This article was downloaded by: [McGill University Library]On: 14 October 2014, At: 13:37Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

The Communication ReviewPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcrv20

West Side Story Read From Below: YoungPuerto Rican Women's Cultural ReadingsKennaria Brown aa Department of English, Theatre, and Communication , BereaCollege , Berea, Kentucky, USAPublished online: 30 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Kennaria Brown (2010) West Side Story Read From Below: YoungPuerto Rican Women's Cultural Readings, The Communication Review, 13:3, 193-215, DOI:10.1080/10714421.2010.502808

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2010.502808

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

The Communication Review, 13:193–215, 2010Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1071-4421 print/1547-7487 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10714421.2010.502808

West Side Story Read From Below: YoungPuerto Rican Women’s Cultural Readings

KENNARIA BROWNDepartment of English, Theatre, and Communication, Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, USA

Critics have hailed West Side Story as both a masterpiece and acaricature of Puerto Rican culture. However, the perspectives ofeveryday Puerto Ricans are largely missing from the discourse.Therefore, this audience reception study approaches a group ofyoung Puerto Rican women as cultural readers to learn their inter-pretations of West Side Story as a reflection of their standpointand the film’s current cultural relevance. The participants rejectedNatalie Wood’s Maria for being “insufficiently” Puerto Rican, whileidentifying with the “America” scene because it reflected their owngendered tensions. Their readings acknowledged the caricatures,yet validated West Side Story as a cultural text with modern-dayrelevance, though less so than with previous generations of PuertoRicans.

Media scholars have long been concerned about the impact of stereotyp-ical representations of subaltern cultures on viewing audiences and—byextension—the public sphere. Subaltern audience reception studies supportthese concerns, revealing that marginalized viewing publics do recognizethe potential harm of stereotypical mediated images and express frustra-tion and concern about the effect on their respective group’s sociopoliticalstanding (Báez, 2007a; Bobo, 1995; Dávila, 2001; Hooks, 1996; Rivero, 2003;Rojas, 2004). Yet, subaltern audiences have limited choices if they wantto enjoy representations of their cultures in mainstream media. Therefore,negotiated or oppositional readings are common among marginalized view-ers who sometimes interpret these images in unexpected and empoweringways that provide insight into subaltern groups’ strategies for psychological

Address correspondence to Kennaria Brown, Department of English, Theatre, andCommunication, Berea College, 101 Chestnut Street, CPO 1884, Berea, KY 40403, USA. E-mail:brownke@berea.edu

193

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

194 K. Brown

survival in sociopolitical contexts that undermine their social identities andsenses of self (Báez, 2007a; Bobo, 1995; Hooks, 1996; Rivero, 2003).

These observations are particularly applicable to West Side Story, anAmerican classic with a long love–hate relationship with Puerto Rican com-munities (Negrón-Muntaner, 2000; R. Pérez, 1997; Sandoval-Sánchez, 1997,1999; Sarat, 2000). According to Negrón-Muntaner (2000), the four menwho created West Side Story—Jerome Robbins, codirector and choreogra-pher; Leonard Bernstein, composer; Arthur Laurents, writer; and StephenSondheim, lyricist—admitted their ignorance of Puerto Rican culture, andtherefore, they did not intend for the story to be taken as an accurate rep-resentation of “Puerto Rican culture, migration, or community life” (p. 84).Nevertheless, for decades following its debut the musical was the primaryreferent for Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rican culture in the U.S. Americanimaginary and for many Puerto Ricans as well (Negrón-Muntaner, 2000;Sandoval-Sánchez, 1997, 1999). Although some Puerto Rican scholars arehighly critical of the musical’s role in reifying negative Puerto Rican stereo-types, they also acknowledge its beloved place in Puerto Rican popularculture (Negrón-Muntaner, 2000; Sandoval-Sánchez, 1997, 1999).

Aside from its artistic attributes, West Side Story retains its prominencein Puerto Rican popular culture largely because it has yet to be replacedby another popular Puerto Rican story (Negrón-Muntaner, 2000), and itis still active in U.S. popular culture. Although Puerto Rican entertain-ers such as Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, and Mark Anthony have grownin prominence in mainstream entertainment, and they “made their PuertoRican identity an important part of their star personas” (Negrón-Muntaner,2004, p. xii), there is still a dearth of specifically Puerto Rican charactersand stories in major Hollywood films. Popular Puerto Rican actors such asJimmy Smits and Jennifer Lopez rarely play Puerto Rican characters (Báez,2007b). Furthermore, the 51-year-old musical is still widely performed inhigh schools and colleges across the nation (Sandoval-Sánchez, 1999; Sarat,2000) and was recently revived on Broadway and nominated for four TonyAwards, one of which was awarded to Karen Olivo for her performance ofAnita (“Nominees & Winners: The Shows,” 2009). Hence, despite its creators’admitted ignorance of Puerto Rican culture and the rise of Puerto Rican pop-ular entertainers, West Side Story retains some of its representation power inU.S. and Puerto Rican imaginaries.

Although individual Puerto Rican scholars have provided cogent anal-yses of the musical and its impact on their lives (Negrón-Muntaner, 2000;R. Pérez, 1997; Sandoval-Sánchez, 1997, 1999), these articles are largelyoppositional with a somewhat jaded acknowledgement of West Side Story’spopularity among Puerto Ricans. A search revealed that as of yet, no studyof West Side Story has specifically focused on U.S. Puerto Rican audiences’responses to the film. Considering the musical’s conflicted place in PuertoRican popular culture and the dearth of Puerto Rican stories in U.S. popular

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

West Side Story Read From Below 195

culture, how do Puerto Ricans in sociopolitical positioning similar to that ofthe Puerto Rican characters in the film negotiate West Side Story’s portrayalof Puerto Ricans to find affirmation of their cultural identities? What (if any)are their points of identification and dissonance? Furthermore, in the litera-ture most of the attention is on the two male gangs, the Jets and the Sharks.What about the women’s stories? What (if anything) do the women of WestSide Story have in common with modern-day urban Puerto Rican womenin struggling socioeconomic circumstances? Finally, what do their readingsreveal about their positionality in U.S. society at this transitional momentin U.S. history? Therefore, this audience reception study explores young(16–21-year-old), working-class Puerto Rican women’s readings of West SideStory as a window into their standpoints as they interpret this controversialclassic in a modern era.

Exploring these questions with a current, young Puerto Rican audiencenot only provides insight into the cultural battle around West Side Story, butalso illuminates the broader context of Latina/o and migrant/immigrant iden-tity negotiation at this juncture in U.S. history when the first African Americanpresident has just appointed the first Latina Supreme Court justice—a PuertoRican—while immigration remains a hotly battled issue in the national publicsphere. Although West Side Story has lost much of its representation power,it remains a culturally relevant text for modern-day young Puerto Ricanwomen, in similar sociopolitical circumstances, who negotiate its stereotypesto find authentic notes that affirm their everyday lived experience.

The essay begins with an overview of West Side Story as a product of itstime with modern-day sociocultural significance. The overview is followedby the methods, then the results, which places the participants in the largercontext of migration/immigration, Puerto Rican, and Latina/o scholarship.The discussion and conclusion explores an apparent shift in the significanceof West Side Story for modern-day young Puerto Rican women even as itmaintains its cultural significance.

