#256 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Monday January 24)
Good morning!
WEST SIDE STORY SHINES
I loved the original West Side Story. Who didn’t revel at this masterpiece featuring Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno? It was a groundbreaking musical on so many levels. Sixty years later, a new version has been released, one that s more timely, appropriate, and creative, employing more Latino actors and having spoken Spanish more of the dialog. I’m a sucker for musical theatre, particularly when it can attract a new generation of viewers. While I still think the first version was a classic, this one was great.
Apparently, many critics share my view, including this review from The New York Times: “Somehow, Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner — and an energetic young cast of Jets and Sharks — pulled off a surprising cinematic coup. Respecting the artistry and good intentions of the original stage musical, they turned it into something urgent, modern and exciting. There’s a lot to unpack in the movie’s gestures of reverence and revisionism, but mostly there are big emotions, memorable songs and an unabashed faith that sincerity will always be stronger than cynicism.”
I agree; it was a beautiful rendition of an American classic, an updating of a great original retelling of a Shakespeare’s tragedy created by the talents of a triumvirate of geniuses—Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins. This Spielberg update is a tribute to the original that is more ethnically sensitive and modern in its telling.
THEN TO SOME THERE IS NO GOOD NEWS, EVEN IN GOOD NEWS…
But not everyone shares the joy of this retelling of the classic. First, let’s keep in mind that West Side Story is not a documentary. It is a brilliantly imagined suite of dance, acting and music telling an American immigrant story (indeed, an “American story”), through a loose retelling of Romeo & Juliet. It could apply to any pair of feuding groups. In fact, it was originally imagined as a conflict between Irish and Jewish gangs. That was changed because it was too reminiscent of Abie’s Irish Rose.
Against this backdrop, it’s hard to understand the anger of the author of a recent LA Times Commentary, entitled “Spielberg tried to save ‘West Side Story.’ But its history makes it unsalvageable”:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2021-12-12/west-side-story-puerto-rico-cultural-authenticity
The author believes that the entire enterprise of West Side Story is cultural appropriation, an inaccurate description of Puerto Rican Americans and, notwithstanding the much more inclusive effort with this staging of the classic musical, remains unacceptable if it has even the hint of non-Puerto Rican participation.
As opposed to “quasi documentaries” or “historic recreations” like Oliver Stone’s JFK, which plays with historical facts to paint a picture of a discredited theory that LBJ was complicit in the assassination, or Selma, which whitewashes out Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel from the iconic scene of arms locked in protest, West Side Story does not purport to be a historical depiction.
If one reads the author’s concerns as intended, the author believes that non-members of an ethnic group may not write about that group, nor put words in dialog or song that might purport to “speak for” a member of that group or offend that ethnicity. She tosses the entire enterprise in the trash bin with:
“No matter how many Nuyorican actors are cast, how many lines are recited in Spanish, how many Puerto Rican consultants are hired and how many panels with historical experts are held, the collective effort does not correct the problematic appropriation on which the musical was built.”
Further, she cites a line from the song “America,” that references “…Puerto Rico, that ugly island, island of tropic diseases.” I don’t think this was intended as the playwrights’ view but the lament of a New York Puerto Rican happy to be in America and not in Puerto Rico. Without casting judgment on the agreeability of either, it would seem to me that this is not an unreasonable opinion to be felt by an immigrant. Certainly, my ancestors did not speak fondly of the lands from which they came—they came here with reason and loved America.
PERHAPS ALL ART IS APPROPRIATION
Romeo & Juliet, the play upon which this is based, is the story of two fictitious Italian noble families. Shakespeare is believed to have appropriated that story from earlier writings. Of course, Shakespeare was a prolific appropriator of other ethnicities, locating his plays in Denmark, the Iberian Peninsula, and elsewhere, with characters (and stereotypes) drawn from other cultures, including Spaniards, Moors, Danes, French, and Jews. Then, of course, there’s La Boheme, appropriated by Jonathan Larson for the musical Rent. Not only was this an appropriation of La Boheme, but it also appropriated the lives and attitudes of Bohemian New Yorkers of varying ethnicities—gay and straight. Shakespeare, Shaw and others, as we know, have had their works reimagined in other locales and eras. On Broadway today, there is a version of Sondheim’s Company that reimagines the protagonist as a woman, even though originally contemplated as a man. And then there is Denzel Washington is playing Macbeth, the Scottish king imagined by the English playwright.
On TV, the Marvelous Mrs. Maizel has an Irish-American playing one Jewish role and an Arab-American playing another. I’m pretty sure some of the writers on this and any number of shows in which Jewish and other ethnic players are acting are not of that religion or culture.
The fundamental problem I have with the author is the premise that we apparently are prohibited from setting our plays in a geography or with members of a community to which we do not belong. In this conclusion, the author fails to understand the idea that theatre and film most often aren’t intended to be about any particular group or location, but are merely representations of ideas, emotions, and reactions that have universal application. The author fails to accept that the entire idea of acting is, of course, the wearing of masks to tell a story. Sometimes that mask is a different color or ethnicity or religion—and that often makes the art more powerful.
Have a good day,
Glenn
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