蜜桃传媒

An excerpt from Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture by聽Frances Negr贸n-Muntaner

There are cultural icons that never seem to die no matter how much dirt you throw on them. And the multi-faced West Side Story鈥擝roadway show, Hollywood film, staple of high school drama programs, inspiration for the 2000 Gap campaign featuring 鈥渢he latest Spring styles and colors of the Khakis and the Jeans,鈥� and possible remake featuring a 鈥渞eal鈥� Puerto Rican cast鈥攔efuses to bow out after way too many curtain calls. Like the Spanish-American War for the Island nationalist elites, the 1961 film version of West Side Story, directed by Robert Wise and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, can be dubbed the diaspora鈥檚 鈥渢rauma.鈥�

A symptom that West Side Story remains a constitutive site for American ethno-national identifications is the fact that although the film is neither the first nor last portrayal of Puerto Ricans as criminal men and 鈥渇iery鈥� women, hardly any boricua cultural critic, activist, or screen actor can refrain from stating their own very special relationship to West Side Story. References to the film tend to convey a sense of shame or pride in the speaker鈥檚 ethno-national identity, a desire for valorization, and/or a struggle to articulate an oppositional voice in American culture.

Jennifer L贸pez, the highest-paid Latina actress in Hollywood today, recalls that West Side Story was her favorite movie as a child. 鈥淚 saw it over and over. I never noticed that Natalie Wood wasn鈥檛 really a Puerto Rican girl. I grew up always wanting to play Anita (Rita Moreno鈥檚 Oscar-winning role), but as I got older, I wanted to be Maria. I went to dance classes every week.鈥� For the Bronx-born L贸pez, causing the Jets and the Sharks to rumble in West Side Story may signify that a boricua can indeed be valuable enough to play her own stereotype in a major American motion picture, but for the San Juan鈥揵orn entertainer Ricky Martin, starring in the infamous musical means contributing to the stereotypes that make him a cultural oxymoron as a middle-class 鈥渨hite鈥� man. Martin has in fact repeatedly rejected the possibility of a starring role in the remake because 鈥淚t鈥檚 kicking my culture. And I鈥檓 not gonna feed that.鈥�

The journalist Blanca V谩zquez, whose editorial work in the Center for Puerto Rican Studies publication Centro was crucial in fostering critical discourse on Latinos in the media, has also underscored the importance of West Side Story in her own identity formation: 鈥淎nd what did the 鈥榬eal鈥� Puerto Rican, Anita do in the film? She not only was another Latina 鈥榮pitfire,鈥� she also sang a song denigrating Puerto Rico and by implication, being Puerto Rican. I remember seeing it and being ashamed.鈥� The Island-born cultural critic Alberto Sandoval shares in the shame as the film came to define him after he migrated to the United States: 鈥淎nd how can I forget those who upon my arrival would start tapping flamenco steps and squealing: 鈥業 like to be in America鈥�? As the years passed by I grew accustomed to their actions and reactions to my presence. I would smile and ignore the stereotype of Puerto Ricans that Hollywood promotes.鈥�

In contrast to the purported materiality鈥攈owever discursively produced鈥攐f the Spanish-American War and its aftermath, the nearly universal consensus by spectators, critics, and creators of West Side Story is that the film is not in any way 鈥渁bout鈥� Puerto Rican culture, migration, or community life, that ultimately, it refers to 鈥渘othing.鈥� Even West Side Story鈥檚 creative collaborators have been consistent in representing the work as non-mimetic. The lyricist Stephen Sondheim, for instance, initially rejected the project on the grounds of his ignorance of Puerto Rican culture and lack of experience with poverty: 鈥淚 can鈥檛 do this show I鈥檝e never been that poor and I鈥檝e never even met a Puerto Rican.鈥�

鈥�West Side Story is then nothing short of a Puerto Rican Birth of a Nation (1915): a blatant, seminal (pun intended), valorized, aestheticized eruption into the (American) national 鈥榗onsciousness.’鈥�

