The recent New York Times piece on the reaction of Latinx people in the arts to West Side Story has drawn some sadly uncharitable responses from people whose political instincts are typically progressive. So, even though my initial and concluding thoughts about the whole issue is to say that the arts are, thankfully unlike politics in that the best work does not come from agreement and compromise but a willingness to put forward distinctive, unique, challenging and often upsetting work, I do want to say a few words about why I think we should not be divided about the wrong things when it comes to West Side Story and other works of art that raise issues of gender, race, and class.
It’s important to note to being with that there was no unanimity of opinion in the article let alone an effort by the voice of the New York Times to take a position. That anyone thinks so shows just how raw the feelings of white people, and especially white men—including progressive white men—are on issues of race and gender.
It’s not hard to understand those raw feelings. The long-accustomed hierarchy of this country is being challenged in new ways. Two in particular sting white men and some white women.
The first is the demand to recognize the deep, pervasive, and, most importantly, continuing injustice that has been done to Black and brown people and women. White progressives have long recognized that injustice, but only up to a point. They told themselves a story about how America had not lived up to its ideal in the past but how the power of right-thinking people to recognize those ideals and to fight for them in the Civil War and civil rights movement, and the Obama Campaign and the Black Lives Matter has brought us to a point where we are close to achieving a post-racial society. It’s something of wake-up call to be told that one’s attendance at rallies and marches, campaign contributions, and good thought has not really taken us to that point. It’s distressing to learn that deep structural inequalities continue to block opportunities for women and people of color to get a good education and job, to have their talents recognized and be rewarded appropriately, and to secure a home in a good neighborhood. And it’s a slap in the face to be told that the public policies supported by liberal from Social Security to urban renewal to public housing inadvertently or deliberately reinforced, racial hierarchies and segregation.
The second is the demand to de-center the white male experience, to recognize that the experiences of white men are not and should not be taken as normative for Americans; to understand that other people have very different experiences and takes on the world; to that there they have cultural achievements that white men have not created or recognized or understood except perhaps to appropriate them to their own advantage and in ways that hide their true sources (which happens even white men do this with respect and love for those sources); to grasp people of color and women have their own stories to tell that everyone—including white men—should hear especially if we claim that our interest and pursuit of knowledge is universal.
Both of these demands are being made by those who talk about West Side Story in the New York Times piece.
Some of the writers in this conversation focus on the first set of concerns. They point to the exclusion of Latinx, and especially Puerto Rican actors from the casts of these production. They show how a show a musical that borrows the story of Romeo and Juliet to make a liberal statement against racism and ethnic hatred, can inadvertently reinforce it by, as Carina Del Valle Schorke points out, portraying Puerto Ricans as gang members at a time when there were few other portrayals of them in the arts and media.
Some of the writers address the second set of concerns. They point to the failure of Robbins, Bernstein, Sondheim and others to draw concretely from the experience of Puerto Ricans or to embrace their musical language in the show except in the most superficial ways. As Matthew Lopez points out in the piece, members of the Puerto Rican and Latinx communities have often had some ambivalence to West Side Story—grateful on the one hand that it portrays them and now provides opportunities for them but rueful that it does so in a way that is inauthentic and limiting. (Compare that to the attitudes of the great blues musicians who were alternately amused by, disparaging of, grateful to, and resentful towards the white men who took up their music and made a great success of it.)
These criticism of West Side Story seem valid to me. And neither of them say that Robbins, Bernstein and Sondheim should not have made this musical any more than people who point out that white jazz musicians are often recognized and rewarded in ways that superior black jazz musicians say that white people should not play jazz (so long as they develop the skills and understanding to do so in authentic ways).
Instead they say that in a better world the authors of West Side Story would, and could, have gone about their work in a different way, one that would have included creators and participants from the communities it portrays and told the story in ways that more closely reflected their way of life and culture. And it suggests that such a West Side Story would be not only a more powerful representation of Puerto Ricans and their culture but a more power indictment of racial and ethnic hatred in America of that time.
