An overlong grumble about a very simple problem in West Side Story

Content warning: this post will mention sexual assault.

Before I get my complaining in, I actually really loved the new West Side Story. As in, I might go see it again in theaters, which is a privilege I do not extend to many movies. (Mission Impossible: Fallout is the only recent example that springs to mind.) I know the laws of show-don’t-tell dictate that telling my friends to go see it before I launch into an inordinately long complaint about what added up into maybe 5 minutes of screen time might hamper that message… but you should see it. I would not at all be mad if it won Best Picture. (And give Ariana DeBose that Oscar for her radiant portrayal of Anita right now.)

For WWS newbies, basically, it’s a modern (for the 50s) retelling of Romeo and Juliet but instead of Italian aristocrats, you’ve got your Jets (the white gang of the West Side, led by Riff) and your Sharks (who are Puerto Rican, led by Bernardo). Former Jet Tony happens upon Shark Maria, love at first sight, tragic ending because the two sides can’t get along, we live in a society.

In the original show, there’s this tomboyish character referred to as “Anybodys” who eschews femininity and desperately wants to be a Jet. The 2021 version reimagines this character as “ain’t no girl!!” and explicitly trans—nonbinary actor iris menas, who prefers their name to be spelled lowercase, portrays Anybodys. (Slate just published an article while I was drafting the more ranty portion of this piece, which I’m very thankful for because I do not have the time to go watch the whole 1960s movie and dig up the musical for who is, ultimately, an extremely minor character.)

If I may allow myself another disclaimer, I’m really not here to pop a squat on the movie’s team, especially menas, over this decision. Thankfully, there wasn’t a whole press tour of “aren’t we soooo brave for including the Trans Community in our movie.” And Anybodys does live to the end, which is never guaranteed in gang warfare or just being a trans character in anything. (On a more sincere note, the film did get banned in a few countries like Oman and Saudi Arabia presumably because they did this, which does suck.)

What I am here for is to discuss one scene, really just one line, that drove me a little nuts, and that I think hampers the strength of how the Jets are portrayed. I was thinking of writing about this while I was in the theater watching it unfold, and then when I was doing some preliminary internet-poking, I saw a few headlines from a few D-list outlets that stoked my annoyance enough to make me sit down and write this. (Because what is a personal blog if not petty grievances persevering?)

Indeed, I think the Pink Newses and the DigitalSpies out there proclaiming Anybodys as a “powerful, poignant win for trans representation” are missing that the scene where that “win” happens is kind of at the cost of consistent characterization of the Jets—and ends up distracting from the deeper message menas is trying to convey.

The first time we see Anybodys, they’re in a police station with a bunch of other Jets. They get verbally harassed for their presentation (whee), responding to insults like “dickless wonder” with the “I ain’t no girl!” heard ‘round the world. (Or at least in Saudi Arabia.) They instigate a fight over this, which causes the officers to haul them out so the rest of the Jets can sing the “Gee, Officer Krupke” number. We see them pop up a few more times, most notably when they overhear the plan to kill Tony as revenge (because Tony stabbed the Shark leader, Bernardo earlier), so they go warn the Jets, who reward his efforts with a heavy “you done good, buddy boy.” (Diversity win!)

The entire way the “buddy boy” line was shot and edited suggested that this was a humanizing moment for the Jets that means something. Anybodys has a murder plot to go try to intercept, but they hold that pressing action (that the audience is supposed to be more invested in) to linger on the line. It sure seems like it’s supposed to be a payoff from the “dickless wonder” scene—the Jets now accept Anybodys as one of their own and as “ain’t no girl.”

Up until now, the Jets have been portrayed quite obviously as the villains in this story. Their opening number has them defacing the Puerto Rican flag, it’s established that they have a history of brutalizing communities of color who dare encroach on their territory, and Riff doesn’t get the same humanizing treatment as Bernardo. (We get to see Bernardo’s dreams and home life and loving relationship with Anita, who acts as a sister to Maria.) You’re not supposed to empathize with the Jets—at most, you think “I understand why you’re acting like this but you’re still bad people” —while the Sharks are mostly just trying to get by in America.

So the entire movie before this shows them as villainous and bigoted, and coupled with the transphobia they level at Anybodys before, “buddy boy” is a twist with no emotional setup. There hasn’t been an indication before this that the Jets could change, so this moment of acceptance for Anybodys comes out of nowhere. It reads more as “you gave us crucial information, so in return, we won’t bigot at you” than what I think they were going for, which was “the Jets actually accept Anybodys.” Up until now, we’ve pretty much only seen them be bigoted towards, as Riff says, “people I don’t like,” so this heel turn is more confusing than poignant.

And it’s especially confusing when immediately after that line, in the very same scene, those very same Jets attempt to sexually assault Anita!

Putting those two turns of events together verges on nonsensical, though the Slate story does try to offer an explanation:

I’m going to give that explanation the biggest benefit of the doubt I can—for one thing, I wasn’t wearing my glasses, and while I could see 99% of what was happening onscreen (my vision isn’t that bad) I may have missed a subtle acting moment where we see that Anybodys maybe doesn’t want to be a Jet when they offer acceptance. And while I also missed when those dreams of Jethood “curdled,” I’m willing to accept for the purposes of this argument that it happened.

The problem is that there still isn’t a reason the Jets would offer that acceptance in the first place. There’s still no emotional setup for them in that moment. If I am buying the above argument wholesale, I don’t think it has to be a bad thing that the film centers the experience of Anybodys over that of the uniform and pretty basic Jets. But it just doesn’t make sense for the Jets to suddenly act as more accepting towards an outsider and then flip flop right back into bigotry (assaulting Anita when she was just trying to get a message to Tony). It completely distracts from what’s going on with Anybodys’ character because you’re focused WAY more on how what you just saw doesn’t track.

And that’s probably why I missed all of the nuances of Anybodys’ character arc that menas outlined above.

I feel like I have to mention that “it doesn’t make sense” is often deployed as a catch-all excuse for why people won’t write characters who aren’t cisgender or straight, or for why those characters can’t live happy lives. And while I know the population of people reading this is, by design, mostly selected by me, and thus are willing to take what I just said in good faith, I don’t want to contribute to bad faith objections to trans characters existing. Because this really isn’t an objection to Anybodys’ transness. Tony Kushner is a goddamn legend, he can (and largely did!) figure out how to make that change feel organic. And while I missed the nuances menas brought to the table, I’m really happy they exist and are pushing for this kind of storytelling. The change to Anybodys’ character for the adaptation is, I’m pretty sure, a net positive for wider society, if a small one at that. And I truly meant it when I said that everything I just griped about takes up maybe about 5 minutes of a 156 minute-long movie.

All of that said, I do think it can be useful to examine why something feels so off about those 5 minutes. The real problem has barely anything to do with Anybodys at all. It’s a screenwriting problem: you have this moment of ostensible growth for the Jets that comes out of nowhere, followed by a sequence that would only make sense if that growth had never happened. It’s just simple emotional setup and payoff.