Without a touch of irony, Leonard Bernstein also noted the extent to which he researched Puerto Rican culture before writing the score: 鈥淲e went to a gym in Brooklyn where there were different gangs that a social organization was trying to bring together. I don鈥檛 know if too much eventually got into West Side Story, but everything does help.鈥� The 鈥渟uperficial鈥� way that Puerto Ricans were represented made one of the original West Side Story producers, Cheryl Crawford, insist that 鈥渢he show explains why the poor in New York, who had once been Jewish, were now Puerto Rican and black. When someone said the piece was a poetic fantasy, not a sociological document, she replied, 鈥榊ou have to rewrite the whole thing or I won鈥檛 do it.鈥欌�� Yet if West Side Story was not intended to be 鈥渞eal,鈥� and many boricua spectators insist that it does not accurately represent us as a 鈥減eople,鈥� what accounts for its reality effects? Why is West Side Story a founding site for Puerto Rican鈥揂merican ethno-national identifications?

The film鈥檚 durable canonization, I would argue, is not arbitrary on several counts. West Side Story is the earliest鈥攁nd arguably the only鈥攚idely disseminated American mass culture product to construe Puerto Ricans as a specific, and hence different, U.S. ethnic group, ranked in a particular social order, living in a distinct location, yet informed by a uniquely American racialization process. While it is not the only media intervention to represent Puerto Ricans within a legal or sociological discourse (12 Angry Men and The Young Savages, for instance, preceded it), West Side Story remains the most cohesive cultural text to 鈥渉ail鈥濃�攁nd perhaps even more important for a discussion on ethno-national shame, to see鈥擯uerto Ricans as a distinctly American ethnic group.

West Side Story is then nothing short of a Puerto Rican Birth of a Nation (1915): a blatant, seminal (pun intended), valorized, aestheticized eruption into the (American) national 鈥渃onsciousness.鈥� Irresistibly, Variety offers a typical West Side Story review: 鈥淭echnically it is superb; use of color is dazzling, camera work often is thrilling, editing fast with dramatic punch, production design catches mood as well as action itself.鈥� Or as Stanley Kaufman insists in the New Republic, 鈥�West Side Story has been overburdened with discussion about its comment on our society. It offers no such comment. As a sociological study, it is of no use: in fact, it is somewhat facile. What it does is to utilize certain conditions artistically鈥攁 vastly different process.鈥�

Indeed, West Side Story鈥攗nlike the crime-saturated evening news鈥攊ncorporates Puerto Ricans into the United States through a media product valued for its Shakespearean inspiration, aesthetic quality, financial success, and popularity with audiences, a timeless American 鈥渃lassic.鈥� This coupling recalls the historian Francisco A. Scarano鈥檚 observation that 鈥渄omination is an ambiguous process, a form of creating distance, of othering, and at the same time creating intimacy or bonding.鈥� The unanimous regard for the film鈥檚 quality, which simultaneously shames Puerto Ricans through its racist emplotment and valorizes us by the attachment to an appreciated commodity, continues to seduce audiences into multiple fantasies of incorporation鈥攕exual, social, and (variously) ethno-national.

West Side Story is also not a product of Island high culture but of American popular entertainment, which does not depend on literacy or education to be consumed. If the cinema 鈥渉omologizes . . . the symbolic gathering of the nation,鈥� the film further demarcates the United States, not Puerto Rico, as the 鈥渘ational鈥� space. In this sense, even if West Side Story represents AmeR铆cans as a subaltern group, the subjects so lowered have more in common with Nuyoricans than the heroic boricuas from the Island鈥檚 nationalist fiction, since they are working-class, not blanquitos; English (not Spanish) speaking; urban, not mountain dwelling; racialized, not European; and fully engaged in modernity, even if at a disadvantage.

Equally relevant is the fact that West Side Story constitutes Puerto Ricans as criminal (men), and victimized (women)鈥攖wo gendered sites of shameful identification that nevertheless socially constitutes many boricuas in excess of ethno-nationality. Educated AmeR铆can spectators, who tend to be the most stung by the shame of West Side Story, have attempted to offset it by offering a 鈥減ositive鈥� counterdiscourse, on the 鈥済ood鈥� side of the law. In doing so they have, however, resorted to the same definitions of justice that criminalize Puerto Ricans and ignore the degree to which boricua popular culture reveres outlaws and identifies with alternative codes of honor. Boricua popular culture, in fact, often embraces violence by individuals as a means of addressing asymmetrical power relationships. 鈥淭he right to individually enact coercive reprisals directly, without official institutional mediation,鈥� writes Kelvin Santiago-Valles, was 鈥渞ecognized and affirmed among the 鈥榥ative鈥� laboring classes鈥� during the first five decades of American rule. Similarly, I witnessed in screening West Side Story to young Puerto Ricans in the Philadelphia barrio during the mid-1990s, that teenagers repeatedly affirmed that the film was not racist, for 鈥渢hat鈥檚 [gangs, violence, death] how it is.鈥�

