West Side Story Anybodys Trans Identity Fixes A Problem With The Original

West Side Story: Anybodys’ Trans Identity Fixes A Problem With The Original

The 2021 remake of West Side Story features trans character Anybodys whose new identity adds both meaning and nuance to the original character.

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West Side Story Anybodys Trans Identity Fixes A Problem With The Original

In the 2021 remake of West Side Story, Anybodys’ character, played by non-binary actor Iris Menas, is no longer a tomboy and is instead a trans man, fixing a major problem with the character in the original. The musical-turned-motion-picture West Side Story takes the story of Romeo and Juliet and sets it in 1957 New York City as tensions are rising between the Puerto Rican Sharks and White American Jets. It follows the main characters, Tony and Maria, as they fall in love despite being on opposite sides of the fight.

The original 1961 movie version, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, differs greatly from the 2021 remake of West Side Story, directed by Steven Spielberg, mostly to appease a modern audience. Spielberg adds a few characters, like Valentina played by Rita Moreno from the 1961 film, and he changed the order and staging for some of the songs. Most importantly, many of his changes add sociopolitical context that’s necessary to understand the nuance of the musical. One of those changes is taking the tomboy character Anybodys and making him a trans man, which fixes the problems with the character in the original movie.

Anybodys in the original West Side Story doesn’t make a lot of sense as a character, and that’s mostly because she doesn’t serve much of a purpose. While other characters have direct roots from characters in Romeo and Juliet, Anybodys doesn’t have an equivalent, so the addition of her character was a choice Ernest Lehman actively made in the original, but then they don’t do anything of substance with her. In the original 1961 version of West Side Story, she doesn’t sing, and her subplot of a girl trying to join an all-boys gang is played for laughs. The gang is terribly rude to her, declaring that she’s a girl and will always be a girl, and they exclude her from their group even though she’s desperate for their acceptance. She does eventually earn their respect by warning of Chino’s plan to kill Tony, but then she immediately participates in the terrible things the Jets do, calling into question if earning their respect was even worth it. In the end, she’s again exiled from the Jets to protect her from the other boys in the gang, ending her story in the same place it began. The character is a strange choice in the original movie.

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In the 2021 remake of West Side Story, director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner decided to make Anybodys’ character a trans man. This decision fixes a lot of the problems with the original character because it adds meaning and nuance to his subplot. Instead of the story being played for laughs as a girl tries to be one of the boys, it’s a serious and heartfelt story of a trans man seeking acceptance and trying to prove himself to the Jets. The rejection from the Jets when they call Anybodys a girl who will always be a girl is no longer funny but instead cruel abuse from a group Anybodys trusted and looked up to. When Anybodys warns the Jets of Chino’s plan to kill Tony, he’s recognized and validated as not only a member of the gang but as a man. In the biggest change from the 1961 West Side Story, Anybodys isn’t exiled by the group, but instead, his story ends in a better place than it started as an accepted member of the gang. He actually has a character arc.

By making Anybodys a trans character, West Side Story adds a layer of representation that wasn’t there before. The LGBTQ community already saw themselves in Anybodys’ gender non-conforming character in the original. For many, the character was already trans. Confirming the character’s identity validates what viewers already saw and related to. Without these changes, Anybodys’ character would just be a throwaway joke like the original.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/west-side-story-anybodys-trans-change-original-problem-fix/

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