In Frances Negron-Muntaner’s article Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses (2000), she asserts that West Side Story provides cultural representations that play an important role in Puerto Rican and American culture by giving shape to the Puerto Rican identity. Negron-Muntaner shows that even though West Side Story was not intended to showcase Puerto Rican culture in the United States, many Puerto Rican-Americans still manage to identify with it. West Side Story’s impression on Puerto Rican-American identity is a result of many factors, including the way Puerto Ricans are portrayed and issues of Puerto Rican-American life such as racism and violence. She states that Puerto-Rican identity is racialized. In the film,…show more content… In this case, it pushes the notion that Puerto Ricans were criminals and deviants. Negron-Muntaner also states that Puerto Rican identity is colonized, referring to the fact that Puerto Ricans are born American but take no part in American law or rights. She specifically mentions the “America” scene where there is a division between nationalist and assimilated Puerto Ricans. She shows that it is through this ambiguous colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States, and West Side Story’s use of it, which allows for many Puerto Ricans to identify themselves with the film. Furthermore, as well as creating a space for Puerto Rican cultural discourses, the film gives the audience a view on American culture. This includes untended identifications, such as the idea of queerness in the film. Negron-Muntaner suggests that underlying the film is an “uncanny queerness” and supports this through ideas such as a parallel between Tony and Maria’s impossible love, to an impossible love between two men. Overall, the themes that Negron-Muntaner specifies in the film West Side Story argues that it establishes the formation of Puerto Rican identity and cultural
