West Side Story movie poster. Source:Amazon Prime Video
West Side Story is a film that showcases the conflict and struggle that accompanies immigration, poverty, and the American dream. The main characters are from rival street gangs that, despite sharing several similarities, despise each other. They both come from poor backgrounds, are immigrants or the children of immigrants, and are facing the threat of their neighborhood being gentrified. There is the Puerto Rican street gang, called the Sharks, and the White ethnic street gang called the Jets. Their neighborhood community members associate with one gang over the other, based solely on their own ethnic relation to the Jets or the Sharks. However, what they fail to realize is, they are both fighting the same oppressors. The two protagonists in West Side Story are Maria, a Puerto Rican girl, and Tony, an Italian boy who is affiliated with the Jets. They fall in love, and their romance becomes quite the controversy for both the Jets, the Sharks, and the Puerto Rican and White ethnic community in the neighborhood. Throughout the film, the characters’ Catholic and ethnic identities are portrayed through their actions and morality in the post-war United States when immigration and the racism that accompanied it, were at an all-time high. Although the Jets and the Sharks come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, they have both experienced these oppressors while living in the United States and being classified as the “other”. In West Side Story, how does the intersection between Catholic and ethnic identity play a role in the development of characters’ sense of belonging, community, and personal identity?
Between 1880 and 1900, there was a wave of Italian immigrants arriving in the United States who were described as “‘Swarthy’” and “‘kinky-haired’” (Orsi 1992, 313). Due to this, they were also categorized as “lazy, criminal, sexually irresponsible, and emotionally volatile” (Orsi 1992, 315) by the social gospeller, Edward A. Ross. As a result, southern, dark-skinned Italians, experienced similar othering to that of the African American community, which led both groups to live together in neighborhoods in New York City. However, there was conflict between both groups for several years over the limited work and space that existed for them. The northern Italians, with lighter complexions than the southern Italians, differentiated themselves from the southern Italians, by calling them Turks. Naturally, the southern Italians wanted to “shed the mark of the ‘Turk’ at last” so they “learned that achievement in their new environment meant successfully differentiating themselves from the dark-skinned other” (Orsi 1992, 317). This motivated them to take over many of the industries in the black neighborhoods to have an Italian majority in Harlem. Soon enough, the Italians were escaping the stereotypes and othering that they had battled for so long. Many began to move into better neighborhoods and left many vacancies for the growing Puerto Rican population that was arriving in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s. Although many Italians moved out of Harlem, there were still many left, however, they no longer had the grip on the neighborhood they once did. There was now a high number of Puerto Rican immigrants that shared their streets, which led to new conflict between the groups and a need to differentiate from each other. Ironically, they shared more similarities than differences, “Puerto Ricans were a Latin people who spoke a Latin language and shared many of the same values as Italians, and many of them were Catholics, at least initially. But they were also poor–and dark-skinned” (Orsi 1992, 327).
“An Italian immigrant family on board a ferry from the docks to Ellis Island, New York.” Source: CNN
This historical context is important when understanding the storyline and development of West Side Story and its characters. This film is set in the mid-1950s and was initially released in theaters in 1961. Thus, the Jets and the Sharks became the personification of the tension between the Italians and the Puerto Ricans at the time. In fact, it is possible to argue that the similarities that they share fuel their feud. When examining a sense of belonging, both groups immigrated to the United States and were immediately classified as the “other”. The Italians, or Jets in West Side Story, fought for a long time to escape this classification, many succeeded, but some still remained in poverty and in fear of gentrification. However, the Italians, or the Jets, had been in the United States long enough that many of them were able to move out and escape the negative image that the American public had given them. This made it so that when the Puerto Ricans arrived, they were thought of as the new problem in the city, “Several critics have suggested–accurately–that the Jets stood in for Anglo-America’s fear of immigrants’ taking over “their” space, and that the name “Shark” implies savagery, cannibalism, and ferocity, and as such the gang constitutes a “negative” portrayal of Puerto Ricans” (Negron-Muntaner 2000, 94). With the negative image that both groups had been given by the American public, a sense of belonging and a formation of community in a foreign New York City was incredibly important. This led to the formation of gangs and tight-knit communities that did not accept each other in fear of further degradation from the general public; hence, the creation of the Sharks and the Jets. Within these communities or gangs, belonging looked a little different. For the Sharks, family values and Catholic values were of greater importance than the Jets. There is a scene in the movie where you can see the Sharks praying shortly after Bernardo’s death (Spielberg 2021, 02:06). Although the Jets recently lost Tony, there is no depiction of them turning to religious coping mechanisms. It appears as though their Catholic roots have faded away with the generations of Italians that have moved on from Harlem and their loss of the family unit. We consistently see Shark gang members, going home to family members or apartments, but we never see that with the Jets. The Jet’s sense of belonging or community comes from one another. Their gang acts as their family unit, which provides them with protection and comfort. This is why when Tony is taking a step back from the Jets after being released from prison, the Jets have a hard time understanding this; Tony is one of their own and many of them don’t have anyone else in their lives other than their fellow gang members, how could he move on?
