Spielberg’s “Woke Side Story”
I admit the above title is clickbait and I loved the remake! Go see it this weekend!
Ok, movie critic Sarah is not.
BUT musical theater aficionado, Sarah is indeed! I love musicals. LOVE. Showboat, Into the Woods, Rent, Jesus Christ Superstar, Les Miserables … I could go on and on.
I also love having songs stuck in my head which watching musicals achieves so effortlessly. (I even love having jingles from commercials get stuck in my head. You should too because going back to a familiar, associated-with-joy-in-your-mind ditty is an effective easy way to endure long bouts of starvation, forced labor, and other myriad unpleasantries of war, the grid going down, camp, vacations with family, and other captivity-oriented scenarios. Whistle while you work, as the old saying goes! Or as our human trafficking victims of pimps sing, whistle while you work it! See, always look on the bright side. Even in the darkness of your mind! The day the grid goes back up, the war ends, or the feds raid the torture lair is already on the calendar. And if not, the date of your death surely is. And all of our earth pain and suffering ends when we die. Think of earth as a dungeon and one day God lets you out through the mercy of death. Hey, have you purchased a life insurance policy yet? Remember, you want whole life. That other stuff never pays out - that’s why it’s so cheap!)
And speaking of death, that was my least favorite part of this 2021 remake of the 1961 Academy Award winning favorite (as well as my least favorite part of the original). There was not nearly enough death! Bill Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave! How dare one base a musical on “Romeo and Juliet” and let the Juliet character live at the end??
Who indeed.
For the record, this is why West Side Story the musical is one of my least favorite musicals ever (second only to Avenue Q). Come on, the love of your life dies in your arms. Limp. His body you will never hug, kiss or make love to again is lying dead at your feet. Your soulmate. Your twin flame. You’re never going to hear the sound of his voice again. Never know the familiar cadence of his footfalls after the key turning in the lock signals a homecoming. His once vibrant soul reduced to a corpse at a crime scene. Yet you stand up and walk triumphantly in front of the rival gang members as they carry his body away from said crime scene in a pseudo truce? Get outta here. Time to drown. Pick a river. Any river. Who are these people?
People who don’t want to glorify suicide in front of young audiences, I suspect. So, ok, fair enough. But then don’t call it inspired by “Romeo and Juliet.”
I think I made it clear that I abhor the ending. But only if I compare it to R&J. No one should. It’s a great movie if we watch it as a tragic love story, avec song & dance. It’s a filmed musical and Spielberg himself said it’s not a remake per se, it’s a re-imagining.
And it’s also nice to see actual young people play the roles intended for actual young people (compared to the 1961 feature where both Tony and Maria can’t help but look older than teenagers because they both are older, this Maria was 18 while filming and this Tony was 25). In the original Broadway musical script from 1957, Anita, Bernardo, and Maria live with Bernardo and Maria’s parents and no one’s age is disclosed. It’s easy to see they are meant to all be about high school age or a little older. In the 1961 movie, too, they live with parents. In this 2021 movie however, in a bizarre and amusingly historically inaccurate to the point of silly moment, it is revealed that Bernardo, Anita and Maria all live together without parents in the home, and (wait for it!) split rent! Three ways! (Are they all 3 on the lease too? LMAO.) In the middle of the kitchen one day, Maria declares to her older brother Bernardo that she is “an adult now,” as she puts it. When did we as consumers start demanding that over the top declarations of “I am legal and no longer jailbait” become part of every movie that has teenagers in it? This scene was far too redolent of the multiple declarations in the movie “Tangled” that the heroine is 18. This should, ideally, be totally unnecessary in the suspended disbelief universe that all movies take place in.
As for the “woke” parts of the movie, there are not too many and they do not ruin the movie as I mentioned early on! There is a lot of Spanish dialogue that occurs among the Puerto Rican characters without any subtitles appearing simultaneously on the screen. Now, thinking of all the people I might have gone to see this movie with (if they were still alive), my mom, my aunt, my grandmother — none of them spoke Spanish and my own is rusty at best. I understood what was happening through context but I did wish I knew exactly what the characters were saying. Spielberg said he didn’t want English to rule over the movie but I find that to be absurd. Imagine playing the movie — the entire movie — with the volume so low that the viewer is forced to deduce (and speculate) what the dialogue is, based on context. Frustrating for anyone. Spielswoke missed the point here. The extra Spanish dialogue was a good addition and added to the authenticity of the historical milieu. Subtitles would have made the average white/black/Asian American/Indian American (et al) viewer be able to understand and thus relate to the characters even more empathetically. But let’s not project our virtue onto him and give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t realize what would happen in their absence. The effect was to annoy any viewer who couldn’t understand spoken Spanish and instantly easily translate it in their mind into English (so everyone who isn’t fluent). There’s no reason to think that wasn’t also the intent.
