West Side Story (1961)

West Side Story Essay Prompts
HELPFUL HINTS:
• An essay has the following elements: o Atitle
Spring 2020
o Anopeningparagraphthatincludesyourmainidea
o Supportingparagraphsorganizedintoevidencethatsupportsyourmainidea o Aclosingparagraphthatsummarizeshowyoucametoyourconclusion
• When answering the essay prompts, think beyond simple questions of plot details and dialogue. Many theatrical elements may be used to support your analysis of The King and I In terms of character and plot development as well as the authenticity of the characters and the setting. Additional items to consider are costume design (especially when you compare the way characters with similar social status or occupations are dressed), set design, lighting, music, choreography, etc.
• You must give credit when you use anyone else’s words or ideas with MLA format (unless you specify another format).
• For all essays, offer specific evidence using at least THREE different characters, scenes, songs, or plot points from the show to support your argument.
Also please remember:
• The name of a book or show should be italicized.
• The name of a chapter, article, or song should be in “quotation marks.” *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Essay Prompts
I’m dividing this week’s essay prompts into two categories. You can construct an essay on “Race/Racism in West Side Story” or “Sex/Gender/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity in West Side Story” and use as many or as few of the questions I list in putting together your own main idea and supporting evidence. If your main idea includes questions from both the race and gender categories, that’s fine; the topics are related. Just be sure that when you write your title and your main idea in your opening paragraph that you indicate the focus of your essay. If you feel you have something substantive to say about West Side Story and its relationship to “real America,” feel free to write about it. (And if you’re not sure about the topic, e-mail me at denise.baez@lehman.cuny.edu.)
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Side Note: We’ve already seen Rita Moreno (Anita in West Side Story) in another of our musicals. She plays Tuptim in The King and I.
Sex/Gender/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity in West Side Story
Competing definitions of masculinity and femininity war with each other almost as fiercely as do the
Sharks and the Jets.
• In the list of characters, four of them (Doc, Schrank, Krupke, & Glad Hands [the Social Director at the dance]) are called the “Adults.” The Jets refer to themselves as “juvenile delinquents” in “Gee, Officer Krupke” which implies that the see themselves as minors. (Although, if they are minors and if Tony falls into the same age bracket, then he would not legally be able to run away with and marry Maria.) What do these factors imply about the ages of the Jets and the Sharks? Do YOU see them as boys or men? How does your answer shape the way you view them?
• What kind of men do you expect the Jets want to be, sooner or later? Or do they even want to become men—would they rather stay perpetual adolescents? What is your definition of manhood, and does it differ from theirs? How would you answer these questions if I was asking them about the Sharks? Would they sing their own version of “Gee, Officer Krupke”? How would Tony and Doc describe the nature of manhood? Schrank and Krupke?
o What do we know about the families of the Jets and the Sharks? How does what we learn about their families influence the way we see them and their likely futures?
o AftertheJets’firstconversation/confrontationwithDetectiveSchrankandOfficer Krupke, A-rab comments, “They make a nice couple.” What is he implying with that comment? Is there anything in the way the scene is staged to make you believe that Schrank and Krupke are “a couple”? What does A-rab’s comment tell you about his definition of masculinity?
• Where does Anybodys fit in the spectrum of male/female identity and behavior? Are her (?!) attempts to rescue Tony twice after he kills Bernardo an example of the tight-knit support the Jets brag about as part of membership in the gang? Or, given that Anybodys is not even allowed to join the group despite her repeated attempts to prove her worthiness, does this mean that she’s a better exemplar of male virtue than the Jets are? Or does it mean that she’s being a typical female, helping a male who is part of her wanna-be “family” because that’s what women do? Both? Neither?
• Much is made of the deference females are supposed to show to males in the Puerto Rican community, both by the deference even Anita (the fiery girlfriend) and Chino (the presumed fiancé) give to Bernardo’s “right” to demand Maria’s obedience to his orders and his frustration with Anita’s frequent assertions that she no longer owes him the deference he expects because they are now in America. What evidence, other than Anita’s claim that “American” women have greater freedom than do Puerto Rican women “back home,” does the show offer? In the few scenes we see the Jets’ girlfriends, what is the nature of their interactions with their boyfriends?
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What does this say about white American attitudes about male/female relationships in the 1950s?
o In what ways does machismo/male privilege influence Bernardo’s response to Tony’s interest in Maria (including his possible suspicions of Tony’s motives)?
• A common complaint of feminists and others is that women’s roles are often divided into only two categories—“good” women who have no interest in sex other than marital sex (and don’t have any interest in that until they are married. Some would insist that their enthusiasm even for marital sex should be lesser than that of their husbands.) and “bad” women who have an uninhibited interest in sex and set their own terms for when they are sexually active in or out of marriage. (This is often referred to as a Madonna/whore complex.) The relationship between Anita and Maria is sometimes defined in these terms. Others claim that both women are “whores” according to this ideology because the show clearly implies that Maria and Tony consummate their relationship on the night of the rumble. How would you describe them in terms of their sexual history and how does it fit into your view of how virtuous (or not) each woman is? PLEASE talk about each woman as a whole person and not just her genitalia.
