Side Story Research Articles

1961: Fifty Years of the Southeastern Geographer

1961: Fifty Years of the Southeastern Geographer Graham A. Tobin and Robert Brinkmann This is the fiftieth volume of the Southeastern Geographer, the first having been published in 1961 under the editorship of James A. Shear. And what a year that was; along with the birth of the Southeastern Geographer there were other momentous events. Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space followed a month later by Alan Shepard. The space race was heating up and the pursuit for the moon began with President Kennedy setting the goal of a landing a man on our satellite before the end of the decade; so taking geography from its “geo” earth bound status to lunar and planetary surfaces. Roger Maris hit 61 home runs controversially beating Babe Ruth’s record; the Beatles perform in the Cavern Club, and that classic sit-com, Mr. Ed, premiers on television! At the same time, the films Breakfast at Tiffany’s and West Side Story showed two distinctly different faces of the same city. In the same city, Celia Cruz and Bob Dylan came on the scene and Robert Rauschenberg produced Rigger. The times, they were a-changing. In 1961 our global geography was also changing, at least from a political perspective, as the old colonial powers were compelled to adjust to a new world order, one where emerging nations increasingly exerted their rights to sovereignty and independence. In country after country, the dominance of European hegemony in Africa, in Asia and elsewhere was challenged sometimes peaceably and sometimes by force. In 1961, Sierra Leone and Tanzania each declared its independence and became the 100th and 104th members of the United Nations joining Mongolia and Mauritania that year. Algeria revolted against the French and Spanish troops left Morocco. Mauritania and Gabon adopted new constitutions, Ethiopia installed its first premier (Aklilou Habtewold), East and West Cameroon merged to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon, and the Trucial States1 issued its first postage stamps. The fight for freedoms and support for emerging nations was growing and by the end of the decade much of Africa was liberated from its colonial past. At the same time, other actions in 1961 promulgated changes that set in motion some of the events of the latter half of the 20th century. For example, South Africa withdrew from the British Commonwealth and proclaimed itself a republic, a not very surprising event in the context of other nation states rightfully claiming their independence. However, the ugly white rule in South Africa promulgated even harsher apartheid regulations that discriminated more and more against the majority black population, building on the legislation of the late 1940s and 1950s. For these actions, South Africa was condemned by the General Assembly of the United Nations. [End Page 1] Also in 1961, and reminiscent of later years, was Iraq’s claim to Kuwait, an ongoing saga that saw yet another war in the early 1990s. Similarly, it was in 1961 that President Kennedy sent 18,000 military advisors and later U.S. military helicopters and crews to South Vietnam and so began the build-up of American troops that culminated in the bloody war that killed 3 to 4 million Vietnamese, 1.5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians, and over 58,000 Americans. In 1961, the Cold war was getting quite hot. The two “super-powers,” United States and USSR, went on a nuclear bomb testing spree and faced each other down in several tense moments. Relations with Cuba had broken down and, of course, the Bay of Pigs fiasco did not help matters. During the year, a plane was hijacked to Cuba beginning a series of events that brought severe measures—President Kennedy signed a law implementing the death penalty for hijacking. In Europe, East Germany began building the Berlin Wall and restricted flow of traffic between the two sides of the City. It was to last until 1989. At home in the United States, and particularly the South, it was race relations that frequently dominated media attention. This was the year that the Freedom Riders began their activities to support equal voting rights in America. The outcome was at times devastating...