If West Side Story has constituted Puerto Rican ethno-nationality as shameful, yet some spectators enjoy it and others decry it, how is the film playing (with) 鈥渦s,鈥� Puerto Ricans and/as 鈥淎mericans鈥�? From the many ways that spectators complicate and enjoy the subjection of cinema, I will begin by highlighting the 鈥渕ake up鈥� of West Side Story鈥攈ow it visualizes boricuaness鈥攂y using the queer vernacular methodology of 鈥渞eading鈥� its performances as do the judges and onlookers at a drag ball. Arguably, one of the pleasures that the film offers boricua spectators is how it fails to 鈥済et鈥� them as Puerto Ricans.

While little known, the film鈥檚 origin story provides a valuable entry point. West Side Story is based on a 1949 play called East Side Story, a love story between a Jewish girl and a Catholic boy frustrated by both families. 鈥淎s early as January 1949 Robbins had come to Bernstein with a proposal that they make a modern-day version of Romeo and Juliet,鈥� wrote Meryle Secrest, 鈥渦sing the conflict between Jews and Catholics during the Easter-Passover celebrations as a contemporary equivalent.鈥� After some thought, however, the collaborators Jerome Robbins (choreographer), Leonard Bernstein (composer), and Arthur Laurents (writer) put the project on hold partly because the proposed story line was too similar to Anne Nichols鈥檚 Abie鈥檚 Irish Rose, the longest-running show on Broadway during the 1920s.  鈥淚 said it was 础产颈别鈥檚&苍产蝉辫;Irish Rose to music,鈥� Laurents commented, 鈥渁nd [Robbins] wouldn鈥檛 have any part of it.鈥�

Read as a national allegory, Abie鈥檚 Irish Rose is about how American 鈥渨hites鈥� were invented out of a broad spectrum of European ethnicities, immigration histories, and classes. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, the final resolution is staged as an integration of Jews and Catholics through marriage and upperclass mobility鈥攁 triumph of 鈥渨hiteness鈥� as a new identity for the children of European immigrants, regardless of their religion. By the end of the play, Abie and Rose, for instance, celebrate a hybrid Christmas with their children, who are fraternal twins. The twins, named Rebecca and Patrick in honor of Abie鈥檚 mother and Rose鈥檚 father, respectively, will clearly grow up to be neither Jewish nor Catholic, neither Irish nor European, but 鈥渁ll-American.鈥�

At the height of the late 1940s, Bernstein felt that Abie鈥檚 conflict was outdated. World War II had created a new context for Jews in the United States; anti-Semitism was at an all-time low and many first-generation Jews and Irish were integrated as Americans, despite a lingering discomfort. However, the basic premise of 鈥渋mpossible love鈥� based on a socially imposed norm continued to be compelling to Robbins, Bernstein, and Laurents. 鈥淲e鈥檙e fired again,鈥� wrote Bernstein, 鈥渂y the Romeo notion; only now we have abandoned the Jewish-Catholic premise as not very fresh, and have come up with what I think is going to be it: two teenage gangs, one the warring Puerto Ricans, the other 鈥荣别濒蹿-蝉迟测濒别诲鈥�&苍产蝉辫;础尘别谤颈肠补苍蝉.鈥�

According to Bernstein, the new idea emerged spontaneously鈥攁nd far from the action:

I was at a Beverly Hills pool with Arthur Laurents. I think I was in California scoring On the Waterfront. And we were talking ruefully about what a shame that the original East Side Story didn鈥檛 work out. Then, lying next to us on somebody鈥檚 abandoned chair was a newspaper headline, 鈥淕ANG FIGHTS.鈥� We stared at it and then at each other and realized that this鈥� in New York鈥攚as it. The Puerto Rican thing had just begun to explode, and we called Jerry, and that鈥檚 the way West Side Story鈥攁s opposed to East Side Story鈥攚as born. 