• “America” is sung only by Anita and the other girlfriends of the Sharks in the stage version of West Side Story. Rosalia, a girlfriend the script describes as “not too bright,” is the only one in the group to defend Puerto Rico and to sing nostalgically about her return there someday while Anita leads a spirited defense of America; the other girlfriends dance in unison with Anita while Rosalia remains isolated on one side of the stage for much of the dancing. How does the song change when the two groups are male and female versus one female against a group of other females? Are there reasons why the girlfriends might be happier in America than are their boyfriends?
Race/Racism in West Side Story
• West Side Story’s audience gets to know the Jets as individuals; the three songs sung by the Jets allow each member to sing individual lines before joining in a chorus (and dance) that clearly demonstrates the attractions and benefits of gang life. (And, of course, the relationship of Tony and Riff takes place in the context of Jets membership.) The audience gets to know only two of the Sharks as individuals. (Would you describe Bernardo and Chino as fully written characters?) The Sharks’s only song (“America”) is one they sing with their girlfriends, and Bernardo is the only Shark to sing solo. In the original Broadway show, the Puerto Rican women (except for Maria) sing “America,” and the Sharks have no song at all. What effect does this difference have on the way the audience sees these characters?
• The Sharks are not the first gang to be targeted by the Jets. In the dialogue that precedes the “Jet Song,” Riff refers to the previous gangs they’ve beaten, the Emeralds and the Harps. (The names imply that these are Irish gangs; the Irish are an earlier group of immigrants.) They speak about holding on to their “territory” (a.k.a., public areas like streets and playgrounds) and defy the authority of the (white) adults when they act on their “claim.” The Jets agree that the “PRs” are different from those previous gangs and that beating them is an urgent matter worthy of an escalation in their level of violence because the “PRs” are likely to become more violent. Why?
• Does it matter that the Jets are traditionally cast with white actors and the Sharks are cast with actors of color who can be forced to darken their skin and hair to fit racial stereotypes? Would
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West Side Story work just as well if both gangs are cast with a mixture of white and non-white actors?
• Does it matter that Natalie Wood, a white actor, was already famous when she was asked to play a Puerto Rican young woman who is loved by a white young man?
Internalized Racism?
• Is Anita being racist when she calls Bernardo an immigrant when he complains about the freedom she embraces as an American girl instead of keeping to a role Bernardo describes as the more submissive and therefore more proper behavior that would be expected of her “back home” in Puerto Rico?
• Are Bernardo and the other Sharks being self-hating Puerto Ricans or racist in the song, “America” when they focus on Puerto Rico’s poverty in relation to the U.S.?
• Are Bernardo and the other Sharks racist in the song, “America” when they focus only on the discrimination they’ve faced in America? Does West Side Story support or refute this negative perception of the way Puerto Ricans are treated in America? Aside from the behavior of the Jets, what can we tell by the way the Sharks are treated by Tony, Doc, Schrank, Krupke, and Glad Hands (social director at the dance)?
• Some of the characters drive the plot (i.e., make things happen) while other characters primarily react to what happens. Which characters belong in which group? Does either group contain only white or only Puerto Rican characters?
• The Jets, who are described in the script as “an anthology of what is called ‘American,’” refer to the Sharks as immigrants even though Puerto Ricans are American citizens and so cannot be immigrants (as a legal technicality). Why do they continue to do so even when the Puerto Ricans are quite vocal about their citizenship?
Culturally Authentic?
• West Side Story has been criticized for cultural inauthenticity. (For example, not only is the “mambo” that the Sharks dance to at the gym not really mambo music—and the mambo is Cuban, not Puerto Rican. Additionally, “America” is written as a Spanish-from-Spain paso doble mixed with traditional Broadway jazz.) Latin music (and several other genres such as country and “race” music) became popular in the U.S. during the 1940s when an American society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) strike blocked the traditional sources of popular music (such as Broadway songs) from airing on the radio.
o Until West Side Story, musicals functioned under a “melting pot” theory. Ethnic “flavoring” (for example, The King and I) meant that certain elements of the music might resemble the music of other genres, but that the all mostly fell into the category of the “Broadway” sound based on the theory that potential Broadway audiences wouldn’t
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pay to see anything that was “too” unfamiliar to them. Do you think that a “pan-Latin” approach to Puerto Rican culture was disrespectful at that time? Would it be considered disrespectful now in a new musical?
Criminal Acts
• The Sharks and the Jets agree that it was the Jets who started the violence between them. Does this absolve the Sharks of guilt in their ongoing feud? What alternatives do they have to continuing the fight?
• The Sharks and Jets lie repeatedly to the police and are guilty of multiple, ongoing incidents of harassment and assault against each other.
• “Gee Officer Krupke” implies that at least some of the Jets have been through the court system.
• The Jets are stopped from committing rape by the fortunate entrance of Doc, the owner of the
drugstore.
• Bernardo, Chino, and Tony are all guilty of killing someone. It has been pointed out that Chino’s killing of Tony is premeditated, but Bernardo’s killing of Riff can be considered an act of self- defense. (Do you agree?) Tony’s killing of Bernardo falls somewhere between these two extremes; Bernardo is not threatening Tony at the moment Tony stabs him, but Bernardo has made it clear that he wants to fight. On the other hand, the staging of the scene clearly allows for the possibility that Tony’s motives are revenge and/or solidarity with his “fellow” Jets, not self-defense. What level of responsibility for their crimes do you assign to each of the three killers, and why?
• Is there any difference in the way the Jets and the Sharks are treated as potential or actual criminals?