The Jets stare face-to-face with the Sharks during the dance at the gym. Source: Boston Globe
Although the Jets’ Catholic identity is not as strong as the Sharks’, it still plays a large role in the original formation of these gangs that serve as a community and grant a sense of belonging to the misfits of New York City. It is clear that the intersection between both groups’ ethnic identities and religious backgrounds brought them together; because in an environment that was against them from the start, they had to look for any similarities that brought them together. Even though the Sharks had a stronger connection to Catholicism than the Jets, it is possible to argue that both gangs served as sacred spaces for these youths due to the community that was formed there. Albeit physical, these sacred spaces were formed on human connection, shared beliefs, and devotion to one another. Regardless of where the groups physically met, the space they held as a collective had embodied rituals that granted members a sense of comfort and belonging, much like traditional sacred spaces that are discussed in The Seer of Bayside: Veronica Lueken and the Struggle to Define Catholicism. In this text, it is stated that “the sacredness of a sacred site does not simply erupt from heaven but is created by human efforts. There is symbolic labor that goes into establishing and consecrating sacred space in the form of repeated and embodied practices” (Layco*ck 2014, 15). Although the Sharks performed religious activities as a group and the Jets were never shown practicing religion, their gang served the same purpose as the Sharks. Layco*ck explains that sacred spaces “erupts into the chaotic world of the profane and imposes order” (Layco*ck 2014, 15); and for a group of youths that were living in poverty with absent families, the Jets provided them with structure and created order in their unorderly world. Both groups applied the same principles that they learned from their Catholic and ethnic identities to create a sense of belonging and community in New York City that they did not have before.
The Jets walk through the neighborhood streets as a cohesive unit. Source: IMDb
The intersection between Catholic and ethnic identity also plays a large role in the development of personal identity for the characters in West Side Story. Both Maria and Bernardo exhibit the conflict that comes with the intersection between the two. Both struggle with upholding the expectations of their Catholic upbringing while navigating the complexities of being ethnically Latino in New York City as immigrants. This is most clearly seen when Maria falls in love with Tony, despite knowing her family members would not approve. Her brother Bernardo wants her to marry Chino, a Latino Catholic boy from the same background as herself, but Maria experiences a clash between her religious beliefs and desires when she realizes she has no interest in Chino because she is falling in love with a white ethnic instead. At the end of the film, there is a scene that alludes to Maria and Tony having sex; the two wake up together in Maria’s bed which has a cross hung over it. Their sexual relations and the image of the cross over her bed highlights the violation of her Catholic upbringing because Maria and Tony are not officially married (Spielberg 2021, 01:59). This scene also highlights the evolution of Maria’s personal identity. With the new and less traditional values she is exposed to in the United States, she begins to grapple with the intersection of her Catholic and ethnic identity to best fit into the environment that she is currently living in. Although she is still ethnically Latina, she has evolved to become Puerto Rican-American rather than just a Puerto Rican living in the United States. She still upholds her family’s values, but she has adapted them to best fit her life in the United States, a country with much less traditional family values such as dismissing the importance of waiting until marriage to have sex. Similarly, Bernardo’s Catholic and ethnic identity is challenged by the evolution of his personal identity as an immigrant in New York City. With the racial discrimination and violence he encounters from the Jets and other white members of society, he develops an anger towards them that drives further gang violence. However, his participation in violent gang activity is in contradiction with his Catholic beliefs. Like Maria, this is the result of being socialized in the United States, a country that painted Puerto Rican men as violent criminals, or as dangerous foreigners, when the Jets were participating in the same behaviors. Unlike Maria, this allowed Bernardo’s personal identity to evolve to further connect with his Catholic upbringing and ethnic identity as a form of resistance. This is why he was adamant about Maria marrying a man from her own religious and ethnic identity, and why he organized the fight against Tony and the Jets as soon as he found out about Maria and Tony’s love affair. In both Maria and Bernardo’s case, the intersection between their Catholic and ethnic identities as immigrants in the United States played a large role in the development of their personal identity.
Maria dressed in all white in her childhood bedroom. Source: Vanity Fair
In West Side Story, the characters’ sense of belonging, community, and personal identity were all greatly impacted by the combination of their Catholic and ethnic identities. This intersection greatly impacted their behaviors and the way they interacted with the environment around them because religious and ethnic affiliation are both core components that shape one’s identity. Both ethnic groups experienced similar racial discrimination and stereotyping in the United States upon immigrating. The negative image that tainted the Italian immigrants in the early 1900s drove them to use the same racial discrimination and stereotyping tactics against the Puerto Ricans when they immigrated to the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. They used these tactics out of fear of losing the order they had worked so hard to achieve in their neighborhoods. Additionally, in a racist, post-war United States, it was crucial for them to differentiate themselves from darker-skinned immigrants. This led to the formation of the Jets and the Sharks, two gangs that desperately needed a sense of community and belonging in a system that was designed to oppress them. These gangs served as sacred spaces for the characters in both a religious and non-religious context. They provided structure in their otherwise chaotic world. West Side Story highlights the importance of one’s religious and ethnic identity when satisfying their basic human needs: community and a sense of self.
