I think your explanation answers the question to a large extent: this is the story of Tony falling in love with Maria, so he is centered and her agency exists mainly in response to him, and then it's the story of the Jets and their feud with the Sharks, so the Jets are centered and the Sharks' agency exists mainly in response to the Jets and America. And that balance feels right to most audiences because most audiences have typically found themselves centered in the story or haven't questioned/noticed/minded the status quo of popular entertainment in this country.
Call that unconscious bias, overt racism, or the natural approach to doing a standard adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet" (hence the contemporary responses to Shakespeare that frame his plays around the female characters like Juliet or Desdemona); wherever our modern-day arguments take us in how we interpret the choices of the creatives, I think it's clear that they brought a specific point of view to the story. |