WEST SIDE STORY REVISITED

West Side Story is a product of its time that illustrates themes that still resonatein current audience reception studies. According to Negrón-Muntaner (2000),Jerome Robbins originally conceived the retelling of the Romeo and Julietstory as East Side Story, with a Jewish boy and a Catholic girl as the “star-crossed lovers.” However, this conceptualization came too close to Abe’sIrish Rose, a popular play from the 1920s with the same theme, and EastSide Story was tabled for about 10 years. It was resurrected and retooled inthe 1950s when Americans were up in arms about gang violence and beganto turn their attention to Puerto Ricans as a source of the problem, althoughPuerto Ricans had been migrating to New York in considerable numbers

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

196 K. Brown

since World War I (Flores, 1993) and had “model minority” status in Chicagoat the time (G. M. Pérez, 2001). In response to the negative national attentionon Puerto Rican gang violence, the collaborators made the Jewish boy Polishand the White Catholic girl Puerto Rican, moved the story to the West Side,and West Side Story was born (Negrón-Muntaner, 2000; Sandoval-Sánchez,1997, 1999).

Although admirers praised its technical innovations, critics decried itstropicalization of Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rican culture. According toAparicio and Chávez-Silverman (1997), “to tropicalize, as we define it, meansto trope, to imbue a particular space, geography, group, or nation with a setof traits, images, and values” (p. 8). They argued that tropicalization has ahegemonic function when it occurs from “a privileged, First World location”(p. 8) because it projects the dominant culture’s fears and prejudices ontosubaltern cultures, thereby “facilitate[ing] the popular acceptance and jus-tification of imperialist interventions, invasions, and wars” (p. 8). The waytropicalization manifests in West Side Story is by subsuming Puerto Rican cul-ture into “a mythic idea of latinidad” (p. 8), while stereotyping Puerto Ricanpeople as the embodiment of the social ills of the day, thereby establishingthem as scapegoats.

The troping of Puerto Rican culture into a “Latin” hybrid was primar-ily accomplished by the Puerto Rican characters assuming what Rodríguez(1997) described as the “Latin or Latino look that everyone recognizes. Thisperson is slightly tan, with dark hair and eyes” (Rodríguez, 1997; p. 1).As Rodríguez (1997) continued her description, the hegemonic articulationsof the “Latin look” are exposed: “Spanish usage, accented English, occu-pation, education, residence, relationship to Anglos, self-identification, andidentification by others” (p. 1). In West Side Story, White actors in brown-face, with divergent Hollywood Spanish accents, play the lead Puerto Ricanroles, with the exception of Rita Moreno as Anita. Furthermore, they areoffset from the Jets by tight colorful clothing that emphasizes their sexualityand exoticism, and the music representing Puerto Rican culture is a LatinJazz hybrid that has nothing to do with the actual music of Puerto Rico(Negrón-Muntaner, 2000; R. Pérez, 1997; Sandoval-Sánchez, 1997). In short,in a film in which Puerto Ricans are a central part of the story, no PuertoRican cultural codes whatsoever are used to represent Puerto Ricans ortheir culture. They are simply Hollywood’s “Latin.” Sandoval-Sánchez (1999)summarized West Side Story’s tropicalizing effect, “the musical, through itsmusic, dances, romantic melodrama, and exoticism of cultural othernessdistracts from the racism within it” (p. 64), thereby reifying Puerto Ricanstereotypes and justifying White hegemony while the audience is delightfullyentertained.

Yet, even though the Puerto Rican characters in West Side Story wererepresented as “Latin” tropes, they were still specifically interpellated as“Puerto Rican.” The stereotypical portrayal of Puerto Rican people in the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

West Side Story Read From Below 197

musical bears out the hegemonic function of tropicalization and the “Latinlook.” R. Pérez’s (1997) study of Hollywood representations of Puerto Ricansfrom the 1950s through the 1980s, including West Side Story, revealedthat Hollywood films with Puerto Rican characters during that time periodgenerally portrayed Puerto Ricans as hypersexual, violent, and morally andsocially deviant. West Side Story contributed to this trend by portraying themales as “knife-carrying gang members who could only solve their prob-lems through violence,” and the women as “either innocent, passive, virginalbeauties (Maria, the Natalie Wood character), or ‘hot-blooded,’ ‘fiery,’ sponta-neous and worldly (Anita, the Rita Moreno character for which she receivedan academy award)” (R. Pérez, 1997; p. 151).

These depictions of Puerto Ricans were reflections of both the growingpublic concern about gang violence in the 1950s (R. Pérez, 1997) and com-petition for employment and housing when soldiers returned home fromWorld War II that fueled “a widespread anxiety about the possible return ofthe Depression” (Briggs, 2002, p. 77). Despite their brief stint as a “modelminority” in Chicago through the 1950s and into the 1960s (G. M. Pérez,2001), Puerto Ricans as cultural—and often racial—Others became scape-goats for these fears, as they were repeatedly attacked in print and film as“a problem” (Briggs, 2002; G. M. Pérez, 2001; R. Pérez, 1997). As biasedstudies and selective news reporting painted Puerto Ricans as social andmoral deviants draining the nation’s resources, Puerto Ricans’ struggles withsubstandard living conditions were presumed to be caused by a “culture ofpoverty” instead of limited employment opportunities, housing discrimina-tion, and racism (Briggs, 2002). In sum, Berg (2002) argued, “Stereotypesare ideological . . . Stereotypes don’t just derogatorily depict the Other—they also indicate a preferred power relation” (p. 21). Thus, stereotypingPuerto Ricans in print and film served “an important ideological function: todemonstrate why the in-group is in power, why the out-group is not, andwhy things need to stay just as they are” (Berg, 2002, p. 22).

However, despite the controversy surrounding the musical and its rolein establishing Puerto Ricans as scapegoats for the nation’s social ills, WestSide Story endures as a popular classic among Puerto Ricans (Negrón-Muntaner, 2000; Sarat, 2000). Regarding the musical’s enduring popularity,Negrón-Muntaner (2000) posited, “West Side Story has provided what noPuerto Rican-made film has been able to deliver to date: a deceptivelysimple, widely seen, and shared text dwelling on still critical issues likemigration, class mobility, racism, and police brutality” (p. 87). The fourJewish gay men who created the musical were as responsible for its authen-tic notes as they were for the farce. Although they were admittedly ignorantof Puerto Rican culture, they were close to the Jewish immigrant experienceand conflicted concerning their sexual identities (Negrón-Muntaner, 2000;Teachout, 2004). Therefore, their immigrant experience and identity conflictare as much a part of the musical as their dominant cultural privilege. Hence,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

198 K. Brown

they were able to capture the honest longing of “Somewhere” and the ten-sion between yearning for the “homeland” and a desire for a new life withnew opportunities in “America,” all in a farcical context (Negrón-Muntaner,2000; Teachout, 2004). Thus, even if Puerto Ricans do not recognize their(literal) voices and culture in the film, they identify some of their key issuespresented in an engaging, attractive package.