The Puerto Rican 鈥渢hing鈥� was nothing but the recasting of a colonial migrant community into a distinct and 鈥渘ationally鈥� recognized ethnic group, now also seemingly available for queer erotic fantasies.

In adapting the play, the film鈥檚 creators maintained Catholicism as a plot continuity (although the East Side鈥檚 Italian boy became Polish), but Jewish identity disappeared, a critical displacement since the creators of the film were all Jews. The erasure of Jewish characters, however, did not mean that the questions that have affected Jewish integration into the United States vanished. As Michael Rogin and others have commented, Jews in New York have been productive appropriators of subaltern culture鈥攑articularly African American鈥攊n an effort to address their own complex process of sometimes shameful transculturation. This process recalls Toni Morrison鈥檚 comments regarding American literature, 鈥淭he fabrication of an Africanist persona is reflexive; an extraordinary meditation on the self; a powerful exploration of the fears and desires that reside in the writerly conscious. It is an astonishing revelation of longing, of terror, of perplexity, of shame, of magnanimity.鈥�

While blackface was only partially used in the staging of West Side Story, the play鈥檚 music is heavily indebted to jazz and Latin American rhythms, and the casting in both the play and the film could be broadly understood as a minstrel act. In addition, for gay Jewish artists who were working in highly visible venues and in some cases living complex lives as heterosexuals, telling stories close to home through other means was not uncommon throughout their careers. Despite the fact that some have pointed to the surprising ease with which the producers changed one ethnicity for another as a symptom of racism, 鈥減assing鈥� and hence substituting ethnicities was part of Jewish (ambivalent) survival strategies in the United States, which, of course, have much in common with (white) queer practices of integration into heterosexist spaces.

The casting of white actors presents a second opportunity to approach West Side Story as a transethnic masquerade. Mason Wiley and Damien Bona wrote that the Mirisch brothers, executive producers of West Side Story, had 鈥渢oyed with the idea of casting Elvis Presley as the leader of the American street gang, with his followers played by Fabian, Frankie Avalon, and Paul Anka.鈥� No major male stars, however, were actually cast as any of the 鈥渨hite鈥� Jets, although Natalie Wood and George Chakiris were hired to play the two Puerto Rican leads. Predictably, only secondary Shark roles went to Latino actors.

JB NICHOLAS / SplashNews.com

Since Puerto Ricans are a differently racialized people and some are indistinguishable from whites or African Americans (as coded in Hollywood cinema), boricua ethnic specificity had to be easily seen and heard. Otherwise, the visual economy separating the Jets from the Sharks鈥攁nd Maria from Tony鈥攚ould be lost. To stress the difference between ethnic groups, Puerto Rican characters spoke in a shifting, asinine accent, and the hair of the Jets was dyed unnaturally blond. Not surprisingly, George Chakiris, who played Bernardo, was 鈥渂rownfaced.鈥� Given the history of Hollywood representation of Latino working-class men and Chakiris鈥檚 own record in the production (he had played the leader of the Jets in the theater) brownface underscored Bernardo鈥檚 ethnicity; makeup was a clamp used to avoid any ethnic misreading of his 鈥渞ealness.鈥�

Ironically, even if designed to make him more authentically boricua, Bernardo鈥檚 brownface and eccentric Spanish pronunciation had the opposite effect and were responsible for what many observers found to be an unconvincing performance (which nevertheless landed him an Oscar). Simultaneously, although Natalie Wood鈥檚 brunette type was less contested on the basis of appearance, the authenticity of her voice was questioned and even mocked. Not only was Wood鈥檚 singing voice dubbed, but her 鈥渟peaking accent helped her earn the Hasty Pudding Club鈥檚 award for worst actress of the year.鈥�

Jerome Robbins had requested Rita Moreno to audition to play Maria in the Broadway show, but once the play was transformed into a Hollywood production, the likelihood that a Puerto Rican actress would be granted the lead role considerably diminished, given the collusion of racism and commerce in film history, and the prevalent taboos on interracial romance. Although Rita Moreno is light-skinned, the union of Tony and Maria could have created anxiety in 1961 (although not in 1941, during the heyday of the 鈥淪outh of the Border鈥� films of the Good Neighbor Policy era). One way to alleviate this anxiety was to allow white audiences to enjoy the interracial seduction by casting actors as Maria and Bernardo whom everyone knew to be white, and making sure that Moreno wore heavier makeup to avoid any confusion with the virginal Wood.

