Sita Sings the Blues is a 2008 animated adapation of The Ramayana, created by the American artist Nina Paley. In it, Paley experiments with what the medium of animation allows her to do both in representing the story of the epic and in incorporating elements from her own life experience.
For Tuesday, watch the film (which is about an hour and twenty minutes long), by going to this link: http://sitasingstheblues.com/watch.html
(Paley has distributed the film for free. She discusses this in her extensive FAQ, which you should also read: http://sitasingstheblues.com/faq.html)
After watching the film and reading the FAQ, leave a comment to this post discussing one decision Paley makes in adapting the epic. Explain what the decision is and why it is important (that is, why that decision changes the way we view the original work by revising something about the epic and/or by revealing something about the epic you hadn’t noticed before). Then, say a bit about what you think about the decision that she made. (You might recall the way we discussed staging and adaptation with Lysistrata or the way you thought about interpretation with the images of The Ramayana.)
Make sure you also finish reading The Ramayana before our class on Thursday.
As always, let me know if you have any questions!
21 responses so far ↓
VALERIA KUBLIY // Mar 22nd 2015 at 12:23 am
The most outstanding decision done by Paley in adaptation of this Indian epic is mixture of real life personal experience and this Sanskrit writing. This is amazing how she focuses on her actual life, interconnects her emotions and the personal history of broken marriage with the situation of Sita’s rejection by Rama in the Indian epic. This autobiographical integration is shifting the focus of a whole story from Rama to Sita. However, this drastic change releases a quite trivial story. I ‘m not saying that is bad, conversely this adaptation is fascinates me, since its enable the audience relates somehow to this almost “holy scripture”. Though it just proves one more time that the more the world changes the more it stays the same. As Paley herself answers “The aspect of the story that I focus on is the relationship between Sita and Rama, who are gods incarnated as human beings, and even they can’t make their marriage work. …Why did Rama reject Sita? Why did my husband reject me? We don’t know why, and we didn’t know 3,000 years ago. … you have to accept that this is something that happens to a lot of humans.” (FAQ)
I think that Paley decision to incorporate her personal experience or revealed her “inner Sita” is outstanding, since her own story is essential to understanding how and why she chose to tell Sita’s story the way she did. It isn’t simply background to the telling of a story from the Ramayana. The piece is an interlock of Sita/Nina. By making the mythological story relevant to one woman’s life, we see that it can be relevant to the lives of many.
m.ruiz // Mar 23rd 2015 at 1:01 pm
Paley chooses to pay much more attention to Sita’s suffering in this adaptation of the Indian Epic than in the original. This greatly affects the way the story is told because The Ramayana is not originally about Sita, it is about Rama. He is the main character. I thought about Sita’s suffering before watching Paley’s film but I just did not think about it as much. Paley did not choose to discuss Rama’s feelings much at all in the film. She mostly ignored every other character in the story. Her decision is actually quite odd. The original version pays attention to all of the characters that make up the story. Paley was weirdly focused on Sita.
Paley’s decision not only resulted in an incomplete story but it was also nonsensical. A good story is created when numerous, different characters affect each other’s lives through the choices they make. A good story cannot be created by the suffering of one woman. If it wasn’t for the humorous animation, the film would have been too boring for me to watch. Paley’s decision was nonsensical because she acts as if The Ramayana is a modern story being told in a modern society. This is obviously not the case. A woman in Sita’s time and culture was supposed to blindly dedicate her life to her husband. A husband was supposed to be a wife’s lord while she just didn’t mean as much to him. That was just the way things were; it was a cultural rule. Paley acts as if Sita voluntarily and consciously decided to be overly dedicated to Rama. Sita did not decide anything, she was forced into what she was born into. The discourse in the film regarding Sita’s decisions is not relevant to the actual story. It is only relevant to the story Paley created in her own mind because she wanted to feel like Sita understood her.
I understand this film was a way for Paley to express the pain she felt due to her divorce but I think she forcefully creates a connection between her and Sita. I think it is weird that she felt the need to make a private grieving method public. Everyone’s different and I respect her work but her thought process seems so illogical that it frustrates me.
d.lee4 // Mar 23rd 2015 at 2:49 pm
The most interesting decision done by Nina Paley in “Sita Sings the Blues” is how she has taken “The Ramayana” and connected it to her own life. By connecting her life with the story, it actually reveals a part of the story which I originally didn’t notice. This is important to point out because it makes the story much more accessible to new viewers. Also, by connecting herself with Sita, it also lets the story be seen from a different viewpoint so Rama doesn’t become the only one focused on in the story.