And, lol, a columnist so woke she dips her quill into a pot of no-doz before writing for Slate, agrees with me!!
“… the choice to leave the Spanish dialogue unsubtitled makes the few specificities of the immigrant experience that the film engages with inaccessible to non-Spanish speaking audiences. When Bernardo (David Alvarez) excludes Anita (the phenomenal Ariana DeBose) from his definition of “family,” she asks him if it’s because she’s “una prieta”—dark-skinned. With this scene, the film makes a passing comment on the very real problem of colorism in Latinx communities in the U.S. and beyond, but that brief engagement with anti-Blackness is not available to non-Spanish speaking audiences, and the topic is not brought up again. In this way, the unsubtitled Spanish feels more like an opportunity for Spielberg and his collaborators to check a box for representation while absolving themselves from meaningfully engaging with the ways in which the film, for its white audiences, continues to uphold the very stereotypes about the Puerto Rican community that it’s supposed to be rectifying.”
Ok, so she doesn’t exactly agree with me, in the dictionary sense of the word, but I semi-agree with her. Spielsbewoke was checking off a woke box with the addition of meaningful Spanish dialogue but rendered it meaningless to everyone but people already familiar with it. Would the average viewer (average non-Latino viewer) also find the remark about the Anita character’s darker skin compared to other Puerto Ricans interesting? I think so. But again there’s no way of knowing since there were no fricking subtitles! I now wish my Spanish had been oiled up enough to understand the remark about Anita’s dark skin but I only learned it was even part of the movie dialogue when doing research for this substack. Ridiculous! If we’re going to make forays — however brief —into each other’s cultures and subcultures, whether through time travel (via historical fiction) or in real time, let’s be direct. Good grief: the irony of being politically correct in a forest when no one is around to hear. Astounding. Think riling up the woke community wasn’t the point? I suspect it was.
For the record: I view identity politics as one strategy in a multi-faceted (kinetic warfare-derived) plan to divide us as Americans so that we are more easily conquered by a globalist agenda. That being said, I make it a priority to put myself in other people’s shoes and ask myself how I would feel about the same situation if I occupied a different tribal role. I think our Slate writer makes a very good point.
There was another change to the updated version that could be interpreted as woke but it really turned out to be a cool addition to an already stunningly talented and beautiful cast: the Doc character, who owned the shop where Tony works in the musical and the 1961 film, is now in 2021’s version replaced by a character written specifically for Rita Moreno. The new premise is that Doc has passed away and now his widow (Rita Moreno who played Anita in the first movie) runs the store. This is the Friar Laurence role for those who want to draw parallels to R&J but again, I wish we wouldn’t because the very act of comparing the two works shoplifts the plot from WSS and robs R&J of its precedence. There will never be a love story as intense, as enduring or as devastating as Romeo and Juliet. A fourteen year old teenaged girl stabs herself to death with a dagger, driving the blade into the despondent terrain of her own heart, so fraught is she with despair that she doesn’t hesitate for a second to take action to join her beloved in the afterlife. There is love and there is teenaged girl love that feels like drowning and flying at the same time. There is love and there is “my pre-frontal cortex hasn’t finished growing yet” love that loves without restraint, caution, or reason. The teenaged girl archetype Juliet loves because she can’t not love. Once we hit age 25 and our pre-frontal cortex finishes growing, we start driving a little closer to the speed limit, it’s easier to pull out (in time), easier to remember to take a (the) pill every day, and hesitating before committing suicide becomes the norm.
But back to Rita Moreno. I’ve heard a lot of objections to casting choices like this, turning a male role into a female one. A lot of people (well, people on Reddit) had an absolute spaz attack when Ghostbusters was remade with several female SNL alum. But it was great! Hilarious. A light hearted way to spend an hour and a half, and especially fun for millennials in my particular generational niche who grew up watching the cartoon Ghostbusters (and had Citizen Kane ruined by it, thank you very much) before walking to school every morning. This is even more satisfying in a nostalgic way than that! Rita Moreno sings, “There’s a Place For Us” and it is hauntingly lovely. As if the ghost of West Side Story past is here to remind us that the more things change, the more they stay the same. That place for us might not be found until the next life or the afterlife, and we can feel in our stomach the sadness that is inevitably coming in the final scene. Tony will be “killed by hate,” and our curious mind can’t help but wonder how many lives are stolen by that particular emotion which acts as such a powerful poison in the human heart. Skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to hear a very sweet spoiler. One night after closing up shop, newly enamored Tony confesses to Doc’s wife, who is Puerto Rican, that he is in love with Maria and that he wants to know how to say a few phrases in Spanish. He asks, “how do you say, ‘I want to be with you forever’?” She replies, “Forever? You don’t want to know how to say, ‘can I take you for coffee some time?’” So cute. She of course then teaches him how to declare his eternal love in Spanish. Great GREAT acting from both of the leads and a wonderful embrace of this new role by seasoned professional Moreno.
There were some revisions made to the lyrics of a few songs but they really weren’t woke-i-fied at all. Slightly altered to be less negative toward Puerto Rico, but not much. And I LOVE a good patriotic pro-America-to-the-point-that-it-verges-on-propaganda tune. Ah, yes, you know the kind — we’re on the same page now. I see you nodding your head! And has there ever been such a pro-America song as “America”?? Only the Team America song of the same name lays it on harder. Er, thicker. Which is why — YES — one could write an entire 5 paragraph essay comparing and contrasting the lyrics of these two extraORDinARILy reverent songs and it would be compelling stuff all by itself!
Just look!!
In “America,” the boys try to say America isn’t that great. But it so IS!
Listen to the whole song here — it’s SO GOOD!!!! You’ll have it stuck in your head all day! Below, I have copy/pasted just a smattering of the patriotic goo that has erupted from the lyricist’s heart via the tool of the pen (the pen is mightier than the sword!). But in the full duet, the boys sing about how they miss San Juan and the girls are all, no way, NEW YORK IS WHERE IT’S AT AND WE’RE NEVER LEAVING.
AMERICA lyrics
Skyscrapers bloom in America
Cadillacs zoom in America
Industry boom in America
Buying on credit is so nice
Life is all right in America
Here you are free and you have pride
Free to do anything you choose
LA LA LA LA LA
AMERICA!
Now, let’s compare those lyrics to that of Team America, Fuck Yeah!!
America, F*ck YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother f*cking day yeah,
America, F*ck YEAH!
Freedom is the only way yeah,
Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer to
America, F*ck YEAH!
So lick my butt, and suck on my balls,
America, F*ck YEAH!
What you going to do when we come for you now,
It’s the dream that we all share; it’s the hope for tomorrow
F*ck YEAH!
McDonalds, F*ck YEAH!
Wal-Mart, F*ck YEAH!
The Gap, F*ck YEAH!
Baseball, F*ck YEAH!
NFL, F*ck, YEAH!
Rock and roll, F*ck YEAH!
The Internet, F*ck YEAH!
Slavery, F*ck YEAH!
F*ck YEAH!
Starbucks, F*ck YEAH!
Disney world, F*ck YEAH!
Porno, F*ck YEAH!
Valium, F*ck YEAH!
Reeboks, F*ck YEAH!
Fake Tits, F*ck YEAH!
Sushi, F*ck YEAH!
Taco Bell, F*ck YEAH!
Rodeos, F*ck YEAH!
Bed bath and beyond (F*ck yeah, F*ck yeah)
Liberty, F*ck YEAH!
White Slips, F*ck YEAH!
The Alamo, F*ck YEAH!
Band-aids, F*ck YEAH!
Las Vegas, F*ck YEAH!
Christmas, F*ck YEAH!
Immigrants, F*ck YEAH!
Popeye, F*ck YEAH!
Democrats, F*ck YEAH!
Republicans (republicans)
(f*ck yeah, f*ck yeah)
Sportsmanship
Books
source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/t/teamamericaworldpolicelyrics/americafuckyeahlyrics.html
It could be my favorite song of all time! Maybe it is! Listen to the whole song here - you won’t regret it!
But seriously. I really enjoyed this movie.
The trailer doesn’t remotely do it justice. The heroine has a voice of an angel. An actual angelic divine messenger being. And my favorite song of all, “I Have A Love” which is actually a duet between Maria and Anita, the latter singing “A Boy Like That,” is perfect. I mean, outstanding. Instead of two divas attempting to out-sing each other as is the case in many a live musical theater performance, we witness harmonized perfection. What a blessing. I am so thankful for that song and that I have the gift of hearing to be able to listen to it! I hope you love it too.
Reminder: Steven Spielberg once made a horror movie for children called “Goonies” replete with the depiction of child torture and monsters and abuse of a vulnerable adult (go watch it as an adult and just see if you don’t perceive it a bit differently now that we are all much more collectively aware of the covert imagery being hoisted upon our kids according to an increasingly more obvious agenda emanating yes, from both coasts, but radiating most specifically from Hollywood), and to this day we call this guy a creative genius and that particular movie a family friendly classic. I loved this rendition of West Side Story but I don’t blindly categorize any movie by any director as great or not great. This one happens to be great.
I also realized, as I reclined this past weekend in the warm red leather seat at the AMC, that this is the first movie I’ve seen since the pandemic. The last time I was in a movie theater was in January of 2020, seeing “White Boy Rick.” (Fascinating, amazing acting, highly recommend — it’s based on a true story.) It was a delight to be back in a movie theater and I highly recommend that too!
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