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Relevance of west side story
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One of the things that first struck me about the play was that the characters believed they lived a good life. I saw the exact opposite. The good life is shown through success, success through a career, education, goals, and love, or at least we are brought up thinking so. The gangs only had one another and without the support of that gang, these boys/characters would not exist as individual human beings. The Jets did not want to have jobs, and they mocked the ex-gang member, Tony, for leaving the gang to make a future for himself. Life outside the gang was not an option for the Jets. None of the boys had any future plans or felt the need for anything else in their lives. Tony did not live the good life, but he did have dreams. He knew there was a better life for him out there, and parting from the gang allowed him to search for that life. Maybe it was only me, but Tony seemed to be the happiest person there, even before he met Maria.
The West Side Story did not demonstrate a good society, either. The people outside the gang did not help to lead these kids in the right direction. The gangs learned to be negative towards one another, because people of higher authority did the same, such as the cops. I was shocked when the cop made racist comments towards the Sharks, I would think that a black man in that time period would be more aware of racial tensions and slurs. In the song “Officer Krupke” the Jets sing of several reasons to why society believes they are bad kids. Society makes it okay for them to be bad, and the boys just accept those excuses. People in their society were constantly giving them negative remarks and this eventually led them to believe that what people told them was true. The society had the same hatred that the two gangs for each other.
In spite of their lack of opportunities both gangs have a lot of fun at the dance (although it is laced with tension). The fun was portrayed by the vibrant colors of the girl's dresses and the boys' shirts, the frenetic music. I really loved the wonderful outfits, and I think that they really do make the play reachable.
I was wondering if West Side Story has ever been done in a setting other than proscenium.
The different groups of friends were completely different from each other. There was the group that wanted to be popular and get all the girls with a party, and there was a group that had all the music records that the other needed. That was the group that was trying to make money as well. Both parties also wanted girls. The fact that these two groups had seemingly presented themselves as gangs shows how much they wanted to be apart from each other. The gangs symbolized the separatism of the youth. The catch to their separateness is that they really needed one another to get what they wanted. The one group needed music and the other group needed money. They ended up making a deal with each other, which was conspired by Bacc. The fact that they were able to come together like that symbolized that they really should be together.
In the end, Tony plays the role of both hero and villain. His wife, Marcela, represents both the whore and the virgin Mexican-American. The both prove unfaithful: Tony to America and Marcela to Mexico. Herein lays the schizophrenic world in which good and bad coexist across the borders of two emerging world countries struggling for control of land and culture. There’s a price to be paid for such human greed and unrealistic expectations. Ultimately it proves to be a place where virtue doesn’t remain intact and villains abound, even among the good guys!
1. Riff- He is the leader of the Jets. Founded it with Tony. A wild man that acts like a punk and dies in a fight.
Tony saw through the prejudice though, he loved one of the PR's and when the Jets found out, they were ashamed. Tony's love for Maria was so real, he didn't care what happened. He died.Prejudice plagues this world now and forever, as long as there is a difference in people there will discrimination and prejudice.
In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens’ choice of sentimental expression had an excellent effect on the readers’ responses to the characters. The use of exaggerated sentimentality helped create a clear picture of the story’s issues in the readers’ minds; it gave a feel for the spirit of the times, and made it easier to understand the characters’ points of view. It was this very sentimentality that Dickens strived to achieve.
West Side Story suffered a doubtful early history before it made its first Broadway appearance in 1957. The musical was not appealing to potential investors because it was considered too dark and ugly to be commercially viable; its gritty realism and tragic ending seemed too serious to become mainstream. West Side Story dealt with serious subjects—bigotry, race, rape, murder, and death—in a more direct way than Broadway had seen before. Although it did not initially seem possible, West Side Story successfully synthesizes the large tradition of Broadway with the relevancy of Hispanic immigration and juvenile delinquency of the 1950s.
In this musical, it uses several types of narratives, for example, after the fight between the Jets and Puerto Ricans, after the police leave, they enter the ally and the girl is begging to join the gang saying how much she wants to fight is a part of narrative sexuality (B 34). The girl is more of a tom boy who wants to be like one of the guys.