Conversely, the film’s hegemonic themes are also present in the livesof modern-day Puerto Ricans and perpetuated by current cultural products.Tropicalizing the various Latino cultures into “a mythic idea of latinidad”(Aparicio & Chávez-Silverman, 1997, p. 8) is even stronger in the current eraas U.S. and Latin American corporations vie to create then compete for thelucrative “Hispanic” market (Dávila, 2001). In this time of economic crisis,scapegoating “brown” people for the nation’s social and economic strugglesis also on the rise, complete with discriminatory immigration legislation thatexposes anyone with the “Latin look” to the possibility of police harass-ment and deportation (Archibold, 2010). Finally, Puerto Rican beauty andbodies are still exoticized and associated with sexual aggression and avail-ability, as is demonstrated by the media attention given to Jennifer Lopez’sbackside (Báez, 2007a; Beltrán, 2002; Negrón-Muntaner, 2004). Latina audi-ence reception studies establish that these trends are perpetuated in currentcultural products and reveal subaltern strategies for negotiating hegemonictropicalization in mass-mediated cultural products.

Subaltern audience reception studies reveal a tension between enjoy-ment and critique that results in negotiated and/or oppositional readings.Remarking on black audiences’ readings of racist 1950s television andfilm, Hooks (1996) observed, “Then, one’s enjoyment of a film whereinrepresentations of blackness were stereotypically degrading and dehuman-izing coexisted with a critical practice that restored presence where it wasnegated” (p. 199). Bobo (1995) referred to the practice of “restor[ing] pres-ence where it was negated” as a “complex process of negotiation” (p. 3).As her black female participants discussed Spielberg’s tropicalized renderingof Alice Walker’s (1982) The Color Purple, they “sifted through the incon-gruent parts of the film and reacted favorably to elements with which theycould identify and that resonated with their experiences” (p. 3). Bobo rea-soned that her participants’ willingness to overlook Spielberg’s liberties withthe text is likely indicative of the rarity of media products that reflect blackwomen’s lives, which was also the case with Hooks’s Black audiences in the1950s. Latina reception studies reveal this same tension in the face of limitedoptions, even with Spanish language programming.

The literature highlighting Latina audiences demonstrates negotiatedand oppositional readings mediated through a series of tensions: enjoy-ment and critique, respectability and shame, and resisting and reinforcingclass and ethnic hierarchies in Latinidad, with Latina bodies frequently inter-posed as a site of these tensions. Rivero’s (2003) study of U.S. Latina and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

West Side Story Read From Below 199

Latin American women’s readings of the telenovela Yo soy Betty la feademonstrated all of these themes as her participants delivered negotiatedcounterhegemonic readings of the text. On the one hand, they understoodthat the mediated beauty standards Latinas are subjected to are productsof patriarchal, European, middle-class hegemony. Noting the link betweenclass, race, beauty, and respectability, they observed that the “ugly” charac-ters in Yo soy Betty la fea were “ugly,” not because of their actual physicalattributes, but because they were working class and—in one case—Black.Hence, they produced oppositional readings. On the other hand, they hada desire to be “beautiful” and to see the “ugly” characters they cared aboutbecome “beautiful” according to the same hegemonic norms they critiqued.

The themes of respectability and Latina/o social hierarchies are strongerin Rojas’s (2004) exploration of Latinas’ responses to Latina representa-tion on the Spanish language networks Univision and Telemundo. Acrosssocioeconomic positions, Rojas’s participants expressed an awareness of thepresence of Latina stereotypes on Spanish language networks and the poten-tial harm such representations—especially the sexualized images—renderedthe perception of Latinos in general and Latinas in particular in U.S. society.Rojas’s (2004) participants also observed that respectability was articulatedwith class and racial hierarchies within Latinidad, specifically noting theWhiteness and patronizing attitude of the talk show hosts contrasted withthe darker skin and uncouth behavior of the guests and the tendency touse darker Latino groups, such as Dominicans, as the butt of jokes. Insum, Rojas’s (2004) participants’ readings of the programming on the twomajor Spanish language networks were largely oppositional. They critiquedgender, racial/ethnic and class hierarchies while maintaining a standard ofrespectability in the name of protecting Latina/o sociopolitical standing inU.S. society.

Whereas Rojas’s (2004) participants were critical of the fissures andhierarchies within Latinidad, in their readings of Puerto Rican superstarJennifer Lopez’s public image Báez’s (2007a) Mexican American and PuertoRican women participants took refuge in their specific cultural identitiesdividing along the line of respectability versus sexual freedom. Overall, sev-eral women expressed discomfort with the emphasis on Lopez’s body—asopposed to her talent—in her public image, but also her choices in dis-playing her body in tight and revealing clothing. Lopez did not present arespectable image they wanted representing Latinas to the viewing publicor Latina/o children and teenagers. Yet, they were disappointed that Lopezchose to change her body to fit an Anglo beauty standard by lighteningher hair and losing weight. They wanted to affirm Latina beauty through aLatina body, but they wanted the Latina body displayed in a manner thatengendered respect for Latinas.

Although both the Mexican American and Puerto Rican participantswere concerned about respectability, they negotiated Lopez’s public image,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

200 K. Brown

specifically her highly publicized romantic relationships with men, differ-ently. Báez’s (2007a) Puerto Rican participants were more supportive ofLopez, embracing their own bodies and sexuality as Puerto Rican women byembracing hers, and the Mexican American participants tended to attributeLopez’s “sexual freedom” to her Puerto Rican identity. This differentiationbetween Mexican and Puerto Rican women—that invoked stereotypes ofboth groups—also had class implications. A Mexican American participantnoted that the two groups lived in different parts of the city (Chicago)under different conditions, with Mexican American neighborhoods tendingto be comprised of single-family homes and Puerto Ricans primarily livingin apartments. She then attributed some differences in Mexican and PuertoRican norms to their differences in living conditions. Thus, again, discus-sions of a Latina body revealed tensions between enjoyment and critiqueand respectability and shame, exposing class and ethnic fissures in Latinidad,resulting in negotiated and oppositional readings that each culture used toaffirm their respective cultural identities.

These studies that demonstrate modern tensions present in nascent formin West Side Story are studies of modern audiences reading current culturalproducts. So why return to West Side Story? Puerto Rican audiences are asrare in media studies as Puerto Rican stories are in mainstream films. Despiteits tropicalization of Puerto Rican culture, no other Puerto Rican film hashad West Side Story’s longevity or mass appeal. As Negrón-Muntaner (2000)argued, West Side Story accessibly illustrates themes still relevant to modern-day Puerto Ricans. In other words, currently it is the only Puerto Ricancultural product that can hold its own with Yo Soy Betty La Fea, Telemundoand Univision, and the public persona of Jennifer Lopez. Therefore, studyingPuerto Rican women’s readings of West Side Story provides an opportunityto add Puerto Rican women’s voices interpreting a Puerto Rican story toLatina audience reception literature, bringing the themes discussed above totheir experience and adding their emerging themes to the discussion. Hencethis study accesses young, urban, working-class Puerto Rican women ascultural readers expressing their modern-day struggles, values, and strategiesfor psychological survival as they interpret West Side Story.

