I was mostly trying to paraphrase the article for the benefit of the OP, who expressed wordless amazement as his/her reaction to it, but wasn't very specific about the source of the amazement. So I had to guess and maybe I guessed wrong.
Personally, I don't have any serious problem with people of any ethnicity writing about people of any other ethnicity--which, of course, is done all the time in books, but doesn't seem to bother many people until it's done in the theater or in movies. I think the author of the article does have a point, however, that a century of white voices dominating American movies has not yet come anywhere near being balanced by a strong and steady stream of other voices. And that the changes Spielberg has overseen to the original version of West Side Story are very little more than cosmetic. |
