When it was announced that Spielberg would remake one of the most beloved movies and plays ever, West Side Story, my first thought was why? The new version, of course, would be more politically correct, apparently under the belief that it was unfair and demeaning to Puerto Ricans. For reasons that were unclear, this new version would correct the casting, the story, the songs, for their sake, as the original failed to serve to show them as they, today, would prefer to be shown.
West Side Story bombed. It’s been a massive box office failure. Huge failure. And not, apparently, because it wasn’t well done, even if it still failed to be as woke as some demanded. Was the problem that Maria wasn’t as Hispanic as she should have been or that nobody needed a woke remake of West Side Story? Why can’t beloved old shows, whether movies, plays, television, be left alone? Do we really need a new, serious, remake of Fresh Prince of Bel Air?
John McWhorter comes at this from the Encores! series at New York City Center.
The Encores! series at New York City Center has, a program for the new season reads, “staged weeklong revivals of rarely seen musicals from the Broadway canon” for nearly three decades. It does such a great job that a revival can jump the rails back to Broadway: The current run of “Chicago” started as an Encores! revival and has been going (minus the pandemic break) for around a quarter century. The three Encores! shows each year have become a kind of ritual for many New York theatergoers, and the appeal is obvious: Every now and then, it’s both entertaining and edifying to dust off an old show and give it another look.
Broadway puts on far more plays than one might realize because many fail to make it past opening night. Not every show is Cats, Phantom or Hamilton. But when a play is a huge hit, captures the hearts of theatergoers, its revival after dormant decades may bring back the love it enjoyed the first time around. So naturally, this means it has to be screwed with this time.
But the artistic director of Encores!, Lear deBessonet, named to that role shortly before the pandemic, appears to have something a bit different in mind. Quoted in the program, she said Encores!:
had been this gorgeous archaeological site that had been perfectly excavated. So, what’s next? The question that had always been there but became the most urgent was, “How do we decide when we give audiences a second look at a show?” Almost zero shows written before the 21st century have a worldview and politics that sit well with a contemporary viewer, so what is the criteria? I love that question.
Do beloved movies, plays, television shows, really not “sit well with a contemporary viewer? Some, like the beloved Disney movie “Dumbo,” are downright offensive these days, and might well be difficult to ignore. Others, like “My Fair Lady,” might seem more like a relic, a “museum piece,” but one to be suffered as a reminder of how Eurocentric we once were. What causes this is a puzzlement, but somehow we can suffer some and not others.
But McWhorter raises a different question. Why can’t we accept these old shows as “museum pieces” rather than bastardize them to fit into the sensibilities of the moment?
Nor what the producing creative director Clint Ramos had to say: “I’m excited to be bringing a practitioner’s point of view as well as a social justice approach,” adding, “History is written by the powerful, so it’s not just about looking back, but how we look back. With ‘The Tap Dance Kid’” — this season’s first production — “we are expanding the definition of a hidden gem.” Its director, Kenny Leon, added, “You have to speak to the audience sitting in the seats today” because “we’re not creating museum pieces.”
As if a museum piece is inherently a mistake. Even though museum pieces are pretty much what Encores! has been pulling out of the proverbial crates all these years — indeed, “museum pieces” is what “Encores!” implies. But per deBessonet, “We knew that the mission was going to grow into its next stage of evolution.” In other words, apparently, Encores! hasn’t been woke enough, and the job is to correct this supposed flaw.
No one is stopping any writer, director, producer, from coming up with the some totally hip, completely woke, cutting edge social justice movie, play or TV show. Do it! Lin-Manuel Miranda pulled off a coup with ‘Hamilton”, even if it later proved unwoke for lack of focus on Jefferson’s treatment of his slave, Sally Hemmings. Miranda tried again with “In the Heights” and learned the hard way that no love story can be woke enough to overcome all shrieks of racism.
How would it harm us to see the show staged according to the script that Broadway audiences enjoyed 25 years ago? Why doesn’t it suffice to make clear, perhaps with a disclaimer in the program, that the Encores! team does not endorse certain attitudes of earlier times, but still thinks that the revived piece is worthy of a revival that hews as closely as possible to the original?
If an old show no longer suits your sensibilities, there is always the option of not seeing it. Maybe it’s no longer worthy of our love and appreciation, a relic of a time when we were not yet awakened to need to only portray Puerto Ricans the way they, or at least some of them, demand to be portrayed today? But if you’re putting on a “museum piece” because it was loved decades ago, then put the relic on and let the audience love it or hate it. And if no one wants to see a relic, then it will be a West Side failure. As it should be.
