West Side Story and The Music Man: whiteness, immigration, and race in the US during the late 1950s

West Side Story and The Music Man, the two biggest hits among Broadway musicals of the 1957-58 season, yield an odd sort of couple - wildly mis-matched yet interconnected nonetheless. They opened within three months of one another, appearing as starkly opposed views of a shared nation. I offer here a side-by-side reading of these two shows, with a special focus on a cluster of intersecting themes, including the insidious interconnectedness of racism and nostalgia; the strategy of focusing on Jane or Joe Citizen (or 'the common man'); the targeting of youth and teen culture; and a shared subtext of fear (even paranoia) about outsiders. Together, they provide a window on the complexity of America in the late 1950s - on its diverse demographics and polarized politics, on the market segmentation of its myths, on the ways in which racism, even seemingly non-overt forms of racism, can join hands with nostalgia.