It’s hard for me to see why one would contest these claims. It’s actually hard for me to imagine that Leonard Bernstein would contest them. And given that Sondheim has given his blessing to new productions and a movie of West Side Story that are attempts to recreate the work in ways that bring it closer to what would have been made in a better world, I don’t know why anyone else would disagree with them—unless they simply are finding the slap in the face and the wake up calls about our failure to truly attain the ideals of this country a bit too hard to take.
Learning the truth about the past and present of one’ county is often hard to take. It’s especially hard when you have reasons to be grateful for a country that it turns out is more deeply flawed than you had imagined.
So I recognize the inclination to be offended by these claims. But I just don’t see how our country is ever going to reckon with its past and build a better future if we can’t get over this initial reaction and truly listen to these critiques.
There is another claim presented by some of the participants in the discussion, that is even more striking and perhaps more upsetting—that it’s time to put West Side Story aside, that effort to repair it and comment on it in your own work (as the playwright in the discussion, Matthew Lopez did) but to put it aside. Del Valle Schorske basically says that West Side Story can’t be fixed, that it’s too much a product of the limitations of a time and place.
That’s an argument that I found hard to agree with, for two reasons. First, I truly love the music of West Side Story. And we want to share the things we love with others and hope it survives and is heard by future generations. Just as I am sad that the music of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington is not heard as much as it should be today, I would be sad if West Side Story were not heard any more.
And second, I think there are and will continue to be creative opportunities to revise, remake and recreate West Side Story in ways that put its best parts to even better uses.
Having said that those two things, I don’t have feel much urgency to insist on them or raise may voice against those who do not want to see West Side Story remain a staple of high school musical performances. For even if I disagree with what Del Valle Schorske said, I can see why she hade goord reasons to say it.
And in the arts, unlike politics, we don’t have to reach some agreement. We can disagree with one another and not just take stands but put forward works of art that others find appalling or disturbing or distasteful or aggressive. And the world of art will be better for all those challenges.
As a result of them…
There will be some artists who continue to be moved by West Side Story and seek to represent it in new and creative ways.
There will be other artists who are motivated by the limitations of West Side Story to do better work ,some of which, like the recent play by Matthew Lopez, might references it.
There will be artists who hope West Side Story goes away and are motivated by their distaste for it and its limitations to do completely different work that speaks even more body to the continuing racial, ethnic, and gender injustice in America.
I look forward to the work they will all do. And I think they can, and should, contribute in different ways to moving further down the path to an American that recognizes and provides compensation for our history of racial injustice and that decenter the white male experience—which of course does not mean ignoring it but including it as one of many in the gorgeous mosaic that America should be. As Jesse Green points out, “If there is no pleasure to be had in “West Side Story” then it cannot possibly overcome the problems we’re discussing. But if it does offer pleasure, then we, as individuals, are free to weigh it against those problems. The balance will be different for different people, not necessarily corresponding with identity.”
That seems to me the right, generous response to views that some of us find disturbing.
And what should we do with white people, mostly but not entirely male, often but not always on the right, who believe that this debate itself is a slap in the face, that the whole discussion proposes to eliminate works of art that they love
Well, one thing to do is what I’ve just done here, actually read the piece a little more closely and see that this is not what most of the people interviewed in it said.
Another is to explain why we should take seriously the reasons that some works of art that are found morally and politically problematic in their conception and / or execution, that there are multiple ways of dealing with them, and that very few people want to cancel them entirely.
And to those who are still listening I will say that you should be grateful we live at a time when we are having these discussions because they offer this country a chance finally to come to grips with our past in a way that we’ve never done before. And if some people who take part in them see to go overboard, you have the opportunity to disagree respectfully and that is far more opportunity than the Black and brown people and the women whose views and interest were utterly ignored for hundreds of years have had. Knowing that your views will continue to count in a genuinely fair America in ways that the view of historically oppressed did not count, perhaps we can respond with some grace and tolerance and with open ears to ideas that, at least initially slap us in the face.