Racism And Sexism In The West Side Story

West Side Story is a romantic musical film, that is compared to a ‘ Romeo and Juliet’ story. The musical explores a wide variety of themes. Some of the main themes include racism, sexism and loyalty. These themes are still relevant today however, they may be different to us. The choreographer uses dance throughout wisely, to help get different points across.

Racism is one of the main themes throughout and shapes a lot of the film. The two sides Sharks and Jets, Sharks ( Puerto Ricans), Jets ( Americans ) have a long rivalry that appears to be revolved around the colour of their skin. To show difference between the two social gangs is there clothing and the different colours. Sharks wear Bright colours like read and purple, and there clothing is kept cleaner and look smarter compared to the jets whose clothes look …show more content…
It is one of the similarities we see between the Sharks and the Jets , they treat females as a lesser value to themselves. This is shown when the leader of the Jets tells three women to leave the candy story because the Sharks arrive, which they refuse to do at first. This leads them to question there place in society. More examples of this is the men pushing women out or telling them to leave, acting as though women can't look after themselves. This is still a big issue in today’s time as women aren’t being paid the same as men in many jobs and many people still believe that there are female objects, professions and colors e.g and then are male objects, professions and colors e.g . This relates in dance because of the lack of female choreographers, this is believed to be because of the way women and men are treated in dance class. Teachers teach the females that these are the rules and are strict on them however, because of the lack of males, teachers are more lenient. There for teaching them to be more lenient. West side story uses dance to show this by