{"id":20799,"date":"2010-02-25T10:10:02","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T15:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=20799"},"modified":"2013-12-15T04:02:20","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T09:02:20","slug":"west-side-storys-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/02\/25\/west-side-storys-america\/","title":{"rendered":"West Side Story&#8217;s &#8220;America&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dmitriy T.M. reminded me of this classic performance of the song &#8220;America&#8221; from a classic American musical, <em>West Side Story<\/em> (1961; it won 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture).\u00a0 The song features <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">white New Yorkers and <\/span> Puerto Rican immigrants debating about the benefits of living in America.\u00a0 The &#8220;streets paved with gold&#8221; mythology is articulated by the women at the same time that the <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">white <\/span>men remind them that they face racism and poverty.<\/p>\n<p>Also, Rita Moreno is awesome:<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"344\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/NPlcE3GcoFc&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p><strong>UPDATE<\/strong>: Commenter Jesse W. says,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;as a theater nerd, I wanted to point out it&#8217;s not a debate between white New Yorkers and Puerto Ricans, I think you just get that impression from the bad casting. They&#8217;re all supposed to be Puerto Rican; it&#8217;s more of a battle of the sexes between the men who wanted to stay in the old country and the women who wanted to come to America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And Laura says,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;the women are arguing with the men that America is great, and they prefer it to Puerto Rico, and the men are arguing that America is racist and oppressive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dmitriy T.M. reminded me of this classic performance of the song &#8220;America&#8221; from a classic American musical, West Side Story (1961; it won 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture).\u00a0 The song features white New Yorkers and Puerto Rican immigrants debating about the benefits of living in America.\u00a0 The &#8220;streets paved with gold&#8221; mythology is articulated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,1796,3920,285,1754,1757,293,23705],"class_list":["post-20799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-nation-puerto-rico-territory-of-u-s","tag-nation-united-states","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-latinos","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-social-construction","tag-vintage-stuff"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20799"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60441,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20799\/revisions\/60441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}