1) Conjunto and Zoot Suit both discuss the political complications and difficulties experienced by Latinos in WWII-era California. Conjunto’s primary conflict is the tensions and injustice that arise between Mexican, Japanese and Filipino-American farm workers, demonstrating the unique struggles these underprivileged people must go through. The characters dream of better lives for themselves and their children in America, only to wonder, “Where did my dream go?” (Mayer 53). The racial dynamics of the different characters nonetheless leave them united in their status as racial minorities; even when they argue over who is ‘more American,’ Gene pointedly says, “being American isn't something you teach. It's something you're born with” (Mayer 49). Nonetheless, the characters’ conflicts reveal interesting dynamics on the way American media and culture socializes minorities in different ways to be more acceptable as citizens.
Zoot Suit, meanwhile, points out the difficulties experienced by the Chicano movement in the 1940s. This is made clear in the play’s barrio setting in Act 1, Scene 2, where the Downey and 38th Street Gangs are getting ready to fight, only to be interrupted by the cops firing in the air and arresting the gangsters. Throughout the play, the government and law enforcement place harsh punishments on the gang members, conditions brought on by poverty and racism, as Shearer says: “I have tried my best to defend what is most precious in our American Society — a society now at war against the forces of racial intolerance and totalitarian injustice” (Valdez 74). The ‘zoot suits’ these delinquents wear is nothing more than an assertion of their identity, but they are being used as excuses for the establishment to treat them as less than human.
3. Of all the plays we have covered so far, I believe Zoot Suit cuts to the heart of its political and historical roots the most directly and incisively. Talking about the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 and the Sleepy Lagoon murder that inspired them, responding to crisis with theatre in a very compelling way. Of particular note is the way in which the play is structured – the narrator character of El Pachuco provides an overtly theatrical window into the very real and brutal events that occur in the play, beginning the play with a song that celebrates the zoot suit gangster lifestyle. After that, however, the play is quickly ‘broken up’ by the cops, and what follows is a starkly realistic and intense character drama in which police interrogate hooligans, a tense trial takes place over the souls of the defendants and of Latino youth culture, and the imprisonment of the main character in San Quentin.
The characters of Zoot Suit straddle the line between offering a naturalistic, detailed and exhaustive account of the Riots and the surrounding cultural issues around it and being a self-aware theatrical piece. El Pachuco will announce act breaks by talking to the audience, characters will read letters out loud to the audience, and so on, offering a documentary-like feeling to the proceedings. The play makes you feel as though you are receiving a particularly artful retelling of the events surrounding the Riots, and deep, intense discussions of the cultural issues of racism, youth delinquency, and poverty that surrounded these events. To that end, theatre is possibly the most effective way to demonstrate the power and themes inherent to the events of Zoot Suit.
Works Cited
Mayer, Oliver. Conjunto. Alexander Street Press, 2005.
Valdez, Luis. Zoot Suit. Alexander Street Press, 2004.