METHODS

The participants in this study were the 17 Puerto Rican students in three6-week sessions of critical media literacy classes I taught from Januarythrough November, 2006 at an organization in Western Massachusetts thathelps young mothers on welfare prepare for the General EducationalDevelopment exam. Thus, all of the participants were single mothers on wel-fare, aged 16 to 21 years, with the average age being 18 years. Although therewere a total of 24 students, with the remaining 7 being African American

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

West Side Story Read From Below 201

or White, and a number of films were viewed and discussed, this arti-cle focuses on the Puerto Rican students’ discussions of West Side Story.After the initial screening of the film, segments were shown in subsequentclasses to compare particular aspects of its representations of Puerto Ricanwomen with other portrayals. Therefore, West Side Story was viewed eitherwhole or in part throughout the three 6-week sessions. The classes wereaudio recorded and transcribed and analyzed using the constant comparisonmethod (Glaser, 1992).

Following the principles of critical pedagogy, the intent of the sessionswas to use discussions of films that depicted themes from the students’lives to provoke political consciousness (Freire, 2000). It could be arguedthat with such an objective I certainly influenced the participants’ responsesto the films we viewed. Furthermore, my positionality as a middle-aged,childless, middle-class, educated, African American woman influenced thechoices I made in the classes. However, Clifford (1997) and Rosaldo (1989)have argued that no culture is “pure” or “untouched.” Furthermore, evenresearchers who keep their interaction with their participants to a minimumalter the context by their mere presence. Hence, they argued that it is morehonest and effective to acknowledge ethnographic research as an interac-tion and incorporate the participants’ input in the process, which is what Iattempted to do by engaging the participants in discussions and yielding totheir interests and priorities even as I led the class.

One of the advantages of our interactive mode of interpretation was thatmy understanding of their readings was immediately available to the partic-ipants, and they were not shy about correcting me or politely refusing totake up my tangential observations. I could not get them to discuss anythingthey did not consider relevant to their experience. Hence, despite my influ-ence, the participants took advantage of the immediacy of our interactionsto insist upon more accurate interpretations of their readings and introducetheir own topics for discussion.

Regarding West Side Story, the participants validated the film as a rele-vant text by actually selecting it for viewing. Wanting their input in choosingthe films we viewed and discussed, I began the first session by showing TheBronze Screen: 100 Years of the Latino Image in Hollywood (2002), whichfeatures several clips from historical and modern films. I asked the studentsto let me know if they saw a film they would like to view in class. Assoon as West Side Story appeared on the screen, the Puerto Rican students’faces lit up, and “Angie” turned to me and said, “That one.” They eagerlyanticipated viewing it and found points of identification even though theyacknowledged its dated look and stereotypes.

The participants’ readings of West Side Story were both negotiatedand oppositional. They enjoyed the film, yet were highly resistant to itstropicalization of Puerto Rican culture. However, this negotiation mani-fested in an unexpected way. Their opposition was generally centered on

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

202 K. Brown

Natalie Wood’s portrayal of Maria, and their enjoyment generally centeredon the “America” scene, arguably the most jingoistic, racist scene in thefilm (Negrón-Muntaner, 2000; Sandoval-Sánchez, 1997, 1999). There wereother minor points of critique and identification; however, the vigor ofthe responses to Maria and “America” demands in-depth attention as theyprovided cogent insights into the participants’ priorities, values, struggles,and agency as Puerto Rican single mothers raising children and lovingPuerto Rican men in a challenging environment that was “home,” but not“Home.”

HATING MARIA: STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM

Similar to other findings, the participants had little positive to say concerningthe specifics of how the film portrayed Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rican cul-ture. However, whereas previous studies tend to address the film as a whole(Freydberg, 1995; Negrón-Muntaner, 2000; R. Pérez, 1997; Sandoval-Sánchez,1997), for the participants, Natalie Wood’s portrayal of Maria became thefocal point of their opposition. Their reception of Natalie Wood as Maria wasdoomed from the start because before they noted her brownface appearanceor heard her poor accent, they knew that in one of the rare films that fea-tured Puerto Rican characters, a White woman was chosen to play the PuertoRican lead and that choice was due to U.S. racism. The fact that Rita Morenowas cast as Anita was a poor consolation because Maria was the femaleprincipal.

Instead of voicing their frustration in terms of Puerto Rican victimhood,they displayed what could be interpreted as strategic essentialism, “a strate-gic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest”(Spivak, 1987, p. 205). Morton (2002), summarizing Spivak (1987), observed:

For minority groups in particular, the use of essentialism as a short-termstrategy to affirm a political identity can be effective, as long as thisidentity does not then get fixed as an essential category by a dominantgroup. . . . Strategic essentialism is thus most effective as a context-specific strategy, but it cannot provide a long-term political solution toend oppression and exploitation. (p. 75)

Although the participants’ use of strategic essentialism in their response toMaria may not qualify as a “scrupulously visible political interest” in thelarger society, in the immediate context Natalie Wood’s Maria was per-ceived as a clear hegemonic threat. Therefore, this subaltern group usedessentialism in a specific context for counterhegemonic purposes.

To begin, they interpreted the decision to cast White actors inbrownface as evidence of White jealousy:

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

West Side Story Read From Below 203

Carmen: They hatin’. They wish they had our color and our frickin . . .(. . .)

Dina: and bodies.

The rest of the class nodded in agreement with Carmen and Dina’s asser-tions. Then they turned their attention to Maria specifically. Wood nevergets it right. In their estimation, “real” Puerto Rican women were clearlysuperior to her poor performance. First, despite her naturally dark hairand enhanced tan (Negrón-Muntaner, 2000), Wood was insufficiently PuertoRican in appearance:

Mári: Look at her face features. You can tell she’s White.Angie: Right! Look at her nose!Dina: Yeah.

Angie: Pointy! They have pointy noses.Carmen: She doesn’t even have any hips.

The dark hair and tan were inadequate disguises for Wood’s Anglo features(pointy nose) and slender body (no hips). During the neighborhood dancescene that displayed the full cast, the participants eagerly scanned the PuertoRican characters until they found a woman, besides Rita Moreno, who theyfelt looked and moved like them:

Carmen: Is she Puerto Rican?Kennaria: Which one?Carmen: The one in the striped dress.Multiple: Striped dress.

Kennaria: Oh, the striped dress? I’m not sure. Since she doesn’t havea speaking role, I don’t know (she wouldn’t be clearlyidentified in the credits).

Carmen: She’s got the body right, though.Dina: The way she dances.

Last, Wood did not sound like them:

Mári: You can tell she was White, and they made her look colored. Inthe way she talks . . . you can tell.

Celia: Cause we don’t say “Papá,” we say “Pápi.”Mári: “Pápi.”Celia: Yes.

Moreover, in a scene that the filmmakers intended to be poignant, whenMaria pleads with God for the news of Bernardo’s death to be a mistake,“Please make it don’t be true!” the participants were chuckling and mocking

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

204 K. Brown

both her accent and syntax. In sum, with their oppositional reading of Mariathrough strategic essentialism, the participants constructed a “Puerto Ricanlook” on the basis of their appearance and linguistic norms.

