Analysis Of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story

The play “West Side Story” presents itself as a story of two gangs who are in the midst turf fueled feud. This feud between the sharks and the jets runs deeper than turf, the feud is truly about how Americans

life in the mid to late twentieth century and the strains of society on African Americans. Set in a small neighborhood of a big city, this play holds much conflict between a father, Troy Maxson, and his two sons, Lyons and Cory. By analyzing the sources of this conflict, one can better appreciate and understand the way the conflict contributes to the meaning of the work.

At this time, Gershwin's career skyrocketed. He was hired by George White to compose for the Scandals series. He continued doing this for four years. During this time, Gershwin composed his first operetta, Blue Monday. It impressed Paul Whiteman, a famous bandleader, so much that he asked Gershwin to compose a symphonic jazz piece. At this time, however, Gershwin was still busy composing for White and forgot to compose for Whiteman until only one month before the scheduled performance. During this rushed creation, Gershwin found inspiration to create his most famous individual piece, Rhapsody in Blue. At its first performance, the piece was loved by the audience so much that they gave it a standing ovation.

In the 1991 drama “Boyz in the Hood”, Written and Directed by John Singleton. He successfully attempts to portray what life was like and in some areas in America still is for African Americans living in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood. It displays a portrait of the harsh realities that plagues the black community and by displaying uninviting living conditions that is South Central L.A, Singleton aims to share to the world the self-destructive deviant behavior that is to this day, destroying the African American community. Some of the self-destructive deviant behaviors include gang life, selling drugs, and gun violence. Various issues are displayed in this movie involving the black community including deviance, poverty, gentrification, the importance of a father in a young man’s life and black on black crime. Singleton displays a tale of three friends growing up in the “hood”, plagued by drugs and violence and layers textures over rough and compelling visuals of black culture that shows us what it means to come to maturity, or die trying, as a black male. In this essay, I will be giving a thorough analysis of the film, as well as covering certain points from the movie from a sociological perspective to explain why singleton chose to write this film.

West Side Story was considered the first musical tragedy and Sondheim continued to be an innovator to the musical theatre catalog. “Sondheim can be seen as a bridge connecting the Rodgers and Hammerstein era to the postmodern era and even beyond”(). Sondheim would continue to reinvent the musical genre and one of his most innovative was Company.

The decade of hip-hop is what some may call it. Tupac, Naz, Biggie Smalls, as well as other artists, were major contributions. Not only for the people who are trying to find their footing, but Buck as well. Throughout the book various lyrics were embedded in order to create a better understanding for its readers. In addition, this book is based upon a 90s lifestyle within Philadelphia, which included drugs, gang activity, crime, hip-hop, and havoc. Malo was directly in the center of everything, the girls, the fights, the guns. His experiences shed light towards what it’s like to as an African American individual living in or near the hood. Not everyone realizes what people go through while living there, but now it gives some readers an image of what goes on. Though times have changed, not all previous feelings

The movie Boyz N the Hood is an illustration of how a group of early adolescents’ lives was affected negatively due to the environment they lived in. These adolescents lived in an environment where drugs, gangs, and shootings were the center of their community. Living in a predominantly African American community these adolescents were faced with many misfortunes. Ricky one of the adolescent characters I have decided to evaluate for this particular paper was faced with adversity.

On the west side of Manhattan two groups compete for turf, the Jets, a group of white juveniles, and the Sharks, a group of young Puerto Rican men. The conflicts that arise from racial and cultural differences are what lead to West Side Story’s message. The Jets do not like the Sharks because they came from a different part of the world. They don’t want them in their neighborhood because they are worried that they will change things, take their jobs, and make the neighborhood dirty. People have always and still have this fear for immigrants because they can’t accept change. When Tony and Maria fall in love, it makes the two gangs’ rivalry even more complicated.

One of the most important elements of this story is the setting. Taking place in the drug-plagued, poverty-stricken, and frustrated streets of Harlem in the 1950s, the setting

Some challenges between anti-social behaviors and geographic are evident in the film Boyz n the Hood. It a 90’s films created by John Singleton, about a boy Tre styles who is sent to live with his father Furious styles in South Central Los Angeles after he got into a fight at school. At his father 's house, he is taught morals and values of being a respected man. On the other hand, his friends Ricky and Doughboy who are half-brothers has a different upbringing with no real support system, resulting in forming a gang, involvement with drugs and a tragic ending. This film is based on the African American experience in terms of environmental conditions which results in a great deal of African American males being pushed into the criminal justice system.

In the movie A Bronx Tale, young Calogero witnessed a shooting outside his house. The cops show up at his house later that day to question him. The police officer had Calogero go to where the police had a line of men who were suspects of the shooting. Calogero got to Sonny, who was pretty much the head gangster of the neighborhood. Calogero knew it was Sunny but chose to tell the police it wasn’t any of them. The lie that Calogero told to the police is morally wrong because according to Pollock, in the ethics book “Morals and morality refer to what is judged as good conduct. (Pollock, 8, 2012). I would say that the lie he told

August Wilson’s highly acclaimed play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago in the late 1920’s. The main character, Ma Rainey, is an African American blues singer, and she is managed by a white music producer named Irvin. Levee, the youngest of four band members, takes on a surprisingly dominant role in the play. Anyone can open a history text book and learn about the general social issues that were present in the early nineteen hundreds. Wilson takes this history lesson one step further, and shows his readers the affects of these racial issues on a personal level. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom shows how the disrespect and exploitation of young African Americans in the music industry can either lead to empowerment or downfall.

John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood is an American teen drama film released in 1991 that focuses on three black teens who live in the dangerous neighbourhood of Crenshaw, Los Angeles. The main characters Doughboy, his half-brother Ricky, and their friend Tre grow up together but meet drastically different fates as young adults. As Swanson (2011) points out, it is important to understand the tension within black communities in Los Angeles at the time of the film’s release; the Rodney King beating had taken place only months before and LA’s gang wars were reaching a peak. As a Los Angeles native, Singleton’s goal with the film was to alert people about the situation around them, as he said: “I couldn’t rhyme. I wasn’t a rapper. So I made this movie” (Swanson 2011). To reflect the environment as accurately as possible, the film was shot on the streets of South Los Angeles, so the crew was just as on edge as their characters would be; there were even threats of gun violence from local gang members.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s insistence on including a message about racial tolerance in a commercial Broadway play a number of years before the civil rights movement. South Pacific marks a moment when musical theatre was striving to distance itself from its commercial roots and to redefine itself instead as art (Most). As the quintessential example of what mid-century critics called “middle-of-the-road” culture, South Pacific sits uncomfortably between the “low” culture of Tin Pan Alley and the “high” culture of legitimate theatre and

This accomplishment can be seen as one of Bernstein’s contribution to the Musical. Leonard Bernstein was a conductor,