West Side Story

The Film "West Side Story" illustrates how the Puerto Ricans of New York faced discrimination and were used as scapegoats by the American people during the cold war time period to escape their anxieties. Due to the fear of communism and possible nuclear war the 1950-1960s time period was a very fragile time for the American people which produced an air of xenophobia throughout the country. The air of xenophobia is present throughout the play due of the repeated mention of stereotypes about Puerto Ricans and the constant feeling that the Puerto Ricans do not belong. The people of American often dealt with these anxieties in one of two ways, through escapism or through and through the scapegoating. This is made very clear through the comparison of West Side Story to the play The Music Man in the document “West Side Story and The Music Man: Whiteness, Immigration, and Race in the US during the late 1950s”. Like many waves of immigrants, the Puerto Ricans faced discrimination when they arrived and for some time after. This came in the form of people being discriminatory directly to them, housing discrimination and job discrimination. Therefore, the play “West Side Story” expresses the discrimination that Puerto Ricans faced due to the xenophobic nature of the time period.

Although Juliet seems more serious and mature at the beginning, Maria grows up during the course of the movie. Tony and Romeo are just the opposite. Tony knows whom he loves, and that's Maria, while Romeo had a very idealistic view of love in the beginning of the play, maturing as the end neared and he had to deal with Juliet's death. Tony and Maria are also less preoccupied with the bonds of marriage and love in their society, while it's almost like a sin for Romeo and Juliet to be together before being married. This is further emphasized by the fact that religion plays a substantially lesser role in West Side Story than it does in Romeo and Juliet.

This song sets the mood as it is an acoustic love song. The song changes when the loves first make physical contact in the elevator and becomes more intense which increases the passion between the two lovers. This music continues throughout the rest of the scene. Before Maria and Tony meet the other characters are dancing at the disco, the music is jazzy and upbeat, this is also set in a major key. When the lovers meet the music changes as the characters fade out.

To begin, Zora Neale Hurston uses sunset motifs to foreshadow events that are negative. In chapter four of the novel, the motif is used to symbolize the marriage of Joe Starks and Janie Crawford. “So they were married there before sundown, just like Joe had said. With new clothes of silk and wool” (Hurston 33). Janie thinks she has found love within the marriage and it creates a build up to the climax. “They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged” (Hurston 33). The relationship between Joe and Janie becomes abusive and untrustworthy. After Joe’s death, a weight of pain and sorrow is lifted from her shoulders and is free.

Comparing Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story In this piece of coursework I will be analysing the technical aspects of the opening scenes in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story. I will be talking about the body language, costumes, colour schemes, the sounds, music and camera angles used in each of the films. Both these films are about two lovers who fall in love despite being in rival gangs or families, which eventually leads to both lovers from both the films to being killed or committing suicide.

Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story share many similar themes. Romeo and Juliet both chronicle a story of overcoming prejudice and hatred, forbidden love, and defying stereotypes that nobody thought could be broken. The two stories are similar in a multitude of ways, even though their settings are centuries apart- Romeo and Juliet set in the 1500’s, and West Side Story set in the 1950’s. Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story both teach a lesson of how prejudice can teach you how to hate, and how one of your rivals may be the one who helps you remember how to love.

Right away the author starts to show the theme by using different types of author’s craft. On the first page, the author uses sensory details and foreshadowing in two lines of this short story. This scene talks about the stairwell at the old apartment that Martin ends up using once or twice. “But they were almost as bad, windowless, shadowy, with several dark landings where light bulbs had burned

In time, Marcela meets a man while Tony is working; she is that starved for companionship. She

In an act of trying to seal her fate, the Capulet’s arrange for Juliet to marry Paris. Paris is a wealthy man of the upper class, and by Juliet being united to him, she will be able to maintain her upscale status. With marrying a man of high class, Juliet can continue to bring honor to her family name. The rift between Juliet and her parents widens when they force her to marry Paris. The ultimatum given by Capulet shows his dominance and his demand for obedience, “Hang thee, young baggage, disobedient wretch!/I tell thee what: get thee to church o' Thursday,/Or never after look me in the face.” (III.v.161-163). This final proposition spikes Juliet’s resentment to her parents to grow stronger. Despite the expectations set on Juliet’s shoulders, she defies her parent’s wishes by getting married to Romeo without their knowledge. West Side Story resembles the same circumstance when Bernardo forces Maria to go to the dance with Chino, a member of the Shark’s gang. Both these occurrences are important to the plot of the story because instead of being swayed by authoritative figures, these young lovers continue to fight for their passion. The families in both tragedies pursue what they believe will be best for their young, even if they are not present to see it be

The meshing of characters between Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Bernstein’s West Side Story formulate significant similarities between the two. In Romeo and Juliet the story of “Two households both alike in dignity,” (Montagues and Capulets) who have been feuding is parallel to the two gangs in West Side Story (Jets and Sharks). This grouping of loyalties keeps the segregation of the two groups at a dead lock, thus producing the tension that keeps the two lovers in each play (Romeo and Juliet, Tony and Maria) in the unattainable, intangible realm of their idealistic love. It is these two groupings that cause the star-crossed

It initially shows worry for her children and sadness for departing from them. For example, the passage states that “when she thought of all the food she had cooked… well the children showed it.” She is proud of her work raising her children and this illustrates that she worked very diligently and strenuously in doing so. The theme of pride continues as she remembers the work she did to make life better for herself and her family after John left her. However, death returns as the image of lighting the lamps represents her lifeforce fading and her initial emotion is fear, then peace as “the lamp is lit” meaning the time has come for her passing and there was no need for her children to “hang on to mother anymore,” meaning she is realizing that her children will be fine without her and is making her peace with

West Side Story came out in 1961 as a melodramatic musical that took place in New York. It takes the same theme as Shakespeare's, Romeo and Juliet, in that it is about two lovers whose relationship is not accepted by others because of conflicting backgrounds.

West Side Story maintains Romeo and Juliet’s intricate and exciting plot using appropriate adaptations to accommodate mid-twentieth-century pop culture. For instance, both artistic forms portray mutual disrespect between the parties. At the dawn of Romeo and Juliet, Capulet’s cohorts harass Montague’s. "I will bite my thumb at them; which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it," boasts Sampson (1.1.42-43). In the opening scene of West Side Story, several members of a Puerto Rican gang insult A-rab, a member of the opposing gang. It is here where Lieutenant Schrank becomes aware of the potential rumble.

West Side Story is the iconic American musical that is a 1957 Broadway production choreographed by Jerome Robbins. Arthur Laurents is the author of the original book with the setting taking place in the upper west side New York city in a blue-collar neighborhood during the mid-1950s. (The Broadway) Because West Side Story is a movie musical, it will be a lot of narrative conveyed through the song. The movie West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet have many similarities and differences consider their plot, their character and their setting. The major plot of the musical is about a rivalry between two different ethnic group gangs, the Sharks and Jets. The Sharks are Puerto Rican and the Jets are white. Leonard Bernstein composed the dynamic and influential music. In the mix of the conflict between the two gangs, a former member of the Jets, Tony, falls in love with the leader of the Sharks sister, Maria. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet clearly influenced this movie, and there are parallel characteristics. For instance, Romeo and Tony, Juliet and Maria, Mercutio and Riff, Tybalt and Bernardo all have similar characteristics. As for the specific film, I decided to watch the 1961 version.

Although the discrepancies between Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story are too frequent to categorize in such limited space, it is impossible for anyone familiar with both texts to not notice the obvious similarities between the two works ("Theme").  From the opening scenes in both, up through the rumble in West Side Story/death of Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, the plays mirror each other (Poelstra).  It isn't until the last part of West Side Story, where Tony (our modern-day Romeo) dies and Maria (Tony's Juliet) doesn't (unlike the two star-crossed lovers of Shakespeare's work, both of whom perish), that the major difference between the two works becomes apparent.