Even though it does not 鈥渟ee鈥� Puerto Ricans, West Side Story visualizes a provocative proposition partly informed by the American Jewish experience: that for many immigrants, identity in the United States is, so to speak, a matter of makeup. Due to the instability of the category of 鈥渞ace,鈥� ethnics must then be made up with dark powder, bright colored ruffled costumes (women), dark colors (men), accents, and incessant movement. By default, 鈥渨hite鈥� men must be made up of yellows, browns, and light blue, the women, orange. The conspicuous absence of blacks鈥攅ven Puerto Rican blacks鈥攎akes the 鈥渆pidermal鈥� differences secondary, even an aesthetic affectation.

This 鈥渕ade-up鈥� representation contrasts with the processes of transculturation taking place in New York between Puerto Ricans and their neighbors, and underscores not only why artifice was required to uphold fading differences but also why this could even be a source of enjoyment for boricua spectators who wished to retain a distinct cultural identity. As the writer Esmeralda Santiago recalls, New York Puerto Ricans during the 1960s 鈥渨alked the halls between the Italians and the morenos, neither one nor the other, but looking and acting like a combination of both, depending on the texture of their hair, the shade of their skin, their makeup, and the way they walked down the hall.鈥� West Side Story鈥檚 overkill in representing race reveals not the power of racism as an epistemology or the impenetrability of Puerto Rican culture, but how the only way left to disavow transculturation is through color-coding, lest you eat the wrong M & M.

Expectedly鈥攁nd despite the heavy makeup鈥攖he film never entirely succeeds in maintaining the illusion of difference. The dance scene in the gymnasium, for instance, succinctly taps into the transculturated core of 鈥淎merican鈥� identifications. The Puerto Ricans 鈥渓ook alike,鈥� as do the Anglos; but at the same time, many Puerto Ricans are indistinguishable from Anglos. The single exception is Maria, whose name and white costume connote her as a 鈥渧irgin,鈥� untouched by American culture and uncontaminated by racism. That the film鈥檚 arguably 鈥減erfect鈥� character is also the most patently 鈥渇ake鈥� suggests that the narrative cannot resolve its rips at the seams.

While thematically the film insists that ethnic groups should stick to their own kind, the gym stages the swan song of anti-miscegenation as white bodies cannot help but perform to Latin-inflected music, even when the dances are not identically choreographed. As Stuart Hall observes, despite the 鈥渋nauthentic鈥� way that blacks are often consumed by the mass media, their incorporation has effected certain shifts that may be lost in a purely thematic analysis of a cultural text: 鈥淪tyle becomes the subject of discourse, the mastery of writing is displaced by music, and the body itself becomes the canvas for representation.鈥� If not in plot, West Side Story is stylishly transcultural and transethnic.

Ridiculously, as West Side Story is staged and restaged, it will become 鈥渕ore鈥� Puerto Rican, black, queer, and 鈥淟atino鈥� at the same time that the play will continue to raise prickly issues. In the 1980 Broadway revival, a black actress, Debbie Allen, played Anita and Josie de Guzm谩n, a light-skinned Puerto Rican from the Island, was Maria. To her surprise, de Guzm谩n was 鈥渕ade up鈥� (as Rita Moreno before her) to look Puerto Rican: 鈥淲hen they darkened her long silken hair for the part of Maria she revolted at first. 鈥極h my God, I am Puerto Rican鈥攚hy did they have to darken my hair?鈥� she thought. They darkened her pale skin too, and after a bit she liked that, wanting to get literally in the skin of Maria.鈥�

Yet it is in seducing the audience to look at Maria where聽West Side Story聽forces both ethno-national makeups to blush. In the character鈥檚 most famous number, 鈥淚 Feel Pretty,鈥� Maria reveals that she feels pretty (visible) only when Tony, a white man, sees her. In Maria鈥檚 quest to be seen by only one man, however,聽West Side Story聽allows other subjects to watch, enjoy, and unsettle his allegedly single authority.

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Frances Negron-Muntaner聽is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, journalist, and cultural critic. She is the co-editor of Puerto Rican Jam and author of Anatomy of a Smile. She currently teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.