The emphasis on Wood’s physical appearance is noteworthy becausePuerto Ricans are mainly descended from three ethnic heritages—European,Taíno (the indigenous group), and African—and therefore can vary inappearance from fair hair and skin, to brown, to an African phenotype,with myriad combinations. Although the Puerto Rican participants and staffat the organization were generally brown with curvaceous bodies, some ofthe staff shared with me that their extended families fill the color spectrum.This must have been the case with some the participants’ families as well.Therefore, at least some of them must have known that some real PuertoRicans do in fact look like Natalie Wood. However, in this particular con-text that was not the point. The point was that a White woman had beencast in one of the few positive Puerto Rican starring roles and their strategicessentialism validated their identities as real Puerto Ricans in the face of thetropicalization of their culture.

It is significant that the participants began with physicality because asthe literature argues, Latinas’ bodies—and Puerto Rican women’s bodies inparticular—are a site of a struggle between the “shame” of their darknessand curves representing sexual availability in the public imagination and“respectability” articulated with whiteness and middle-class status (Báez,2007a, 2007b; Cofer, 1998; Negrón-Muntaner, 2004; Rivero, 2005; Rojas,2004). In her historical analysis of Latina and African American women’srepresentation in U.S. films, Freydberg (1995) argued that Latina and AfricanAmerican women’s sexuality was contained by using their beauty andcurves—which should have been assets—against them as evidence of their“animal” sexuality and justification for their sexual exploitation. Beltrán(2002) noted the presence of the same tactics in Jennifer Lopez’s filmreviews. Moreover, Latina women who become mainstream stars, such asTejano singer Selena and actress/singer Jennifer Lopez are punished fortheir curves until they discipline their bodies into the Anglo beauty standard(Báez, 2007a; Beltrán, 2002; Negrón-Muntaner, 2004). The participants, bycontrast, asserted not just a Latina beauty standard, but a specifically PuertoRican standard, a tactic in their strategic essentialism also used by Báez’s(2007a) Puerto Rican participants. Báez (2007a) observed, “These PuertoRicans used a strategy of ethnocentrism embodied in the female body toarticulate that they were more ‘worthy’ than Mexicans to be visible in main-stream media” (p. 10). By asserting an ethnocentric beauty standard, theparticipants may have been essentializing what it means to “look” PuertoRican, but in this specific instance their essentialism served the counterhege-monic purpose of rejecting not only the dominant beauty standard, but the“shame” imposed on their brown, curvaceous bodies.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

West Side Story Read From Below 205

Another noteworthy aspect of the aforementioned interaction is theparticipants’ racial alignment. Throughout the discussions of the film,the participants clearly differentiated between themselves and whiteness,thereby racializing their Puerto Rican identity. Moreover, the physical mark-ers they emphasized in the preceding interactions are Afro-Caribbean traits:full hips and rounder flatter noses than Wood’s “pointy” European nose.Although racial dynamics in Latin American and Caribbean cultures differfrom those in the United States, Latina/o scholars are candid about the“racial” and/or “color” hierarchies in Latina/o cultures with the attendantarticulations of respectability and class (Rivero, 2003, 2005; Rojas, 2004).Rivero (2003) observed:

In various Latin American and Spanish Caribbean nations the Eurocentric-patriarchal gaze delimits the ways in which “beauty” is represented,situating “whiteness” (with both “race” and class connotations) as the epit-ome of purity and elegance for the female body. Conversely, “black” andmulata women have been socially constructed as hyper-sexual/sensualbodies, creating a distinction in terms of racialized gendered sexualityand perpetuating the stereotypes embedded in Western ideologies ofcivilization and primitivism. (p. 67)

The participants were mulata in coloring and features, so they are implicatedin Rivero’s (2003) observation. Therefore, it is possible that the participants’oppositional reading of Maria was counterhegemonic on two levels. First,they rejected U.S. White hegemony, then implicitly challenged the class andracial hierarchies within their own culture.

Whereas scholars of subaltern groups could emphasize the internalizedself-hatred that can accompany living as a racialized Other, many focus onagency and resistance (Bobo, 1995; Cofer, 1998; Flores, 1993, 2000; Hooks,1996; Khader, 2003), which, in this instance, appeared to be more the partic-ipants’ inclination as they used strategic essentialism to summarily reject anynotion of White superiority suggested through Wood as Maria. Appropriatingthe “Latin look” for their own culture, they devised a “Puerto Rican look” dis-tinct from not only White, but other Latina/o cultures: “We don’t say ‘Papá;’we say ‘Pápi.”’ In so doing, they also excluded many Puerto Ricans, whichis a major drawback in using essentialism as a counterhegemonic strategy(Morton, 2002). Yet, in this context, it served its purpose: to affirm the cul-tural identity of a specific group of Puerto Rican women who perceived theircultural integrity as under attack.

Furthermore, centering their critique on Wood’s performance of Mariamay be the key to the participants’ negotiated reading. With the narrow focusof their critique, they may have compartmentalized the film’s more negativefeatures, leaving the way clear to enjoy the aspects of the film that were

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

206 K. Brown

points of identification, such as the “America” scene. Like Bobo’s (1995)Black women participants, they had limited representations to choose fromso they took what was available and found something to relate to despitethe hegemonic context.

“AMERICA”: GENDERED TENSION AND ISLAND AMBIVALENCE

Sandoval-Sánchez (1997) observed, “There is no doubt that the song‘America’ and its choreography constitute one of the most rhythmic,energetic, and vital hits in the history of musical comedy” (p. 174). It isperformed entirely by Puerto Rican characters in their own space—whichSandoval-Sánchez (1997) noted is confined to one building—and despitebeing an homage to assimilation (Sandoval-Sánchez, 1997, 1999), it alsoprovides one of the few “authentic moments” in the film (Negrón-Muntaner,2000):

[T]his is the way that the question of Puerto Rico-U.S. relationshipshas been historically discussed among Islanders—acrimoniously. Thenumber does not elude most of the immigrant issues like racism andeconomic marginality, at the same time that it highlights the rosy expec-tations and optimistic reasons that most migrants have for coming tothe United States. If anything, “America” portrays an ambivalent pic-ture of life in the United States, with all its oppression and promise.(Negrón-Muntaner, 2000; p. 93)

Between the dynamism of the performance and the authentic notes in itscontent, it is no surprise that “America” was the only scene with which theparticipants fully identified.

The participants’ identification with “America” was largely based ontheir identities as Puerto Rican women. Despite its jingoism, “America” cap-tured key issues in their lives as working-class Puerto Rican mothers livingin the United States. The scene begins with Rita Moreno, an actual PuertoRican, singing “Puerto Rico, my heart’s devotion, let it sink into the ocean.”Despite this pejorative opening, which continues in the same vein, in thefirst viewing the participants chuckled over the opening line and thoroughlyenjoyed the whole performance. At the end of the song, when I asked,“What’s going on in this scene?” they revealed a dynamic they observedbetween Puerto Rican women and men in their social worlds. They reportedthat in general, similar to the characters in the movie, Puerto Rican menwant to return to Puerto Rico to escape U.S. racism and the women want toremain in the States primarily for reasons of economic and personal secu-rity. However, the participants also evinced ambivalence toward the Island,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

West Side Story Read From Below 207

indicating that although they had not rejected it outright, they did not wantto live there.

