West Top Tale including upholds Hollywood’s sexist framing of women while the sometimes chaste virgin, projected from the Maria, or perhaps the colourful sexpot about profile out of Anita
West Top Facts replicates the latest You.S. Black-White racial steps off greatest and you may poor in the way they tags the latest gangs: “When you’re a plane, you’re a jet right” when you find yourself “all Puerto Rican’s a lousy poultry.” New Boricuas – due to the fact “Sharks”- try predators because the white “Jets” soar, while it is the second classification one gropes and initiatives in order to physical violence Anita. S. film background. The fresh gang, the fresh new violent, the new rogue, brand new hazardous men is common Black and you will Latino representations, you start with Hollywood’s earliest villain, the fresh new North american country bandido away from hushed-point in time Westerns.
On the tune “The usa,” we carry out tune in to authentic sources to existed feel. In this rooftop men-female label and you will reaction count, Bernardo discusses the right regarding the whiteness, a rarity for the U.S. motion picture and tv history. So you can Anita’s “Every day life is alright in the us,” Bernardo responds which have “Whenever you are all the-light in the usa.” Although the women offer sound into solutions migration can get discover in their mind, that it scene is even in which Anita describes the newest island since the a beneficial lay where “usually this new hurricanes blowing” and you will “the populace expanding,” and you will “the money due.” As much as she actually is alarmed, Puerto Rico can be “drain to the ocean.” Bland.
The fresh new error out-of West Side Facts
In the an interview towards the Hollywood Reporter, Tony Kushner, which penned the latest screenplay getting Spielberg’s type, said that the initial musical’s founders was indeed strengthening throughout the Jewish immigrant experience and that this was an error.
Our very own story is very distinctive from the fresh new story book European American design out of immigrate, assimilate, work tirelessly and you may do well. Ours try among other well-used routes so you’re able to “incorporation” into the All of us: annexation by way of conquest. Following Foreign language-Cuban-U.S. battle out-of 1898, the united states was presented with having control of Puerto Rico and you can including Guam, the new Philippines, plus the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base for the Cuba. Instead appointment, Puerto Ricans had been proclaimed You.S. customers because of the congressional decree in the 1917.
The new mass migration off hundreds of thousands of Anita’s, Maria’s and you will Bernardo’s try a well planned technique for the fresh assimilation from displaced workers. The fresh U.S. monetary design, also known as Operation Bootstrap inside the Puerto Rico, can simply ensure it is in case your “excess” populace are pushed from island. A number of our mothers arrived from inside the factories and you will facilities from the states to perform cheated labor lower than demanding requirements. The fresh new negative exposure by white-dominant media of one’s Puerto Rican influx to help you places such as for instance The latest York set new phase to your modern Broadway production and you can flick.
Process Bootstrap possess longer term their path and after this Puerto Rico try bankrupt. With the area in the billions of bucks out-of debt, Chairman Barack Obama and you will Congress inside the 2016 implemented an outside fiscal board that’s prioritizing the fresh demands of Wall structure Highway and you will who Puerto Ricans get a hold of given that fostering this new welfare out-of predatory capitalism. Handle through this unelected financial board, also known as “Los angeles Junta” towards area, helps make the purportedly thinking-governing standing of Puerto Rico, currently dubious just before, significantly more away from a cruel joke.
The outcry and you can resistance have been constant. It’s got provided massive marches from the imposition of your own board as well as austerity system. Amid regular strength blackouts in Puerto Rico, protesters smack the roads just about any month, with youngsters, feminists and you can pros at the front end. Throughout the island, Puerto Ricans is top agroecological Baltimore MD sugar daddy strategies, tapping renewable energy, and you may review almost every other designs from inside the as well as times sovereignty. Stateside, the diaspora possess getting awareness of procedures designed in Arizona one to financially hamstring Puerto Rico.