall seeing the film around the tender age of about twelve or thirteen, behind my parent’s backs, of course. Patrick, Bale’s character, and his coworkers are out for a lunch or some sort of meal and when they go to pay, one character remarks, “…speaking of reasonable, it’s only $570.” 570 American dollars. Now, I don’t know about any of you, but $570 is not my idea of “reasonable.” They then proceed to toss their shiny credit cards on an empty plate without a second thought. The utter absurdity of this scene stuck with me because I come from a pretty well-off family, we’re not poor but we’re not filthy rich either, and we certainly don’t spend that much on lunch. In my mind, the fact that there were people out there living this grandiose was…amazing. I thought money was everything when I was twelve; I wanted to marry a rich man and wear fancy dresses and travel to different countries every week. Obviously there were some holes in my plan, but my point being is that I thought the rich could do whatever, whenever, simply because they had the means to do so.

Then… I grew up. I realized that money can’t and won’t buy happiness. As cliché as that sounds, it’s true. Whatever you’ve acquired by the end of the day won’t matter in the long run. What actually matters is what you contribute to society, yourself, your relationships etc. Looking back at my twelve-year-old mind, I laugh; no longer does the image from American Psycho pop into my head but an image from Wall Street (1987). Taken from Gordon Gecko’s office lobby, the second image is of a painting of a burning twenty dollar bill. I love this photo because not only does it foreshadow Bud’s eventual demise but it illustrates words about the status of money. Just because you have money, doesn’t mean you’re indestructible, everything has to decay or burn down at one point. I think of this image as a direct criticism to the lives of the people of the uptown/wealthy New York; perhaps they shouldn’t be putting so much emphasis on an object like money as they do now. There are only a few basic things we need to survive and Jacuzzi’s, limos and thousand dollar suits aren’t them. It’s all right to strive to be successful but if you aren’t doing anything meaningful with your surplus money, then what’s the point? Is your life fulfilled when you buy a rare African rug made out of some unpronounceable material only to brag about how well-cultured, or whatever, you are to your friends? I’m by no means saying we should all live a “rough” life and own one pair of pants and a t-shirt, just that we should be more sensible in how we value money itself.

I fear a world where money and acquiring more materials are the only factors that drive people (sounds a lot like how uptown/wealthy New Yorkers are portrayed nowadays) and we lose any personal connections that we so valued in the past. But money is just paper, and paper burns; sure, we can always make more, but when does the obsession end with this green paper?

How do social classes affect our lives? I’d like to say that it doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, middle class, whatever. But sadly our world doesn’t work that way, social class affects everything; the way we think, act, dress, behave, speak, or think. No matter who you are, you’ve been categorized into some sort of social “box” in society’s eyes. Artists, whether it is paintings, music, films, etc., have the responsibility of portraying to the public something worth thinking about. In films, it’s easier to understand an artist’s message because they have a larger time span, versus a painting that once it’s done, stays constant. Wall Street, directed by Oliver Stone, largely utilizes costumes and dialogue to make a social commentary about the stereotypes of social classes. But that being said, I haven’t seen many other movies that focus on something besides obvious visual and material objects. Because social class affects every part of our lives, even emotions are included. Everyone gets happy, sad, angry or afraid but does our social class define what a middle class man gets happy about versus a rich CEO of a multibillion-dollar company? Or even better, do they experience and view fear differently?

Candyman, for those of you unfamiliar with the horror film, was directed by Bernard Rose in 1992. It revolves around the urban legend of Candyman, a twist on the Bloody Mary myth. Story goes, a young black artist fell in love with a local white woman. To her father’s disgust, he sends out a lynch mob after the artist; with stolen honey from a nearby apiary, they smeared it all over his body, severed off his painting hand and replaced it with a hook. He was stung to death by the bees as the locals chanted “Candyman.” The film follows Helen, a graduate student, as she delves deeper into the legend for a thesis paper.

Like Wall Street, Rose does utilize costumes and dialogue to highlight distinctions between the two classes but he focuses largely on the concept of fear to reinforce and break down these social divisions. There are two specific social classes portrayed here: the poor people living in the ghetto of Cabrini Green (fun fact! This is actually a real housing project!) and then the upper middle class academia. A lot of times race and class are mixed and almost inseparable, this is the case in Candyman; the poor are predominately African American and the upper middle class are white. Interestingly enough, the original story by Clive Baker was set in Liverpool, but Rose chose to set the film in Chicago (a historically important urban settlement at one point for African Americans). You can see that artists have complete control over what they do and there’s no doubt that this change in location largely helped get Rose’s message across.