Gendered Tension

The tension between the participants and their male partners regardingreturning to the Island does not appear to be based on a lack of understand-ing on the women’s part. The women in the class had no trouble articulatingthe men’s position, even with empathy. Carmen remarked, “They like itbecause there (in Puerto Rico), it’s like every Puerto Rican understands eachother. So you know, they’ll be cool about it. Over here they got their (buttskicked) for their respect.” Although in later sessions a student qualified theclear gender divide represented in the film, in general the consensus wasthat in Puerto Rico the men experience the validation of intersubjectivityand the respect and sense of belonging that accompanies it. By contrast, inthe States although they are U.S. citizens, they remain racialized “foreigners”(Briggs, 2002; Flores, 1993).

Though Negrón-Muntaner (2000) is also critical of the strict genderdivide portrayed in the “America” scene, migration scholars confirm the gen-dered nature of the argument concerning returning to the homeland (Mahler& Pessar, 2006; Pessar, 1995, 1999). Feminist migration scholar Patricia Pessar(1999) reported the following:

Research shows consistently that gains in gender equity are central towomen’s desires to settle, more or less permanently, to protect theiradvances. In contrast, many men seek to return home rapidly to regainthe status and privileges that migration itself has challenged. (p. 587)

Briggs (2002) references one of the rare studies from the 1950s that por-trays Puerto Ricans fairly, A Puerto Rican Journey (Mills, Senior, & Goldsen,1950), as reaching a similar conclusion about Puerto Rican women’s experi-ence in the United States, “Puerto Rican women coming to the United Stateswere achieving greater independence from home and husband, freedomfrom male dominance, usually through work outside the home” (p. 82).Torres, Solberg, and Carlstrom (2002) argued that because of the inter-section of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic structural restrictions, manyworking-class Latino men living in the United States find themselves con-fronted with the sociopolitical expectations of manhood without access tothe resources to fulfill those expectations, whereas their female counter-parts are gaining greater autonomy and power within their households,which can be a further threat to their patriarchal status. Therefore, eventhough the gender divide in “America” is extreme, the students’ feedbackand migration/immigration scholarship support its basic contours: althoughboth male and female Puerto Rican migrants face the harsh realities of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

208 K. Brown

making a life in the United States, such as racism, the hardships appear tohave a greater effect on men, while women generally experience increasedopportunities and freedom.

Although the participants understood and empathized with their men’sposition, they agreed with the women in the “America” performance pri-marily for reasons of financial and physical security, frequently referring to aview of life on the Island that seemed more typical of the New York of WestSide Story. From Carmen, “The women get more of what they—their needs.They actually get to meet their needs in America. While back in Puerto Rico,you have to fight and die to get whatever the hell you want.” They reportedthat it is common for relationships to break up over disagreements aboutmoving to Puerto Rico, and this tension touched their relationships as well:

Angie: There’s a lot of women that live over here and leave theirhusbands because there ain’t shit out there.

Lisa: My best friend, her babyfather moved back to Puerto Rico,but she doesn’t want to go live there!

Carmen: It’s, I don’t know. Like I’m talking to this guy from PuertoRico, myself, and he’s in the thing of trying to convince meto move to Puerto Rico, I’m trying to convince him to movedown here. Because, the way they tell me about Puerto Ricois even though there’s a minimum wage, so you can work?

Lisa: Yeah.Carmen: You’re not gonna be makin shit out there! You’re not gonna

survive. How the hell you’re supposed to support—he has 3kids; I have mine. How the hell you’re supposed to support4 kids in—when you get paid 4-something an hour, are youcrazy? So no, it’s not good and then there’s a lot of killingsdown there. There’s killings down here, but over there it’s justhorrendous.

Invoking her responsibility to provide for her children and the need forgood paying jobs, Carmen’s concerns would not permit her to accept hermale partner’s offer and move to Puerto Rico. The participants revealed thattheir friends and acquaintances were leaving their husbands and children’sfathers over the same argument.

On the one hand, they understood their male partners’ battles withracism and feeling as if they could not be “real” men in the States (Mahler& Pessar, 2006; Pessar, 1995, 1999; Torres et al., 2002). On the other hand,although they were relying on hearsay for their information about life inPuerto Rico (only 2 of the women in the class had ever actually been toPuerto Rico, and then at a young age), the participants were concernedabout personal safety and having access to the resources they would needto provide for themselves and their children on the Island.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

West Side Story Read From Below 209

None of the aforementioned is meant to suggest that the participantsdid not experience racism and other forms of discrimination living in theUnited States. Although stories of racial discrimination were relatively few,on occasion participants shared stories about negative school experienceswith racist White students and teachers. However, the site where the partic-ipants had the greatest struggle was not race/ethnicity alone, but rather theintersection of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and age. Living in their worldas Puertoriqueñas was not as challenging as being young Puerto Rican sin-gle mothers on welfare. Because of this status, they reported encounteringhousing discrimination, blatant disrespect from welfare caseworkers, andparenting pressures—such as the constant threat of having their childrentaken away from them—that women who are not on welfare would findunimaginable (Jensen, 1998).

In light of these observations, it would seem that their actual livedexperience in “America” was closer to the male version than the rosy picturepainted by Anita and her friends. Yet, despite their struggles against com-bined racism, sexism, elitism, and a welfare system that punishes womenregardless of race (Asen, 2003; Flanders & Jackson, 1995; Fraser, 1989;Jennings, 2004; Jensen, 1998), like the women of West Side Story, they weremaking lives for themselves using the available resources—which they didnot perceive as attainable in Puerto Rico—even if access to those resourcesdid come with a bitter price. Although migrant/immigrant literature gener-ally does not specifically address welfare, it does explore women’s strugglebetween structure and agency as they sacrifice agency in one area of theirlives to gain it in others.

During a discussion of West Side Story in a later class, Celia—a PuertoRican woman in her mid-60s—sat in on the class and offered a historicalperspective that shed some light on the disparity between Puerto Ricanwomen and men’s experience in the United States:

Celia: It’s funny, I had a cousin who died, and we were discussingthis movie. And basically they came at the same time, aboutwhen this was made. And it was always easier for a womanto find a job than a man.

Kennaria: Ah, so it was just plain easier here. For women . . .Celia: To find a job.

Kennaria: Than it was for men.Millicent: Could it be cause back then they had the laundromats, they

had a lot of the seamstress, a lot of servers . . .Celia: That took it.

According to immigration scholars, the availability of jobs for migrant/immigrant women is closely related to Celia’s observation that they “took it.”Pessar (1995) noted that industrial employers prefer immigrant women for

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

210 K. Brown

low-skilled, labor-intensive work because they are “grateful” for the job andtend not to complain. In other words, they “take it.” Safa’s (1984) study ofthe production of the working-class in Puerto Rico added that in factories inPuerto Rico younger women were also preferred to older women becausethey were more optimistic about their futures and therefore less likely tocomplain about their hours and working conditions than older women whohad become disillusioned with industrial labor. Thus, the increased auton-omy and power in the household came with a price. The working womenhad to submit to an exploitative racist and patriarchal system in the publicsphere in order to gain power in the private sphere of the household. Tothe best of my knowledge, none of the employed students were involved inindustrial labor; however, like the menial employment of previous genera-tions and modern immigrant women, welfare benefits were a resource thatprovided the participants with some financial security and autonomy fromtheir men in the private sphere while they paid a hefty price in their dealingswith public institutions.

