By this point in the video, the audience clearly knows this is an absurd yet compelling story. The sweat on Karmen's skin, her eyes, her gyrations and jovial consciousness, are riveting but there is a sense of farce lurking throughout the story.
"You are all evil!" she shouts. "You've swallowed up our country, but we'll eat your guts. You've swallowed up our country. But it will stick in your throat." With that, she shimmies up to a young law enforcement officer, Lamine, and blows him completely away with her sensuality. In fact Lamine is so smitten by Karmen, and apparently love-starved, that she has him in the palm of her sensual hands with her mesmerizing dance. But his bride is not so easily pushed aside, and she tries to out-dance Karmen, who shoves the bride to the ground. Bad idea, and that gets Karmen arrested. Guess who takes her to prison? Yes, Lamine, and he is so taken with Karmen that he is practically ill with desire for her. He loses his bride and his commission, all because a tall sexy woman put a spell on him.
This story is really about the conflict between laws, a yearning for freedom (which is universal, not just a theme in Africa), sexual desire, and rebellion against authority. One can't help but see the linkage between the history of slaves and Goree Island and the mutinous, wild sexual scenes of rebellion that Karmen puts on....
There must always be resistance when humans are in bondage, whether it is slavery or a woman's prison. When a prisoner can seduce the main symbol of authority, Angelique the warden, it is symbolic of what all those people in the world who are being held against their will can or should do to release the shackles of oppression.
Granted, Karmen dies in the end. And the love that Karmen and the warden experience is not a fulfilling love at all because the fact that Karmen is imprisoned and Angelique is the authority figure makes it impossible for a long-term relationship. The suicide of Angelique is part of the ultimate tragedy of this story; somehow one can imagine that hundreds of years ago slaves also took their own lives to avoid being sent to a life of brutality and unending hard work. Perhaps some slaves even escaped from Goree Island and walked into the ocean to drown.
So what good did all the wild dancing and gyrations do for Karmen and the others in this bizarre tale? It was entertaining, and it forced actions that otherwise would not have taken place, but in the end, the fury of the excited libido died a sad death, and hope went down with it.