Latina/o stars in U.S. eyes: the making and meanings of film and TV stardom

Mary Beltran’s Latina/o Stars in US Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom is a needed reminder that increased participation on the screen and genuine progress in Latina/o media representation are two different things. This book offers a compelling narrative of the course that Latina/o stardom has followed in the United States, including a contextualized socio-political analysis of the ways in which Latina/o actresses and actors have been received, shaped and promoted in the American star system. Latina/o Stars in US Eyes will be of great appeal to academic audiences concerned with media representation, Latina/o Studies and critical race theory. Moreover, being an engaging and highly readable book, it will surely appeal as well to members of the entertainment industry, media activists and a wider readership of people interested in looking critically at celebrity culture. Latina/o Stars in US Eyes proves the importance of critical analyses of popular culture for struggles of social justice. Political interactions are shaped by the identity and mutual expectations that participants hold, and media is a prominent medium through which Americans receive such notions. Media messages celebrate particular conceptions of race, class, gender and ethnicity and significantly shape self-image and social attitudes towards other groups (5–6). As Beltran shows, the entertainment industry is wary of defying received stereotypes when it comes to the portrayal of Latina/o characters. Access and success in this realm are hard to come by for Latina/os and when they do it can be through the portrayal of stereotypical characters or through the participation in projects that devalue Latina/o culture. In particular, participation without creative control may not result in discourses that celebrate Latina/o ethnicities and culture, but rather incorporate Latina/o performers in the reproduction of devaluing images. This is evident in the lines that Puerto Rican/Nuyorican Rita Moreno sang in her Oscar-worthy West Side Story performance, “Puerto Rico, my heart’s devotion ... let it sink back in the ocean!” (79), and continues in the present. Ironically, the capacity of portraying “White” characters gives Latina/os the opportunity to play parts that are not overtly racialized and tropicalized by a pre-packaged conception of Latinidad. Access to these opportunities is, needless to say, restricted to the restricted group of Latina/os that can look the part. This trend is both indicative and reinforcing of the prevailing

Cinema Chicana: An Interview with Lourdes Portillo

AS A YOUNG GIRL IN RURAL ARIZONA, I attended rodeos where the majority of the cowboys were Indians from the nearby reservations or Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Hearing both Spanish and English in my family, my child's mind believed all Spanish speakers to be Mexican. A few years later, I moved to the Midwest, where I was introduced to the Sunday afternoon matinee on television. During a broadcast of a John Wayne movie, I was surprised to see John Wayne as the cowboy and the Indians and Mexicans as the bad guys. One other Sunday afternoon, I watched West Side Story (1961), and I was delighted to be introduced to Puerto Ricans and find that Mexicans were not the only Spanish speakers in the world. This film offered two beautiful Puerto Rlcan women singing and dancing, and Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno became my heroes, until I found out that Natalie Wood was not Puerto Rican at all, but merely painted to appear so. Even in elementary school, I began to theorize about portrayals of Latinos in film and to notice their apparent absence. As I grew older and moved around the Midwest, as well as worked on a farm in the summers in southern Georgia, I quietly observed the way people treated me and each other when it came to issues of race. Having been at the end of some of this mistreatment, I began writing as a way to escape from it. I also plunged headlong into any book or movie I could get, always searching for the existence of Latinos and Native Americans, anything to validate my earlier experiences from my hometown in northern Arizona. I made it my mission to document these portrayals and to become a writer who would tell the truth about living Latina. While I was in junior high school, I announced to my dad that I wanted to get into movies. At the time he was working construction, building sets for Universal Studios. I told him that it would be my mission because there were no Mexicans in the movies. His response was, Aye, M'ija! Who do you think is building all of the sets? As a young college student I grew increasingly inspired by independent filmmakers. The ability to live outside the conformity and formula of Hollywood and make films that portrayed the things mainstream America prefers to overlook was a kind of rebellion that spoke deeply to the kind of artist I believed I was becoming. Again, I was overwhelmed with the goal of discovering the thin existence or nonexistence of Latinos in these genres. Although a few Latino men began to appear in Hollywood with hit movies, such as Gregory Nava and Luis Valdez, women were still only marginal characters, a side dish to the male filmmaker. I then discovered a filmmaker who renewed my faith. I first came to know the work of Lourdes Portillo during a Chicano film course at Colorado State University in the late 1990s. I do not remember which film I saw first. I just remember feeling an intense desire to consume every film she had made. Her unique perspective and the way she blurs genres in film that attracted me; her intense independence, experimenting with form and narrative; her use of both Spanish and English- all of this captivated me. Growing up Latino/a in America often places one in a position where the person must either define him- or herself or be defined. This is also true in most art. The pressures of society to define yourself and your genre can bear down so hard that many artists and filmmakers get rooted in one kind of work, or at least are expected to produce a certain kind of film. Blending of cultures, artistic form, and remaining outside of the grasp of Hollywood are what shape Lourdes Portillo. Her ability to defy definition and her fierce sense of independence bring a unique and bold voice to film, making her a virtual godmother to Latina film production. Although the numbers of Latinas making film are increasing, I had not heard of any before Portillo. Her films are widely used in Chicano/a and Latino/a studies. …

Psychoanalytic and Musical Ambiguity: the Tritone in Gee, Officer Krupke

The poignant and timeless Broadway musical West Side Story is viewed from the standpoint of taking musical forms as psychoanalytic data. The musical configuration of notes called the tritone (or diabolus in musica) is taken as a sonic metaphor expressing ambiguity both in musical vocabulary and in mental life. The tritone, which historically and harmonically represents instability, is heard throughout the score and emphasizes the intrapsychic, interpersonal, and social dramas that unfold within and between the two gangs in West Side Story. Particular emphasis is given to the comic but exceedingly sober song Gee, Officer Krupke. Bernstein's sensitivity to the ambiguity and tension inherent in the tritone in West Side Story is conceptualized as an intersection of music theory and theories of mind; this perspective holds implications for clinical practice and transports psychoanalytic concepts from the couch to the Broadway stage and into the community to address the complexities of love, hate, aggression, prejudice, and violence. Ultimately, West Side Story cross-pollinates music and theater, as well as music and psychoanalytic concepts.

West Side Story: Free-Black Labor in the Mexican Pacific during the Late Colonial Period as seen through the Revillagigedo Census

West Side Story: Free-Black Labor in the Mexican Pacific during the Late Colonial Period as seen through the Revillagigedo Census

Bare (review)

Reviewed by: Bare Julie Rae Mollenkamp Bare. Book by Jon Hartmere and Damon Intrabartolo. Music by Damon Intrabartolo. Lyrics by Jon Hartmere. Directed by Jeff Church. Musical direction by Anthony T. Edwards. Unicorn Theatre, Kansas City, MO. 16 May 2009. Every generation needs to hear a story that the one before them already knows; still, that story requires a revisioning to fit the shifts in cultural context. The tale of two young star-crossed lovers (who both happen to be male) finds a twenty-first-century audience with bare. Premiering in 2000, bare is a cult hit in many cities; teen and twenty-somethings are enamored with the music and their story. One of only a handful of professional companies that have included bare in their season, the Unicorn cleverly made the appropriate contextual shifts. The subject matter is relevant in a time when suicide among GLBT teens continues to rise and legal measures to deny civil rights for homosexuals make headlines. Bare is a play with many lessons about acceptance, ably conveyed through clever scenic, prop, and costume choices and a smart, appropriate collaboration between professional and educational theatre. Click for larger view View full resolution KC Comeaux (Peter), Tony Humrichouser (Priest), and Shea Coffman (Matt) in bare. (Photo: Cynthia Levin.) Bare, marketed as “a merge between Spring Awakening and Dead Poet’s Society” and “the REAL High School Musical,” explores the pains and pleasures of high school seniors at a coed Catholic boarding school: Jason, the jock who is closeted; Peter, the nerd who loves him; Ivy, the easy girl; Matt, always second-best; Nadia, the fat chick. Throw in a sassy African American teacher, a homophobic mom, and an ineffectual priest and anyone who attended high school can relate. The love story takes prominence as Peter struggles to come out against the wishes of his lover Jason. When Jason and Ivy are cast as Romeo and Juliet, he uses this opportunity to prove his manhood by bedding her. This union results in a series of predictable disasters. Reflecting Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, bare juxtaposes two contemporary households as well as the cool and uncool, while depicting church doctrine and the reality of today’s society, the fight within self to define identity, the lack of intra- and intergenerational understandings, and the presence of star-crossed lovers (in this case, young gay men). The reversal of gender adds a twist to the familiar tale, but the character types remain universal. Click for larger view View full resolution Katie McCreary (Angel), Craig Allen (Angel), and Nedra Dixon (Sister Chantelle) in bare. (Photo: Cynthia Levin.) The set and props for bare were minimal, yet managed to convey the contemporary setting. Choir risers served as an altar, an abandoned building, and a courtyard; a simple black frame became a coffin, [End Page 643] Click for larger view View full resolution Shea Coffman (Matt), Brandon Sollenberger (Jason), and KC Comeaux (Peter) in bare. (Photo: Cynthia Levin.) [End Page 644] a doorway, and a mirror. Two benches transformed from lockers to beds to classrooms. The cast effectively used pantomime to show backpacks, doorways, and notebooks, and all used cell phones. The four-piece band took up a full quarter of the stage; by performing in rock concert style and becoming part of the ensemble moments, it added spectacle to the sparse design. This minimalism provided a perfect opportunity for audience members to reminisce about their own high school hallways, which developed a connection between what was happening onstage and their own personal experiences. The costumes, which were highly reflective of television’s Gossip Girls and the teen flick Mean Girls, set the time period as well. The Catholic schoolboy uniforms were amplified with hoodies for Jason and Peter and a sweater vest with tie for Matt. The girls’ uniforms were transformed with safety pins, creating the seams of Nadia’s school sweater and four-inch pumps and a corset-like vest for Ivy. Other details included underwear as outerwear, a rosary as hip jewelry, pink hair, and combat boots. The choices were spot on with current fashion trends; indeed, about half the audience members were sporting similar clothing. Costuming also...

The Social Impacts of Urban Containment by Arthur C. Nelson, Casey J. Dawkins, and Thomas W. Sanchez

Urban containment does not fit easily with popular images of the United States. We all know that the land of opportunity has wide-open spaces, low-density suburbs, automobile-dependent lifestyles, and large shopping malls: the result of unrestricted, successful individualism and commerce. Media suggest that these places contrast with the problematic ones we see on films and in the news: impoverished and dangerous ghettos; failed town centers; flooded, polluted, or devastated run-down suburbs; trailer parks; and other less attractive places where poor people and members of low-status ethnic minorities live. Nelson, Dawkins, and Sanchez dispel the simplistic myth that perpetuates the world of West Side Story, The Graduate, and Desperate Housewives. They also give the gentrification of Frasier, Sex in the City, and Friends rigorous treatment. Unusually for a textbook the book reports research findings. Having been told that the United States was late to apply development control in ways that sought to limit the extent of built-up areas, starting in 1958 with an urban growth boundary at Lexington, Kentucky (p. 9), the reader may be surprised to learn of at least 127 containment plans in the United States since then, falling into categories of “weak” or “strong,” and “accommodates” or “restricts” growth.

West Side Story (review)

Reviewed by: West Side Story Derek Miller West Side Story. Book by Arthur Laurents. Music by Leonard Bernstein. Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Directed by Arthur Laurents. National Theatre, Washington, DC. 2 January 2009. Many recent musical revivals—such as John Doyle’s Sweeney Todd and Company, in which the actors played instruments—have called attention to the theatricality of musical theatre. The West Side Story revival I saw during a pre-Broadway engagement took the opposite approach, accentuating instead the play’s “realism,” most conspicuously by having Puerto Rican characters speak and sing in Spanish, courtesy of translations by Lin-Manuel Miranda (of In the Heights fame). Under the direction of the prolific Arthur Laurents, recently acclaimed for his Gypsy revival (for which, like West Side Story, he wrote the book), this production promised the unique opportunity of a new take on a masterpiece from one of the show’s creators. Laurents’s vision incorporated Spanish translations and some new staging in an attempt to locate the realistic pulse within the musical’s conspicuously theatrical frame. Yet this first Broadway-bound revival in almost thirty years demonstrated that the show’s vitality lies in the ecstatic abandon of Leonard Bernstein’s masterful, jazzy score and Jerome Robbins’s iconic choreography. Despite Laurents’s efforts, West Side Story’s “realistic” presentation of teenage anger and dissociation in the book scenes failed to match the theatrical heat generated by the musical numbers. The use of Spanish was the production’s most prominent realistic gesture, providing Puerto Rican characters a patina of authenticity. The language was put to good use in the “Tonight” quintet, in which it helped articulate distinct gang identities: as each group or character sang of what awaited them after the coming fight, the Sharks sang in Spanish, clearly distinguishing them from the Jets, even as the Sharks’ musical integration in the quintet affirmed the entwined fates of all the singers. The successful deployment of Spanish thus depended simultaneously on the reality of the Sharks’ native tongue and the theatrical artifice of five-part vocal writing. Similarly, “Siento Hermosa” (“I Feel Pretty”) captured the song’s exuberance not only because Miranda’s Spanish lyrics adhered to Stephen Sondheim’s original rhyme scheme, but also because some vocal parts were cleverly reassigned so that the musical structure mimicked and amplified the lyrics’ mockery of Maria. [End Page 479] Click for larger view View full resolution Karen Olivo (Anita) and George Akram (Bernardo) in West Side Story. (Photo: Joan Marcus.) Unfortunately, except for those few fleeting moments, Spanish came across as an obfuscating contrivance, particularly in book scenes like the long encounter between Anita (the excellent Karen Olivo) and Maria (Josefina Scaglione) after Bernardo’s death. As I speak no Spanish, the scene’s nuanced emotional fabric was lost on me. Thus realism only obscured the narrative line, particularly in the dialogue-heavy second act in which Spanish appeared more frequently. Moreover, the use of Spanish was inconsistent. “America” would have been better served if Rosalia had sung her praise of Puerto Rico in Spanish, to contrast with Anita’s English disdain for the island; but the entire song was in English. And given the ethnically “authentic” use of Spanish, it is harder to overlook the casting of Josefina Scaglione, an Argentinian, to play the Puerto Rican Maria. Overall, the use of Spanish was neither comprehensive enough nor compelling enough as a realistic device to overcome its serious dramatic deficiencies. (In August, 2009, the show’s producers, acknowledging a weakened dramatic impact, announced that “A Boy Like That” and “I Feel Pretty” would revert primarily to their English versions.) The show’s attempt to emphasize the gangs’ anger ran into similar problems. The performers, mining the text for its emotional rather than its rhythmic core, left the elegantly stylized tough-guy patois of Laurents’s dialogue sounding merely awkward and dated. Riff (Cody Green) had a look and manner all too reminiscent of a Disney teen idol, which sabotaged his credibility as a menacing gang leader. And stiff, lackluster performances by actors portraying the adult characters gave the younger actors little to fight against, undermining the age conflict that seethes throughout the...

West Side Story and The Music Man: whiteness, immigration, and race in the US during the late 1950s

West Side Story and The Music Man, the two biggest hits among Broadway musicals of the 195758 season, yield an odd sort of couple wildly mis-matched yet interconnected nonetheless. They opened within three months of one another, appearing as starkly opposed views of a shared nation. I offer here a side-by-side reading of these two shows, with a special focus on a cluster of intersecting themes, including the insidious interconnectedness of racism and nostalgia; the strategy of focusing on Jane or Joe Citizen (or the common man); the targeting of youth and teen culture; and a shared subtext of fear (even paranoia) about outsiders. Together, they provide a window on the complexity of America in the late 1950s on its diverse demographics and polarized politics, on the market segmentation of its myths, on the ways in which racism, even seemingly non-overt forms of racism, can join hands with nostalgia.

From On the Waterfront to West Side Story, or There's Nowhere Like Somewhere

Three years before the world witnessed what was arguably Leonard Bernstein's finest synthesis of musical and dramatic elements in West Side Story, he composed his first and only film score for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront. Several scholars and critics have commented on the separate historical and artistic significance of these dramatic works, but virtually no one has made connections between these Bernstein contributions beyond noting similarities in orchestral timbre, rhythmic intensity, and overlapping thematic material. For instance, some have pointed out the shared melodic contour between the Love theme in On the Waterfront and Something's Coming, yet neglected to suggest why this might be significant. This paper addresses this question; it also demonstrates that in each work Bernstein employs similar techniques to comment effectively on narratives that emphasize what it means to be an individual in the 1950s.

Bernstein'sThe Joy of Musicas Aesthetic Credo

AbstractThe bulk of Leonard Bernstein's first book,The Joy of Music(1959), consists of three imaginary conversations and seven scripts ofOmnibuslectures intended for the education of lay audiences. These texts have long been admired for their pedagogy but have largely been ignored as reflections of Bernstein's aesthetic views. This article proposes thatThe Joy of Musicfunctions not only as a pedagogical document but also as an aesthetic manifesto preparing Bernstein's audiences for some of his best compositions—especially the Third Symphony (Kaddish; 1963, rev. 1977) andWest Side Story(1957). In the context ofThe Joy of Music,Kaddishappears as the fulfillment of “the real American symphonic form” andWest Side Storyas the ultimate American musical stage work, that is, a work that is as sophisticated as opera but rooted in the American musical.

Recombinant Broadway

There have been important changes in the way adaptations have been produced on Broadway over the last 30 years. Earlier Broadway-to-Hollywood transfers like West Side Story were produced in the economic contexts of mid-twentieth-century Fordism. Today, the transfer often works the other way, with Broadway adaptations of Hollywood blockbusters like The Lion King created and maintained from within a set of post-Fordist logics that live or die by the buzzwords of synergy and convergence. Not surprisingly, media capital has a larger role to play here than previously. This piece examines the changing conditions of production on Broadway that are the result of media capital's arrival on to the field of live-theatrical production since 1980. These changes, which have occurred in other established and emerging theatrical economies, feature levels of standardization, routinization and workforce alienation that are new to the theatre. Against any impulse towards formalism, this paper suggests that Broadway purists are often unfairly intolerant of adaptations. Under the theatre's new conditions of global-industrialization, a hit show's generic origins – literature, the movies, television – do not matter nearly as much as the newly mediatized methods of its global reproduction.

The Side Story of Stem-like Glioma Cells

In this issue of Cell Stem Stell, Bleau et al. report that activity of the drug transporter ABCG2 defines a tumorigenic stem-like side population (SP) isolated from glioma. Surprisingly, temozolomide, the first-line chemotherapeutic used for treatment of glioma, increased this side population, and even more so when PTEN was deleted.

Constructing Camelot: Britain and the New World Musical

The critical and cultural rhetoric around the Broadway musical often insists upon the form's fundamental ‘Americanness'. This language celebrates the musical's ability to encapsulate the spirit and character of a self-consciously modern America, liberated from its European legacy. Despite this acclaimed liberation, the integrated Broadway musical is often characterized by a dialogue between ideas of American identity and assumptions about European cultural accomplishment. Thus, we see a number of Broadway musicals that consciously re-write canonical literary and cultural texts – Kiss Me, Kate, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Candide, Carmen Jones, Rent, Aida. This article explores the implications of this critical rhetoric, and the extent to which it is reflected in the later works of Lerner and Loewe. Both My Fair Lady and Camelot engage with a notion of Britishness that is cultural as much as it is historical. The creation and reception of Camelot in particular has related that engagement specifically to an idea of contemporary America. This America is epitomized both by ‘its art’, defined as the ‘populist’ musical with attendant social values, and its potential to produce both a culture and society to rival that of the Old World. Such engagements signal the extent to which the Broadway musical strives to be validated both by and against the ‘high art’ apparently epitomized by British cultural accomplishment.

‘The most beautiful sound I ever heard’: Liturgy, Religious Imagery and Symbolism in West Side Story

Liturgy is one of the most obvious ways in which faith is enacted or produced. An analogy might be drawn between liturgical celebration and musical theatre: structurally similar, both performance media include dialogue and song and embrace movement or dance. While recent research on the musical has tended to focus on the musicological, the sociological and the historical, this study suggests that the evolving form of the twentieth-century musical reveals not only cultural influences, but many liturgical and theological references, both visual and auditory, intentional or not. With 732 performances to its credit, the original production of West Side Story was undoubtedly a highly regarded and popular hit on Broadway. The collaboration not only marks a creative high point in the history of the genre of the musical, at a time when that art form was enjoying its golden age, but the show is also reflective of the ongoing sacralisation of the Broadway musical, a phenomenon which reached a distinct climax in this particular production. By evaluating the content of this seminal musical, this study shows how the form of West Side Story exhibits liturgical traits, suggesting that such an interpretation might be applied to musical theatre in general.

Leonard Bernstein's Jewish Boston: An Introductory Note

Leonard Bernstein (1918–90)—the now-legendary composer and conductor—had deep roots among Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Boston. This volume of essays explores aspects of that personal and sociocultural experience as revealed through an intensive team-research seminar at Harvard University during the spring semester of 2006. Titled “Before West Side Story: Leonard Bernstein's Boston,” the course positioned Bernstein within interlocking local networks, primarily during the 1930s and early 1940s. Its aim was not to prepare a standard biographical narrative, but rather to interrogate the synergy between an individual and supportive communities, whether religious, ethnic, educational, or musical. Carol J. Oja and Kay Kaufman Shelemay designed and team-taught the seminar, guiding a group of nineteen graduate and undergraduate students in both fieldwork and archival research, and they timed it to precede “Leonard Bernstein: Boston to Broadway,” a major international festival and conference about Bernstein, which took place at Harvard in October 2006. By drawing on complementary methodologies and capitalizing on the multiple layers of activity made possible by such a large group of researchers, the students covered an extraordinary amount of turf in a short time, and they did so in innovative ways. As their work unfolded, intriguing insights emerged about the powerful, ongoing role played by Boston's Jewish immigrant community in shaping the identity and character of a man who was to become one of America's most illustrious musicians.

What ever happened to West Side Story? Gene Kelly, jazz dance, and not so real men in Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort

Examining the role of the American ‘guest stars’ in Jacques Demy's 1967 film The Young Girls of Rochefort, this paper foregrounds the problematized notion of masculinity that emerges from the film's ‘celebrity intertexts’. While the presence of Gene Kelly reinforces both conventional notions of masculinity and the heterosexual discourse of the Hollywood movie musical, the case of West Side Story stars George Chakiris and Grover Dale is considerably more ambivalent. Demy's film essentially recontextualizes movements and postures from West Side Story, both film and play, yet lacks the dynamic tension of the earlier work. This partial citation of the musical combines with Demy's narrative and directorial choices, as well as with the celebrity intertext of recognized gay/bisexual actors Chakiris and Dale, create a strong sense of sexual ambiguity. The Young Girls of Rochefort thus allows for the exploration of the representation of the male body in the film musical in all its complexity.

The Oxford companion to the American musical: theatre, film, and television

From films ranging from An American in Paris and Flying Down to Rio to such Broadway landmarks as Oklahoma and West Side Story and television hits such as Cinderella and High School Musical, the American musical has thrilled audiences around the world. Now, in The Oxford Companion to the American Musical, readers have at last an engaging and authoritative reference to this highly popular genre-the only such book to cover stage, film, and television musicals in one volume. With more than two thousand entries, this book offers a wealth of information on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers, and much more. There are biographical entries on stars ranging from Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby to Mary Martin and Mae West as well as such contemporary show-stoppers as Nathan Lane, Savion Glover, and Kristin Chenowith; on composers ranging from Irving Berlin and George Gershwin to Richard Rodgers and Andrew Lloyd Webber; and on choreographers such as Bob Fosse, Tommy Tune, and Debbie Allen. The plays and films covered range from modern hits such as Mamma Mia! and Moulin Rouge to timeless classics such as Yankee Doodle Dandy and Show Boat. Also, many musicals written specifically for television are included, and many entries follow a work (such as Babes in Toyland) as it moves across genres, from stage, to film, to television. The Companion also includes cross references, a comprehensive listing of recommended recordings, and a useful chronological listing of all the musicals described in the book. Whether you are curious about Singin in the Rain or Spamalot, The Wizard of Oz or Grease, this well-researched and entertaining resource is the first place to turn for reliable information on virtually every aspect of the American musical. Everything you ever wanted to know about the American musical-at your fingertips. What could be better, or more useful? -Marvin Hamlisch Kudos to Thomas Hischak for The Oxford Companion to the American Musical. Resources such as these are extremely important, not only as historic and academic records, but for future generations of artists who need to understand the legacy they have inherited. -Carol Channing

Encyclopedia of gangs

In light of Los Angeles' gang state of emergency, ethnic and minority gangs are arguably more high profile now than at any other time in our history. News media typically focus on the crime and violence associated with gangs, but not much else. This encyclopedia seeks to illuminate the world of gangs, including gang formations, routine gang activities, aberrations and current developments. One hundred essay entries related to gangs in the United States and worldwide provide a diffuse overview of the gang phenomenon. Each entry defines and explains the term, provides an historical overview, and explains its significance today. As the following entries demonstrate, gangs are part of the fabric of American society. They are not only in our communities but also our schools and other social institutions. Understanding the world of gangs is therefore needed to understand American society. Entries include: Bikers, Bloods, Cholas, Crips, gang mythology, gang warfare, graffiti, Hell's Angels, Hong Kong Triads, Latin Kings, law enforcement, occultic gangs, mafia, media, prison gangs, rites, Skinheads, Streetgang Terrorism Omnibus Prevention Act, tattoos, trafficking, Wanna-bes, West Side Story, Witness Protection programs, and youth gangs.

Introduction: "'To think o' th' teen that I have turned you to': The Scholarly Consideration of Teen Shakespeare Films."

Amid a violent gang war, set to contemporary music, that plagues a modern urban metropolis, two teenage lovers negotiate between their rebellious friends, relatives, and various failed authority figures in a doomed attempt to carve out a safe haven for their love. Such a description fits the film that scholars most often credit with initiating the boom in Shakespearean screen adaptations for the teen market: Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996), (1) but it also matches another movie released decades earlier: Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise's West Side Story (1961). This coincidence should remind us that, although an explosion of cinematic versions of Shakespeare aimed at youthful viewers occurred in the late 1990s, the teen Shakespeare phenomenon stretches back even before 1968, when Franco Zeffirelli proved that a Romeo and Juliet film starring real teenagers could draw thousands of young people willingly into movie theaters to view a rendition of a play that many of them had encountered for the first time most unwillingly in a high school classroom. What did not occur until the late 1990s was a willingness on the part of Shakespeare critics to take teen Shakespeare adaptations seriously as an object of study. While Zeffirelli's film, which employed Shakespeare's language almost entirely, quickly achieved canonical status, other movies produced during the intervening years that made use of Shakespeare's storylines and characters (but not the poetry) attracted little critical attention. As Douglas Lanier writes, Until fairly recently, most of the film adaptations of Shakespeare ... have dwelt in the critical netherworld of Shakespeareana, that dark space reserved for the illegitimate, fake, scandalous, or unfaithful versions of the Shakespearean script, the realm of the bastard, deformed, or wayward children of the Bard. Even a cursory glance over the labels often used for such films--unfaithful adaptations, spin-offs, derivatives, travesties, revisions, and Schlockspeare--reveals how routinely and sometimes unconsciously they are clouded with pejorative connotations from the very start of discussion. (On the Virtues 132) The merit of teen Shakespeare adaptations has come under attack most frequently based on the unavoidable dumbing-down of Shakespeare's plays that is said to occur when these intricate theatrical texts are translated into cinematic or televisual products meant to be consumed by young viewers ill-equipped to appreciate the thematic and linguistic complexity of the originals. As Carolyn Jess-Cooke points out, there has been a tendency in recent films to update and strip down Shakespeare's language, replace the title, boil down the plot and ultimately use the Shakespeare play as a stamp of cultural legitimacy rather than a faithfully-rendered early-modern text (88). Clearly, if faithfulness to Shakespeare's verbal ingenuity is the sole criterion by which such films are to be judged, they will inevitably be found wanting. However, since the turn of the century, a growing number of Shakespeare scholars have come to appreciate Shakespearean teen films for their employment of other, non-linguistic forms of complexity. Lanier, for example, counters the charge that pop culture versions of Shakespeare are inherently simplistic by noting their potential to create complicated visual effects: The value placed on verbal complexity, for example, is associated with reverence for Shakespeare's language. By its nature this value does not accord well with pop culture, where complexities are often conveyed non-verbally, through image or performance, particularly so with film and TV, which are certainly capable of a visual sophistication that rivals Shakespeare's semantic density. (Shakespeare 99) In the present volume, Gregory M. Colon Semenza takes up this line of reasoning in his article, Teens, Shakespeare, and the Dumbing Down Cliche: The Case of The Animated Tales. …