Island Ambivalence

Although the participants were determined to remain in the States, theycertainly did not want Puerto Rico to “sink into the ocean.” The consensuswas that they would like to visit Puerto Rico, but not live there. However,even this idea was somewhat ambivalent and revealed a lack of personalknowledge about the Island:

Ida: Some of my best friends are (going) and I just don’t knowabout the whole flying over—and a thousand degrees, I don’tknow.

Carmen: I wanna go back. The beaches.Lisa: It’s nice to go on vacation, but not to live.

Angie: I don’t want to go, I’d like to go. I’ve never been there. I wantto go there.

In light of their perceptions of Puerto Rico’s crime and poverty, coupledwith the fact that the majority of the participants had never actually been toPuerto Rico, it is not surprising that the participants were ambivalent aboutthe Island. Moreover, they may have been concerned about their receptionfrom Island Puerto Ricans.

The three Puerto Rican feminist authors featured in Khader’s (2003)article, “Subaltern Cosmopolitanism: Community and Transnational Mobilityin Caribbean Postcolonial Feminist Writings” report a “homelessness” amongPuerto Ricans living in the United States, “For [the authors] Levins Morales,Morales, and Santiago, however, there is no genuine sense of home even inthe homeland” (p. 64). Weary of their marginalization in the United States as

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

West Side Story Read From Below 211

a threatening foreign presence, they turn to Puerto Rico only to discover thateven in their homeland they remain marginalized as a threatening foreignpresence. Briggs (2002) observed:

Homesickness for the Boriquen was a constant companion, but so toowas knowledge of the lack of work there and the growing hostility onthe part of those who remained on the island toward the people theyderisively termed ‘Nuyoricans’ (p. 79).

U.S. Puerto Ricans are not “Puerto Rican enough” for Island Puerto Ricans;moreover, the Island cannot live up to U.S. Puerto Ricans’ idealized dreamsof the “homeland” (Flores, 1993; Khader, 2003). Thus, the authors inKhader’s (2003) essay reveal a sense of homelessness that offers insight intothe participants’ ambivalence. They could be ambivalent toward the Islandin part because the Island is ambivalent toward them.

In summary, the discussion of “America” revealed key areas of inter-sectionality in the participants’ lives. They were proud of their ethnicityas Puerto Ricans and had an appreciation of and respect for the Island.However, as low-income single mothers, they literally could not afford toentertain thoughts of moving there, which was driving a wedge betweenthem and their male partners, whose position they understood, but could notsupport. Proud of their cultural heritage, yet unable to return home for prac-tical and perhaps psychological reasons, they were ambivalent about their“homeland” and working to build lives for themselves and their children inthe States.

The focusing of opposition on Maria and identification on “America”reflects Negrón-Muntaner’s (2000) observation, “Although the leads are madeup to look like ‘us’ and fail, most of the identification work takes place withthe secondary characters and the vaguely ‘Latino’ music” (p. 92). Whereasthe “America” scene captures the story of the secondary characters, NatalieWood’s Maria, by contrast, literally embodies the film’s tropicalizing effect.After summarily rejecting Maria, the participants searched for themselves inthe film and found a scene that—if they negotiated the tropes—expressedtheir experience and values as young, urban, Puerto Rican mothers.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: READING WEST SIDE STORYFROM BELOW

The participants produced a negotiated validation of West Side Story as a cul-tural text that is relevant to their lives as modern-day Puerto Rican womennavigating the intersection of race/ethnicity, class, and gender as they striveto build lives for themselves and their children in “America.” For the most

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

212 K. Brown

part, they corroborated previous observations about the musical’s tropical-ization of Puerto Rican culture as well as its “authentic” notes in representingthe Puerto Rican migration experience by bringing these observations to theground of their lived experience. Yet West Side Story appears to have adifferent significance for them than previous generations of Puerto Ricans.

Whereas Sandoval-Sánchez (1997, 1999) and Negrón-Muntaner (2000)have placed some emphasis on the film’s “hailing” function in establish-ing Puerto Rican identity both in the U.S. imaginary and for Puerto Ricans aswell, West Side Story seems to have lost—or at least significantly weakened—its power of interpellation for the current generation. They had no tales ofsomeone “hailing” them with a drunken rendition of “Maria” (Cofer, 1998)or White classmates and colleagues immediately referencing West Side Storyupon learning their ethnic identity (Sandoval-Sánchez, 1997, 1999). AlthoughPuerto Rican stories are still rare in popular film, Puerto Rican celebrities,music, and dance have become mainstream (Flores, 2000; Negrón-Muntaner,2004; Valdivia, 2006). Add to this list a Supreme Court judge, and there arenow more popular cultural references for Puerto Ricanness in the U.S. imag-inary, freeing the current generation from West Side Story’s long hold onthe popular expression of Puerto Rican identity, while retaining some ofits cultural relevance due to the dearth of Puerto Rican stories. The partic-ipants’ interest in and identification with the film appeared to be rooted intheir hunger for specifically Puerto Rican representations (as opposed to aPuerto Rican actress portraying “ethnic” characters) in popular cultural prod-ucts, exposing a need for Puerto Rican stories in film. Referencing Espiritu(2001), Calafell and Delgado (2004) argued that “social change must takeplace on the level of mediated images as oppressed groups respond toideological racism through constructions of their own images. In a medi-ated world, dueling images become the battleground for the articulation ofidentity” (p. 3).

Even with a rise in Puerto Rican representation in U.S. popular culture,West Side Story retains its cultural significance for modern-day Puerto Ricanslargely because it has yet to be replaced. Hence, perhaps assisted by theloss or weakening of film’s interpellation power, the participants expressedsecurity and pride in their Puerto Rican identities and with their negotiatedand oppositional readings they used both the misrepresentations and themore authentic notes in the film to affirm their social identities as PuertoRican women and mothers living in the United States.

Moving to the larger context of media studies, West Side Story as a prod-uct of its time and a socially stratified society joins a long line of culturalproducts that tropicalize subaltern cultures to commodify them for main-stream audiences (Aparicio & Chávez-Silverman, 1997; Beltrán, 2002) as wellas use negative media representations to pathologize a racialized subalternpopulation in the public mindset, obfuscating the role of oppressive social,political, and economic systems in generating social ills. R. Pérez (1997)

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

West Side Story Read From Below 213

and Sandoval-Sánchez (1997, 1999) have argued that films featuring PuertoRicans in the 1950s and 1960s in general and West Side Story in particular setup urban Puerto Ricans as scapegoats for the country’s social ills, especiallyjuvenile delinquency. R. Pérez (1997) argues, “The limiting of Puerto Ricancharacterizations and images to crime films effectively linked the already-established images of ‘otherness’ and ‘racial inferiority’ with the ‘modern’stereotype of criminality” (p. 148). Thus this observation also connects thestudy to feminist media studies because any examination of media repre-sentation of mothers on welfare—particularly mothers of color—reveals thesame strategy of blaming the victim (Flanders & Jackson, 1995; Jensen, 1998),thereby absolving a racist, sexist system of oppression.

