Big Joel the youtuber put out a video the other day about West Side story and I think it's a good video but I also think it missed something important.
You should watch the video, but in case you don't, quick summary. It's basically about the changes between the 1961 movie and the 2021 movie. It talks about how the 2021 movies emphasises the racial differences between the jets and the sharks, highlighting how the jets have a lot more social power. It also looks at Tony's character, and how changes to his writing make him much more complicit in the violence and less sympathetic, and how that has a cascade effect that makes Maria's love for him less reasonable, and the tragedy at the core of the movie ring hollow. It's A good video, and I don't disagree with it, but while I was watching it I was really surprised that Joel didn't talk about the Officer Krupke song, because it felt so important to the topic. And then I went back and watched the two versions and I felt even more that way, so I'm gonna try and talk about it.
1961 version: https://youtu.be/j7TT4jnnWys
2021 version: https://youtu.be/UwrfS54yhk4
There are a ton of differences between the 1961 version and the 2021 version, to put it simply.
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They're set in different places - the 1961 version takes place outside the cafe where the jets hang out, the 2021 version is set in a police station.
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Riff is the focus of the entirety of the 1961 version, but there are two focuses in the 2021 version. It starts with a younger member of that gang - Baby John - who's in trouble as the singer, but when he stumbles over the words, the rest of the gang steps in to show him how it's done. He watches them until the last verse, when he steps back in, now able to sing his part.
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The staging is loosely similar, but there are some really key differences. Both versions make use of a lot of improvised props and synchronised movement, but the 1961 version feels much more rehearsed, while the 2021 version is more spontaneous. The 2021 version also has the gang destroying the police station as they move things around during the song, which I want to come back to.
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There are some very important lyric differences. In the 1961 version, we get these lines: My Daddy beats my Mommy My Mommy clobbers me My Grandpa is a Commie My Grandma pushes tea
And in the 2021 version, they change to this (apparently this is a return to the original Broadway lyrics?): My father is a bastard My ma's an S.O.B. My grandpa's always plastered My grandma pushes tea
So what do all these changes add up to?
This song is back to back with America. If America is about the Puerto Rican frustration with the promised American dream, the ways in which life is better and worse in New York, and also the ways in which its being better is the result of colonialism and violence to Puerto Rico, then Officer Krupke is about the Jets experience of the same thing - the ways in which they are being failed by the society they live in. The 1961 version hammers it home, as Riff is passed from one official to another, all of whom confidently declare what's wrong with him but none of whom offer him any help, even as he lays out the poverty, misery and generational trauma that have affected him.
It feels so important that this version mentions domestic violence, because it really makes explicit how much suffering there is in these young men's lives and how the only response they have to it is a brusque macho humour. There's something deeply fatalistic about the song, and the rehearsed feeling of the action and dance lends itself to that. They do not believe there's any way out for them.
In contrast, the jets in the 2021 version feel a lot more manipulative and powerful. The lyrics come across as a kind of strategy for avoiding the consequences of their actions. They can commit violence and then use this chain of different authority figures to avoid being punished. And this gives them the leeway to destroy the police station without fear, as a woman in a cell watches then with confusion and maybe a little fear.
So it's kind of an exact extrapolation of the things Big Joel's video pointed out. The 2021 version feels much more about race, and the 2021 jets feel like contemporary white supremacists. By contrast, the tragedy of the 1961 version is upheld by the way it uses this song to show how the jets' suffering aligns with the sharks. The tragedy is that they fight when really they should have Solidarity. Class solidarity.
