"Go walk the streets like your sister!"--West Side Story
Today I had lunch with Bev of the Aspies group. We met at Yonge Sushi. I played it safe and had the chicken curry. Next time I should be more adventurous and get an actual sushi order.
This evening I saw West Side Story (for the fourth time) at the Event Screen. Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins were a team of genius. The movie was pretty close to the stage show, I'd imagine, and my favorite number is "America." But the movie version has pretty weak romantic leads: Natalie Wood was pretty, but Hispanic as my grandmother.
Of course, for JFK-era moviegoers white vs. Hispanic gang warfare bore a subtext about white vs. black racial tensions. (Just like when the 1956 movie Giant dramatized discrimination against Chicanos, the audience sensed it was really about discrimination against Afro-Americans.) Frankly, the middlebrow 1950s concern about juvenile delinquency and violent youth strikes me as hypocritical. At least teenagers who played "chicken" were only endangering themselves. John Foster Dulles' "brinksmanship" was chicken with nuclear weapons, and the world was lucky to survive the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Of course, for JFK-era moviegoers white vs. Hispanic gang warfare bore a subtext about white vs. black racial tensions. (Just like when the 1956 movie Giant dramatized discrimination against Chicanos, the audience sensed it was really about discrimination against Afro-Americans.) Frankly, the middlebrow 1950s concern about juvenile delinquency and violent youth strikes me as hypocritical. At least teenagers who played "chicken" were only endangering themselves. John Foster Dulles' "brinksmanship" was chicken with nuclear weapons, and the world was lucky to survive the Cuban Missile Crisis.
After that amazing spike early in the week, my pageview level has subsided to what it was before. I wonder what exactly raised it so high?
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