Therefore, the present study supports the importance of audiencereception studies in media scholarship, particularly in regard to subalternaudiences. Such studies expose the link between popular media and theday-to-day lives of subaltern citizens on the ground as they make do withhegemonic representations of their lives and find validation despite thelimitations. Specifically, many studies featuring the voices of marginalizedwomen as cultural readers rearticulate these women’s social roles. Insteadof being articulated as helpless, voiceless victims of an oppressive systemor as selfish agents living off the government, they are rearticulated as cul-tural agents with an expressed and cogent standpoint. Their lived realitiesbecome visible and unjudged, as the preeminence of their voices allowstheir experiences to be expressed and evaluated on their own terms.

REFERENCES

Aparicio, F. R., & Chávez-Silverman, S. (1997). Tropicalizations: Transculturalrepresentations of Latinidad. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.

Archibold, R. C. (2010, May 28). Arizona law is stoking unease among Latinos. TheNew York Times, p. A11.

Asen, R. (2003). Women, work, welfare: A rhetorical history of images of poorwomen in welfare policy debates. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 6 , 285–312.

Báez, J. (2007a). Speaking of Jennifer Lopez: Discourses of iconicity and identityformation among Latina audiences. Media Report to Women, 35, 5–13.

Báez, J. (2007b). Towards a Latinidad feminista: The multiplicities of Latinidad andfeminism in contemporary cinema. Popular Communication, 5, 109–128.

Beltrán, M. C. (2002). The Hollywood Latina body as site of social struggle: Mediaconstructions of stardom and Jennifer Lopez’s “cross-over butt.” QuarterlyReview of Film & Video, 19, 71–86.

Berg, C. R. (2002). Latino images in film: Stereotypes, subversion, resistance. Austin:University of Texas Press.

Bobo, J. (1995). Black women as cultural readers. New York: Columbia UniversityPress.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

214 K. Brown

Briggs, L. (2002). La Vida, Moynihan, and other libels: Migration, social science, andthe making of the Puerto Rican welfare queen. Centro Journal, 14, 75–101.

Calafell, B. M., & Delgado, F. P. (2004). Reading Latina/o images: InterrogatingAmericanos. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 21, 1–21.

Clifford, J. (1997). Routes: Travel and translation in the late twentieth century.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cofer, J. O. (1998). The myth of the Latin woman: I just met a girl named Maria. InR. Rothenberg (Ed.), Race, class, and gender in the United States: An integratedstudy (4th ed., pp. 292–296). New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Dávila, A. (2001). Latinos Inc.: The marketing and making of a people. Berkeley:University of California Press.

Espiritu, Y. L. (2001). Ideological racism and cultural resistance: Constructing ourown images. In M. L. Anderson & P. H. Collins (Eds.), Race, class, and gender:An anthology (2nd ed., pp. 191–199). Stamford, CT: Wadsworth.

Flanders, L., & Jackson, F. (1995). Public enemy no. 1? Media’s welfare debate is awar on poor women. Extra!, 8(3), 13–16.

Flores, J. (1993). Divided borders: Essays on Puerto Rican identity. Houston, TX: ArtePúblico Press.

Flores, J. (2000). From bomba to hip-hop: Puerto Rican culture and Latino identity.New York: Columbia University Press.

Fraser, N. (1989). Women, welfare, and the politics of need interpretation. InN. Fraser (Ed.), Unruly practices: Power, discourse, and gender in contemporarysocial theory (pp. 144–160). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum International.Freydberg, E. H. (1995). Sapphires, spitfires, sluts, and superbitches: Aframericans

and Latinas in contemporary American film. In K. M. Vaz (Ed.), Black womenin America (pp. 222–243). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Glaser, B. G. (1992). Basics of grounded theory analysis. Mill Valley, CA: SociologyPress.

Hooks, B. (1996). Reel to real: Race, sex and class at the movies. New York:Routledge.

Jennings, P. K. (2004). What mothers want: Welfare reform and maternal desire.Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 31, 113–130.

Jensen, R. H. (1998). Welfare: Exploding the stereotypes. In R. Rothenberg (Ed.),Race, class, and gender in the United States: An integrated study (4th ed.,pp. 242–248). New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Khader, J. (2003). Subaltern cosmopolitanism: Community and transnational mobilityin Caribbean postcolonial feminist writings. Feminist Studies, 29, 63–81.

Mahler, S. J., & Pessar, P. R. (2006). Gender matters: Ethnographers bring gen-der from the periphery toward the core of migration studies. InternationalMigration Review, 40, 27–63.

Mills, C. W., Senior, C., & Goldsen, R. K. (1950). Puerto Rican journey: New York’snewest migrants. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Morton, S. (2002). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. New York: Routledge.Negrón-Muntaner, F. (2000). Feeling pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican identity

discourses. Social Text, 63, 83–106.Negrón-Muntaner, F. (2004). Boriqua pop: Puerto Ricans and the latinization of

American culture. New York: New York University Press.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

West Side Story Read From Below 215

Nominees & Winners: The Shows. (2009). West Side Story. Retrieved August14, 2009, from http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/nominees/shows/index.html#content.

Pérez, G. M. (2001). An upbeat west side story: Puerto Ricans and postwar politicsin Chicago. Centro Journal, 13, 47–71.

Pérez, R. (1997). From assimilation to annihilation: Puerto Rican images in U.S.films. In C. Rodriguez (Ed.), Latin looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in theU.S. media (pp. 142–163). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Pessar, P. R. (1995). On the homefront and in the workplace: Integrating immigrantwomen into feminist discourse. Anthropological Quarterly, 68, 37–47.

Pessar, P. R. (1999). Engendering migration studies. American Behavioral Scientist,42, 577–600.

Rivero, Y. M. (2003). The performance and reception of televisual “ugliness” in Yosoy Betty la fea. Feminist Media Studies, 3, 66–81.

Rivero, Y. M. (2005). Tuning out blackness: Race and nation in the history of PuertoRican television. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Rodriguez, C. (1997). Latin looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. media.Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Rojas, V. (2004). The gender of Latinidad: Latinas speak out about Hispanictelevision. The Communication Review, 7 , 125–153.

Rosaldo. R. (1989). Culture & truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston: BeaconPress.

Safa, H. I. (1984). Female employment and the social reproduction of the PuertoRican working class. International Migration Review, 18, 1168–1187.

Sandoval-Sanchez, A. (1997). West Side Story: A Puerto Rican reading of “America.”In C. E. Rodríguez (Ed.), Latin looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S.media (pp. 164–179). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Sandoval-Sanchez, A. (1999). José, can you see?: Latinos on and off Broadway.Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Sarat, A. (2000). The micropolitics of identity/difference: Recognition and accom-modation in everyday life. Daedalus, 129, 147–168.

Spivak, G. C. (1987). In other worlds: Essays in cultural politics. New York: Methuen.Teachout, T. (2004). Jerome Robbins in person. Commentary, 118, 76–79.Torres, J. B., Solberg, V. S. H., & Carlstrom, A. H. (2002). The myth of sameness

among Latino men and their machismo. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry,2, 163–181.

Valdivia (2006). Salsa as popular culture: Ethnic audiences constructing an identity.In A. N. Valdivia (Ed.), A companion to media studies (pp. 399–418). Malding,MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Walker, A. (1982). The color purple. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

13:

37 1

4 O

ctob

er 2

014