Innkeeper, I’m so glad you brought this up! You see, I’ve been working on revisioning “Gone With the Wind.” In my vision, Pork and Mammy are Rhett and Scarlett and Rhett is really in love with Ashley. Tara doesn’t get wrecked, but becomes the capitol of the Republic of Equal, which is what the South became after everyone became enlightened to the real truth of what happened (I’m saving that for the end). Oh, and Bonnie Blue didn’t die–she was the President of Equal! It’s almost done. I’m trying to figure what to do with the cotton-picking horses.
Next up is “Citizen Caine.” That didn’t go far enough and sleds aren’t used by anyone no more.
Rosebud.
So many cues to choose from!
Let us not be too hasty. It would be a shame to shut this down before the “woke” version of HMS Pinafore.
To keep with Gilbert & Sullivan, why not The Mikado? A play where the entire point is that white actors don makeup, including pulling their eyelids back, to make themselves look like 17th Century Japanese courtiers?
If a revised edition of a show is successful, good for them. For those who like the relics, let’s hope that there will always be a place for us, somewhere.
I can’t imagine that “Song of the South” will ever be released again, except in a completely transformed version that will not even keep the music.
Don’t be too surprised when the goons from Disney corp show up to get you to forget all about that one.
(Clearly, time travel is impossible given that there are memories of that.)
I’m waiting for the woke version of Birth of a Nation.
I may be off here but this makes me think if the Mel Brooks movie .. The producers”… a quick recap is an unethical producer of plays/musicals attempts to put on a production guaranteed to flop.
Using comedy Brooks skewered stereotypes about Jewish people, the entertainment industry etc.
Shouldn’t artistic expression be presented in a way that those with ideology can’t obviously penetrate it? Who wants to be told that almost everything from the past is tainted with racism? Personally I think humor and mockery are better ways to show us our faults and hypocrisies
I’m looking forward to the woke people discovering “Carousel” or “The Taming of the Shrew”
By your leave, Admiral, allow me to give a plug for local community theater. There’s quite a lot of talent way, way off Broadway that can provide an enjoyable evening for a very reasonable price. These folks work hard, for little or no money, just for the love of it.
I knew nothing about theater until my daughter became interested then involved in a number of local productions, as a performer and/or crew member. Everyone should be so lucky to have children that can open up a whole new world for you.
Sigh. Fine. Just this once.
You da mensch.
I liked the new one . I watched the old one a thousand times as an English teacher, as we paired it with Romeo and Juliet. I like old movies. Most teenagers do not. I didn’t see a huge difference in the actual story, and some of it was better. So yay! Happy to have an updated version for the kids to see.
Well, that makes one of you.
“West Side Story” is a farcical parody of heterosexuality and urban ethnic masculinity as imagined by theatrical gay Jewish men. Trying to make it into something more “authentic” was always going to be a fool’s errand. Kushner himself admitted that it’s “a product of its time” and that “there were certain kinds of articulations unavailable to the four gay Jews that wrote the thing originally.” Kushner proved no better at the task than the “four gay Jews” who preceded him and his attempted “articulations” didn’t cut it either.
Enlightened woke critics had already pronounced “West Side Story” to be beyond salvage and irredeemable even before Spielberg’s film version. In 2020, the New York Times decreed “Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die. The latest Broadway revival can’t fix the painful way it depicts Puerto Ricans.” Spielberg’s adaption only earned more execration, with Puerto Rican and other racial intellectuals condemning it as travesty forever tainted by its source material. So the verdict from the “woke” jury is loud enough. They think “West Side Story” should stay a museum piece and preferably never be put on again.
How would anybody know anything about West Side Story if you didn’t show up to explain it to all the blithering idiots? You are so very smart and we thank you for using small words so we can grasp your brilliance.
You’re so very welcome. I’ll be sure to use smaller words as your Alzheimer’s progresses.
Your genius is only exceeded by your kindness.
And thankfully, this blog doesn’t demand much of either.
Well then, I fail to see why your valuable genius time and attention should be squandered here. If you can’t resist the impulse, I can help. It’s the least I can do to repay you.
In 2020, the New York Times decreed “Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die
Meh. That was written by a gay Jew.
Fun fact: when I came out of the closet, gay Latinos in Miami called me Papi as I adamantly denied I was gay. Then later the gay Jews in Ft Lauderdale snickered in the leather bars when they learned of my nickname. That was until they bent over for me in their bedroom, and screamed mas duro Papi. So yeah, you nailed it in the ass with those stereotypes. Que maricon tu eres.
Unnecessarily vivid, but under the circumstances, I’ll allow it.
Rather than or in addition to being considered “museum pieces” (though I am thinking of Leda and the Swan being withdrawn from view for a work depicting the consequences even to Zeus for lack of consent), what about comparison to books?
If someone finds Huckleberry Finn or Merchant of Venice offensive that may be reason not to read it or assign it to a class. But (even if bowdlerized versions are available) the original work is not made unavailable to the public in favor of a revised politically correct version of the novel. Are plays and movies to be treated differently merely because they are performed rather than read?