Posted on 02/25/2020 6:26:07 AM PST by C19fan
For many years I’ve avoided writing about “West Side Story.” As a Puerto Rican critic, I resent the expectation that I have something to say about a musty old musical from 1957.
Just as the U.S. government bestowed second-class American citizenship upon islanders in 1917 without popular consent, “West Side Story” continues to recruit us as extras even when we never intended to audition for the show. The Puerto Rican writer Nelson Rivera once recalled studying abroad in Paris, where he was greeted by “Oui, ‘West Side Story’!” at every turn, as if collecting stamps in the passport of an imaginary nation everyone else thought was real.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Idiocy. Musicals have never been about cultural musical purity. They have been about telling the story to their audiences with a blend of musical theater and whatever relevant ethnic flavor.
That’s how opera has long worked, to some degree, as well.
Authenticity that doesn’t reach audiences or optimally conveyed the story is not a useful value in this context.
And it was only "Two Gentleman"
Back then (1950s) the PR gangs were a prominent factor in inner city troubles. Compared to today’s MS-13s they were little social clubs.
Did you mean "woke" left?
By today's standards--such as they are, always in flux among the elite academicians who pretend to set them--William Shakespeare (a nom de plume if there ever was one) would be labeled a racist, a homophobe, and an anti-Semite.
But the PC crowd might encounter pushback in branding West Side Story composer Leonard Bernstein anything but a man ahead of his time.
As I understand it, Lenny would have been a member of two "protected classes."
Marcantonio was only a full-fledged Republican in his first term. The only Congressmember in the history of the body elected to have run on the Communist Party line. He was a member of the American Labor Party for the remainder of his time in the House (occasionally managing to get either the GOP or Dem lines). He represented East Harlem while Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (later on) had the remainder of Harlem. At one point, his district stretched down all the way to 59th Street.
https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=509112
He’s a piker now compared to most of the Demonrats today.
The depraved class and the deprived class?
The depraved class and the deprived class?
Whoops, Riff, not Lenny B.
Steven Spielberg remake out in Dec 2020.
You know he will change the story.
The remake is quite good.
Yup—my parents took me on vacation to PR when I was a kid.
Omg.
I still have nightmares about the place.
Looks like you were among the few that watched.
Nolte: Steven Spielberg’s Woke ‘West Side Story’ Bombs with $10M Opening
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/12/11/nolte-steven-spielbergs-woke-west-side-story-bombs-with-10m-opening/
That article seems more focused on what Spielberg and Kushner have said than anything in the film. It’s not really changed all that much. And it’s better directed and acted than the original film.
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