Clay, Daniel, & Will
Decoding West Side Story
For our group presentation, we took an in-depth look at the making and background of the hit musical West Side Story. We begin by talking about the directors of the musical, Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein, both of whom are caucasian, Jewish males, and how their stereotypical views of Latinos are portrayed throughout the musical. Our presentation delves deeply into the theme of representation, and how Sondheim and Bernstein portrayed both the Jets and the Sharks, as well as the controversy surrounding the portrayal of Maria by a caucasian actress. Finally, our group touches on the role of music and dress attire, which helps to further differentiate the two groups of people.
Below are the various movie clips that our group used to illustrate the stereotypes of the directors (shown as black slides on the linked PowerPoint Presentation):
Representation of the Jets
Representation of the Sharks
Differences in Dance Style
Click the link below to see a full PDF version of our PowerPoint presentation: