Nitrate & Camphor: A Place for Us? Not Quite.
- blueshiftjournal
- Sep 26, 2016
- 6 min read
by ben del vecchio, columnist
ni∙trate /nītrāt/ n. salt, or ester, or nitric acid. the most water-soluble of all salts.
cam∙phor / ˈkamfər/ n. a white, volatile, crystalline substance with a strong smell and bitter taste. when combined with nitrate, creates celluloid; film.
This past week, the Emmys celebrated another year in television – a year that award-winners and headline writers alike were quick to tout as another progressive one. Some called the broadcast the embodiment of “TV’s Changing Landscape”; others dubbed the Emmys' real winner “Liberal Politics.” Transparent, Veep, The People v. OJ, and Mr. Robot all took home honors. With their wins, and in the wake of “#OscarsSoWhite,” we saw the racial gap between TV and Hollywood – the variegated small screen and the monochrome silver one – accentuated. Highlighted, underscored, boldfaced.
With this divide in mind, last night, I took my seat at a 70mm screening (the only copy in existence!) of Hollywood’s West Side Story – a film ballyhooed in 1961 as a progressive film that would change the face of Hollywood’s race problem. It certainly did – but how much, really?
“Hold my hand and I’ll take you there / Somehow, someday, somewhere!”
As Natalie Wood sang Maria’s final refrain, clutching her fallen lover, tears welling in her eyes, the elderly woman seated next to me mouthed along, gripped the armrest between us, sniffed back tears of her own. This, for some, is the power West Side Story holds – but certainly not for all, and certainly not like it used to. Around my teary-eyed seat-side companion and me, a sold out crowd gathered in Somerville Theater – less than a dozen in the crowd were under 50.
Once, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ Shakespearean adaptation was the talk of the town. The film took 10 Oscars – including Best Picture – home across the Hudson River. But it doesn’t quite hold the same resonance with our generation that it did with our predecessors’. The American Film Institute ranks it as the 41st greatest film of all time, yet on the less-industry-oriented – and younger-skewing – IMDB rankings, West Side Story doesn’t even crack the top 250. Essentially, we know “Maria” and “America”, lyrics by Sweeney Todd scribe Stephen Sondheim, and if the chorus of synchronized snapping at our screening last night was any sign, we know the opening number. But that’s about as far as our West Side knowledge goes.
It's a shame, really. For West Side Story not only provides a peek into the heights of classical Hollywood cinema, but also into its many, many pitfalls.
Emotional, grandiose in scope and score, and, of course, stunningly sung and dazzlingly choreographed, West Side Story is an American cinematic staple. It stands as the epitome of Hollywood’s navigations of race and exclusivity. It confronts misrepresentation and racism, but with a sterilized, gloved, whitewashed hand. The often brown-faced, mostly tokenized characters of West Side Story are a clear reflection of an industry that has struggled and struggled with race. As Maria so hopefully sings: “somehow, someday, somewhere,” a just, fair, and equal paradise exists – sometimes, looking back at something like West Side Story can reveal how much we need it, and how far we have(n’t) come in reaching it.
Opening sequence. Moving between rooftops and blacktop, storefronts and back alleys, Jet- and Shark-territory, Wise and Robbins welcome us into their Manhattan street show. Dialogue-less, but never emotionless, blistering but never unhinged, the beautifully choreographed gang warfare culminates in a geography-fueled full-scale brawl: pirouettes are exchanged for punches, racial slurs for physical slugs. The last straw before the brawl is a small but notable act of vandalism. Jet Baby John, caught in the act of painting Shark walls white, is encircled by a group of them who've smelled blood. He splashes one in the face with his white paint and then dashes off. A subtle message: the White American’s white paint forced in the brown of the brown skin Puerto Rican immigrant’s face. Dripping off, it refuses to sink in, a physical representation of the paradoxical expectations imposed upon American immigrants: a demand to become fully assimilated and “white,” but a populace and system in place that prevent a peaceful one from being possible.
More than that, however, one can’t look at the white paint spread across his face without thinking of West Side Story’s own whitewashing – the brown-facing of George Chakiris (who actually played Jets’ leader Riff in the Broadway show) as Nardo, along with many members of the Sharks, and the unabashedly light-skinned Natalie Wood cast as Maria. (Wood’s casting is slightly more questionable given that her singing voice was dubbed.)
