Thanks for all the fantastic posts, I've been enjoying this site for a while. I just wanted to add that in the context of the 1950's the Italian 'gang' weren't quite considered white or mainstream American. When compared to the Anglo-Saxon immigrants of the earlier part of the 19th century, the Italians were also seen as old-world and exotic. This doesn't take away from the wonderful debate within the Puerto Rican community in "America", but it puts an interesting spin on the love story as between white immigrants and non-white immigrants.

I'm glad this post has been corrected! I was a little baffled; the context of the scene deals with a depiction of Puerto Rican immigrants arguing with EACH OTHER not with Anglo-Americans. XD

Though, yes, this is all due to casting. Many of the Puetro Rican characters in the film are actually white actors with, um, lots of make-up. (I'm surprised the post wasn't about THAT.)

There's a great interview I saw with Rita Moreno and George Chakiris where they talk about the makeup on set - everyone playing a Shark or one of the "Shark Women" apparently got the same base makeup color, which matched almost no one's actual skin. Natalie Wood, as I recall, got makeup that was closer to her own skin color.

These actors clearly come across as Puerto Rican to me, from their skin color as well as from the lyrics of the song. Why else would the purple-shirted gentleman want to "go back to San Juan"?

The thing that's most baffling about West Side Story to me has always been the music more than the visuals. There are a few numbers (this one in particular) that are ostensibly Puerto Ricans singing and making music together, but there's not a single authentically Carribean thing about it. It's sorta Mexican and vaguely "latin," but bears no resemblance whatsoever to Puerto Rican music.

Recognizing that the scene is supposed to be about male Puerto Ricans arguing with female Puerto Ricans about how great America is turning out to be, I think it's a brilliant scene (for reasons other than the dancing.)

Lots of immigrant groups have followed a pattern of young men coming over first, and sending for the rest of the family after they've established a foothold. A lot of Europeans did it early in the late 19th and early 20th century. "West Side Story" shows Puerto Ricans doing it in the 1950s. A lot of Asians are doing it now.

The young men who immigrate by themselves have a really hard time...they struggle to learn the language, they face racism every day, they can't lean on their families for support, they're sending most of their money "home" at the same time they're struggling to create some kind of community in their new home.

Dependents only come over when times are a little better. In 1960, wives were dependents. Now they usually aren't. Everyone except the young men who came over first has the advantages of family support and ethnic community (maybe a religious organization.) Especially if the community discourages young women from going out to deal with "outsiders," they can find the hard times in the old country are a more recent memory, and they spend less time confronting poverty and bigotry in their new home than their husbands and brothers.

I definitely like this version better than the script for the original musical on broadway, whose lyrics don't deal with the oppressive and racist aspects of being a new immigrant. Additionally, the song in the musical is between Anita and another Puerto Rican girl, which also changes the song/context immmensely. In the play (and I think, also the movie) I remember a character makes reference to the Ricans or something, and one of the Puerto Rican characters (I would say Anita, because she's super sassy) pointing out that in fact, they are now Americans (because of America's inclusion of Puerto Rico as a territory)

Hello. I would like to point out a very usual etnocentric concept that LOTS of persons in the U.S. make: the association of the term 'America' with the United States. This is something that we as students and professionals of Sociology need to pay especial attention in order not to continue replicating it.

Kind regards to everyone from Buenos Aires, Argentina

Juan

There is also a new stage version with lyrics that are sometimes bilingual; as http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98207909 points out, Anita doesn't sing in Spanish in the new "America" because she wants to assimilate, but other characters do. Maria sings "Me Siento Hermosa" instead of "I Feel Pretty", for example.

I took my son to see the current Broadway revival of the show. In this version, the song is entirely sung by the women, and there is only one woman who extols the virtues of America. The women also move effortlessly back and forth between Spanish and English now.

I saw the original version, and then was in my HS musical of the show. I always thought "America" captured something important about the American Dream/American reality, and internal dialogue (experienced by every "other" of being both included by the dream and othered by the reality.

As a young child, I believed fervently in the dream part; and thought the women were "right;" but this time, with my son, I read it quite differently.

Although the play may not hold up well half a century later, I thought those closeted gay Jewish men who created the musical understood something important about the ambivalent relationship of the other to the dream and its disillusionment.

This reminded of an article I read a few months ago on Bollywood: How 'alien' to Western viewers the sex-separated choreographed dancing and singing is... Gee...

Yes, in the revival and in the original musical, it's a women's only song. They added the men for the movie, though I think it adds an interesting additional layer of depth. For some immigrant women, they found more agency in the United States then they had in the more traditional structures of their home countries. They could work outside of the home, they could sometimes access more education, they were depended on to be breadwinners, etc. I think part of the story that it is being told in the movie version of "America" is women embracing new family structures, new agency, new ways of life, and men mourning the loss of the familiar, traditional, more stable way of life they left behind. Both have drawbacks and obviously neither is perfect, but it's interesting.

Oh, and everyone may know this but that's not actually Rita Moreno's voice singing. She was a good singer (unlike Natalie Wood who was dubbed because she hadn't the chops to handle it), but they dubbed her voice in post-production without her permission. She never felt that the dubbed voice got Anita right in any of the songs.

West Side Story, to me, is a wonderful film (my alltime favorite), and the song "America" is one of the pillars of this great movie/musical classic.

I'm actually wondering why you thought they were white?