Throughout Candyman we see that the people of Cabrini Green are constantly held to the expectations of the upper middle class academia to be foolish. There’re three groups that reinforce these expectations: the police, Helen’s professor and the top psychologist at the mental hospital. These three groups immediately denounce the fears of the people of Cabrini Green as idiocy. This makes it something that “those” people do. It’s almost as if the two classes are being made into two separate cultures, and if so, then these three groups are virtually committing ethnocentrism. Because the people of Cabrini Green fear something as irrational as Candyman, they are therefore “beneath” them and packaged into these social classes, not allowing them to break free and be part of any other social group. Now, of course, most people would obviously refute the idea of some dude running around killing people with a hook long after he died as a possibility. But were the citizens of the upper class just “supposed” to refute things like these because they are educated? Rose is upholding this stereotype that those who are of a lesser class are not only uneducated and different than the upper middle class but also that they are foolish. Now, this really isn’t the truth because a man from the ghetto could be very well educated but after loosing his job, his home or going bankrupt had to move into one of these gang-ridden housing projects because he had no choice, but it is a stereotype after all.

But we also see the breakdown of class distinctions in the film. Where Helen lives and Cabrini Green are most definitely not two different sides of the world, they’re in the same city. Even Helen’s condo complex shares the same blueprints, the only difference was that hers were sold as condos and Cabrini Green as a housing project. But Rose really merges these two social classes in the scene where Helen finally meets the infamous Candyman. Helen, who again, is from the upper middle academia class, has come to realize that the nightmare of those lower than her has come alive. Only she is able to see the Candyman and others of her social class cannot because she’s begun to share the same fear as the people of Cabrini Green; she does what only the people of Cabrini Green are “supposed” to do and that’s fear something totally irrational and crazy. She breaks this barrier between the two worlds and strikes down the distinctions in the social classes.

Everyone experiences fear but Rose is able to take this emotion and correlate it back to the levels of social class.

“What is art?”
“Well, it’s a form of self-expression.”
“Yes, but, what exactly is it?”
This is how the conversation between my roommate and I went. What is art? Is it solely the paintings and sculptures we see in museums? Or can it include dance too? And what about fashion? Perhaps knitting is also art too! My question doesn’t seem too complex, but it is like asking, “What does it mean to be human?” After serious thought and consideration, I came to the conclusion that art is everything. It all just depends on how you view things.
But…if art is everything, then why is there not a roll of Bounty paper towels on display in, say, the Brooklyn Museum? And if it truly is everything then why doesn’t the general public consider homicide art? With a select few, society in whole has developed broad standards in which people follow. Although most would say art is limitless, it does in fact have limits: ones that exclude things like murder and such. I’ve come to understand it as a large chaotic sandbox in which every type of “child” can play in, and yet, it is organized chaos. If one “child” steps out of line, the other “children” quickly recognize it and are quick to judge. But on the less extreme side, this also explains why I can view a silver fork as art and other person can perceive it as just a simple kitchen utensil.
So if art is just a big sandbox with no specific rules, with respect to basic human beliefs and ethics, how come I don’t see the masterpiece my four-year-old brother drew in the MET? Which leads me to the question of the quality of art: if a work of art doesn’t make it to the art gallery does that mean it was not good enough? Generally speaking, that’s how the public regards art; if it’s good, it belongs in a museum, right? Not necessarily, we all know the most qualified person doesn’t always get the job, there are other factors that come into play. So while my brother’s three-legged pink dog isn’t by a museum’s standards of exceptional, by my perception, it is in fact exceptional. So people really need to change the mindset that it’s the museum that makes a work of art exceptional or art at all. Again, art is perception and presence in a museum should not be interchangeable with “higher quality/value.”
Museums essentially pick and choose through probably thousands of works of art to select the ones they believe will fit their museums, and most importantly those pieces that will surely draw in a crowd, because crowds = money. It’s unfortunate that the art we see placed in museums is strategically placed there, for the most part, to attract people to make a profit. While I do understand that museums are institutions, just like schools and churches, and need profit to exist, the drive to generate revenue should not be its primary concern. It should be about what the people want to see. Perhaps, we can begin to change this mindset I mentioned previously, of associating the museum with a quality of art by changing the role people have in museums. So here’s an idea: maybe we should hold “art elections” every year in major cities or where major museums are located. Although I’m not sure people would actually show up to “art elections” since voting rates in most elections have decreased in recent years anyways; so perhaps voluntary polls that can be taken when people exit the museum or even online are more practical.
The selection of art is something that really intrigues me because whose artistic needs are being satisfied in museums exactly? Is it the people who have similar ideas and aesthetic preferences close to those who selected the artwork for show in the first place? Or is it the complete opposite? Are the people who gain the most out of visitations to museums the ones who have no preference for art, or the people who have no inclination to see the art exhibited in a museum in the first place the ones that benefit the most? What I mean is, if you have no background in art or if you harbor a strong dislike for Egyptian art, for example, and then go on to see the Egyptian exhibit in the Brooklyn museum, are you benefiting more than someone who likes Egyptian art with an intense passion? Are you more inclined to gain more out of your experience because it goes out of your realm of preference as opposed to someone who knows the ins and outs of Egyptian culture/art?
These are things I think the public needs to seriously consider, perhaps its time that we had a louder voice in these matters. Various magazines and articles say that museum attendance has decreased over the years, as much as 21% since its peak (http://reachadvisors.typepad.com/museum_audience_insight/2013/09/the-attendance-slide-a-call-to-action.html) and maybe its not just because of financial means, but maybe because people are tired of seeing things they don’t consider art-worthy.