Greed, ambition, and the possibility of self-gain are always constant in their efforts to influence people’s actions. In Julius Caesar, Marcus Brutus, a venerable politician, becomes a victim of the perpetual conflict between power-hungry politicians and ignorant commoners. He is a man of honor and good intentions who sacrifices his own happiness for the benefit of others. Unfortunately, his honor is strung into a fine balance between oblivion and belief and it is ultimately the cause of his downfall. His apparent obliviousness leads him to his grave as his merciful sparing of Mark Antony’s life, much like Julius Caesar’s ghost, comes back to haunt him. Overall, Brutus is an honest, sincere man who holds the lives of others in high regard while he himself acts as a servant to Rome.
...see karma in the ending where Lil Z returns to the city looking for the children for help id assume these children turn on hi and kill him Rocket captures the whole scenery which made him famous having one person on the inside and living another life where that shot he took landed on the front page of the newspaper. Neighborhoods do have an impact on a child's behavior as well as the way they vision themselves growing up. A child's background in life matters no matter what. Where a child has grown up the neighborhood history remains the same until someone changes the perspective of the scenery the children grew up in as well as the violence that was always surrounded them. They need a better role model because in the end history bounded to repeat itself having now kids under the age of 15 walking around thinking they run the place till history repeats itself again.
In West Side Story, the premise is quite similar. The two rival gangs are the Jets- the Americans, and the Sharks- the Puerto Ricans. The Jets hate the sharks because they feel as if they are encroaching on their territory when they walk the streets of New York as easily as the Jets. The Jets and the Sharks have been in a constant state of uproar since the Puerto Ricans first started moving to America and the gangs were formed.... ...
The Classical Hollywood style, according to David Bordwell remains “bound by rules that set stringent limits on individual innovation; that telling a story is the basic formal concern.” Every element of the film works in the service of the narrative, which should be ideally comprehensible and unambiguous to the audience. The typical Hollywood film revolves around a protagonist, whose struggle to achieve a specific goal or resolve a conflict becomes the foundation for the story. André Bazin, in his “On the politique des auteurs,” argues that this particular system of filmmaking, despite all its limitations and constrictions, represented a productive force creating commercial art. From the Hollywood film derived transnational and transcultural works of art that evoked spectatorial identification with its characters and emotional investment into its narrative. The Philadelphia Story, directed by George Cukor in 1940, is one of the many works of mass-produced art evolving out of the studio system. The film revolves around Tracy Lord who, on the eve of her second wedding, must confront the return of her ex-husband, two newspaper reporters entering into her home, and her own hubris. The opening sequence of The Philadelphia Story represents a microcosm of the dynamic between the two protagonists Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven, played by Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Through the use of costume and music, the opening sequence operates as a means to aesthetically reveal narrative themes and character traits, while simultaneously setting up the disturbance that must be resolved.
A main theme in West Side Story is racism. The Jets' sole reason for not liking the Sharks is simply based on the fact that they are Puerto Rican. Even as little kids, we have this natural instinct to fear things we don’t understand. The Jets were intimidated by the Sharks mostly because they didn’t act like them, look the same, or have the same beliefs as them. The same can be said for the Sharks, and it’s because of these differences that these two groups of people were willing to physically hurt each other, even to the point of death. These types of things still happen all the time. People still don’t know how to put aside their differences to find the things they
Throughout the early years in many East Asian countries, there were many people who were looking for answers to this world’s, and otherworldly, questions. When Gotama became enlightened, and began preaching the practices of Buddhism, it came at such a time when the Han dynasty was collapsing, citizens were tired of Confucianism and looking for a new ideology that they could put there hearts and souls into. Over the years, Buddhism proved to be much more than just a religion; it became a way of life. But over time, the powerful orthodoxy transformed, and many different Buddhist sects emerged. One of the more popular sects, Ch’an, or Zen, Buddhism, has become one of the most influential religions in China and Japan, and is still flourishing today.
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 1. What is the difference between a. and a. Point out how the general setting of the play is established. Give at least two examples. The play West Side Story takes place in a suburb on the West Side of New York City. We can conclude that we are talking about a socially disadvantaged suburb as the surrounding area is described with high brick walls, not very attractive and by the presence of the two gangs.