With how she decided to represent “The Ramayana” in her own way, her verions of the story makes it easier for people to understand what the story is about and not be confused by its original writing . By using chracters whose actions are kept to minor movements, it lets the audience focus more on the telling of the story rather than what is simply going on in the scene.
p.moran // Mar 23rd 2015 at 3:34 pm
In adapting the epic Paley have one main goal and this is the fact that Sita is being rejected by Rama. It is a peculiar and very interesting story where she is able to interconnect two stories from totally different times in a movie.
Some people could argue that she changed the Ramayana’s story completely and it is not the same anymore because it does not have the same goal as the Ramayana’s author exposed, and because it is not what they expected from the movie it is not something of their interested. I agree in one part but not in the other.
Nina is not following the same plot as the Indian epic and she is just focusing on Sita’s depression. But I believe that it is a good idea what Paley does, even though the Ramayana’s goal is based on how Rama spread the rightness in the world, as a god incarned in a human being; here in this movie what she does it is changing the main goal to focus on her own life and take what she considered that it is more of her interest because she feels indentify with it.
I like how she interrelated her current story with her husband in an modern and east culture, compare with Sita’s world, indian and from many years ago and where gods interrelate with the decisions that people made in life. She is able to relate two completely scenarios in one, and I think that is great. Creating one main goal, and that is “ Why Sita is being rejected as well as Paley? I would love to see this movie in real human beings, I like the argument as the characters that intervene that could count as narrators and come in between to explain a little about the storie, since the names and places are a little bit hard to remember.
p.moran // Mar 23rd 2015 at 3:54 pm
COMMENT SOMEONE’S POST #7:
I totally agree with @vk153013, it is a fantastic way and also different to simulate this story and maybe it brings some life to the plot. Different points of view doesn’t mean it is a worst way of seeing the story. Also I agree in that they have the same aim WHY is Sita been rejected as well as Paley.
I do not much agree with you @m.ruiz I think it is a great story but just different points of views. Paley took whatever it was from her interest or whatever she felt identify with to make a movie. It is not the Ramayana and I do not think she tried to do that. I think that she wanted to show her story introducing the Sita’s story as something that strengthened her main point not to show another’s author goal. And I disagree with ” you cannot based a movie just in that topic” I believe YES YOU CAN but maybe with more plot or more argument in through out and maybe with human beings and less singing it will be much more engageable
k.menzer // Mar 23rd 2015 at 9:04 pm
A very prominent decision Nina Paley makes is to make women look very desperate for their men. She focuses on Sita’s longing to be with Rama a lot more than the original story of “The Ramayana” does. She shows through break up songs how sad and alone Sita feels without her beloved Rama. Along with this she shows through how much Sita cries in the cartoon and when Sita sings, the animations show how much she would do for the man she loves. For instance Sita sings and animates how she would jump through hoops for Rama. I believe there is also a moment where the animated Sita grabs onto Rama’s ankles and another moment where she is carrying him on her back showing she would basically do anything for him and cannot live without the man. Although back in the day, women were seen in a different way, I still think this shows desperation that Sita is shown in a way that she would rather die than be without Rama. Nina also shows her own animated self being desperate for her ex husband, Dave, to come back when she is constantly crying and calling him, begging him to come back to her. I’m sure there were many obstacles between her and Dave, but she chooses only to focus on the moments of desperation. I’m a bit turned off by her portrayal of “The Ramayana” and how she relates it to her life but she did make the decision to focus on Sita and herself and both of their desperate need to be with their men. The only way I viewed this story differently, was seeing Sita in a more negative light. I do understand that the reason she made this decision was because she wanted to create a relationship between the way she viewed Sita and how she dealt with sadness and the way she, herself dealt with the same thing.