“When do you kids stop? You make the world lousy!”
"We didn’t make it, Doc."
Whitewashing isn’t exactly new, and West Side Story is just one of Hollywood’s many face-painting episodes. The tactics have simply twisted over the years. Instead of elongated eye-makeup, out-and-out black face, we have CGI Asianization (it's a word now), tokenized casting processes, and active neglect of diverse (and successful) films like Pacific Rim and The Force Awakens, ignored by a system that believes white actors like Matt Damon are needed to sell tickets.
In just the past year, Hollywood has made some egregious (and expected) errors: Rooney Mara as Native American in Pan. Emma Stone as Hawaiian/Asian in Aloha. Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson. Depictions of Egypt as overwhelmingly white in both Gerard Butler’s Gods of Egypt and Ridley Scott’s Exodus. Scott’s been on the chopping block before, casting Chiwetel Ejiofer as an Asian-American character in The Martian, and is among those in the camp of believers that casting white actors is the only way to get films funded. Tilda Swinton’s Asian-turned-white character in Dr. Strange is the subject of other controversy, and the same goes for Scarlett Johansson portraying a Japanese character in Ghost in the Shell. The latter also reportedly ran CGI tests that would make actors “look more Asian.”
At some point, it must be harder to not cast actors of color, right?
Fans seem to think so. Disney’s newest announcement of a ‘live-action’ Mulan was greeted with a 100,000 person strong petition to ensure the ancient Chinese epic actually garners a Chinese cast. While all racial erasure in media is pressing, Asian representation is rarely in the conversation – this past year has seen a bucking of that trend that’s particularly welcome given my lineage.
But it's damn easy to point out the mistakes in Hollywood, given how many of them there are (it's pretty much like saying, "When's the last time Trump said something racist?") – what’s more difficult, and more necessary, is challenging studios even when progress is seemingly made, and keeping the conversation going past “milestones” like 12 Years a Slave winning Best Picture, or the Academy’s latest slate of diverse members. These are, after all, just baby steps that do very little to combat the systemic problems inherent in Hollywood culture.
West Side Story is simply a case study of this process, Hollywood’s oldest and most ignominious tradition – appearing to progress diversity and understanding while simultaneously finding any, and every excuse to forgo legitimate, non-tokenized, and equal diversity in its films.
Just after the film’s dazzling opener, a police officer rejects the notion of police perpetrated violence as “impossible” (yet another current topical exchange,). Nardo, the charismatic and cynical Shark leader can’t resist:
“In America, anything is possible."
His cynicism stings. The realism of this false American promise underscores the miscegenation, intolerance, and lack of acceptance in America. But maybe it would’ve stung more if the actor saying it wasn’t white.
“Life is alright in America…”
“…if you’re a white in America…”
–Anita and Bernardo, West Side Story
Last week, basking in the luster of 70mm film in a sold-out cinema, I claimed that “Cinemas – not death – are often times our great equalizers. Within their walls, we are all the audience – no matter our backgrounds, our histories – we are all transfixed, together, by the images ignited before us." It's a statement that I, basking yet again in a wonderful experience at the theater, would like to fix.
Cinemas may be equalizing in theory – but the pictures house are not so. It would be nice if, someday, the theater could serve as a more realistic escapism – one that serves all races, creeds, genders, and backgrounds. Someday, I’ll be able to look back on West Side Story as an artifact of the past – laugh off its brown-face and mischaracterization as hilariously outdated. Sometime, maybe, West Side Story will remind us of a time before Hollywood followed television in become a diverse, thorough representation of our society.
But as of right now, I will remain astounded by the film’s brilliance, terrified by its relevance, and hopeful that we’re headed in the right direction. Somehow, someday, somewhere, we’ll get there. But it’s a matter of recognizing where we are now, first. And it’s evident that where we are is uneven, unequal, and flawed– despite what Hollywood, and its films might have you believe. When Maria sings “somewhere…a place for us” – a place where an interracial couple like theirs can exist in peace – to a dying Tony, it’s unlikely she has Hollywood in mind.
Nitrate and camphor, the chemical couple that birthed celluloid, play host a thousand times a week, in a thousand cities, in a thousand hearts. Join them. I’ll see you there.