dh141373 // Mar 23rd 2015 at 10:28 pm
As others have stated, one of the most distinguishing decisions Paley makes in her adaptation of the story, is choosing to focus on Sita mainly, which is a good and an unique approach. The whole epic focuses on Rama and his views of conduct and we are not given an clearer view as to who Sita is as a person and her morals. She is shown to be a dutiful wife, she follows Rama into exile, just like Nina Paley followed her husband to India. We don’t know too much of what happen to her while she was being held captive but we get a general idea based on her physical appearance described in the book and her devotion shown in the animated movie. I assume that those months of waiting to free Sita made Rama’s love grow weak or his devotion to be a leader was stronger than his love for his wife. In Paley story, maybe her husband grew to love himself and his time more than he loved her Basically, both of these stories center around rejection from a loved one. I admire her choice as to how she presented life using such an old epic and a modern day story. It shows how life does not change, no matter what culture one comes from or time period. In the movie, Nina took comfort in knowing that it’s something that is part of life as she read The Ramayana towards the end and she seemed at peace without her husband.
r.beregovich // Mar 24th 2015 at 8:43 am
Others have already posted here on the emphasis the film places on the subservience of women to their devotion to men. I’d like to reiterate this point, because I was struck by how much focusing on Sita in this film would bring this truth to light. Reading the Ramayana requires some suspension of disbelief and with that suspension comes acceptance of cultural norms. So when Rama throws Sita to the side in order to appear to be a better leader of his people, it seems all part of the course. But watching the film, the parallel between Nina Paley’s husband telling her not to come back to him, and Rama casting Sita away, really underlined how the Ramayana perpetuates this norm. Paley’s decision to emphasize this cultural notion is interesting, as it shows how things don’t really change over a long period of time. Paley’s own story is different, however, and Dave is no Rama, but that Paley finds meaning in the Ramayana and compares it to her own life story is super interesting.
I really enjoyed the animation. And I really enjoyed the three shadow puppets’ storytelling, it was like listening to a good podcast.
ms158714 // Mar 24th 2015 at 3:50 pm
Nina Paley has taken The Ramayana and expanded the viewpoint of the story. Originally focused on Rama and the endeavors he faces, Paley twists the story and gives the viewer an insight of the effects of Rama’s decisions on Sita. With the incorporation, the story is broadened questioning the treatment of Sita and whether Rama truly loved her. It was quite clever to incorporate her actual life story in the film since it can be connectable to many and highlights the emotions that Sita had gone through. From Sita’s viewpoint the reader can understand how women at the time were treated and how they thought when they were married. Instead of changing the story, I believe Paley was able to broaden it, allowing the reader to think about Sita’s mindset throughout the novel.
dg140454 // Mar 24th 2015 at 6:12 pm
Nina Paley made a brilliant adaptation of the Ramayana not only by showing it through Sita’s eyes but by showing what a modern day Sita may look like. The Ramayana I read and Sita Sings The Blues show a very different perspective of Rama and really makes you wonder if he was as just and godlike as everyone made him out to be. He allows the citizen’s peer pressure to rule his life and even throws his “beloved” PREGNANT wife out into the forest just because he is afraid he wont be able to rule with her in the kingdom. From what I remember, he wasn’t so stoked about ruling after his father died anyway, especially not enough to throw his wife out to become the king. While watching this movie, just as you are beginning to think how dumb Sita is for loving him through all the torment and disrespect Nina Paley throws in a modern version of the situation and you begin to realize that Sita is just hopelessly and “unconditionally in love” like the woman narrator stated. At the end Sita is clearly done being questioned when she has been nothing but faithful and dares Mother Nature to swallow her up if she is as pure as she swears to be. Only once she is gone does Rama realize how wrong he was all along and even sheds a tear. I really enjoyed this movie as it was beautifully animated and really put a whole new perspective to the story I never stopped to consider. I was so focused on Rama that I forgot to think about what his other half is thinking and feeling through all his adventures and tasks.
mj160516 // Mar 24th 2015 at 6:20 pm
In my opinion the way Nina Paley connected the Ramayana to her own life and the way she decided to represent the Ramayana was quite interesting to me. Its like her story makes it easier to understand what actually is going on without being confused. By Nina incorporating her life story it sort of makes you realize some parts of the story you didn’t notice at first. Since Paley connects herself to Sita you can look at this story through a different point of view.
ms153581 // Mar 24th 2015 at 9:41 pm
Nina Paley made an interesting decision in incorporating her own personal experience along side the story of the Ramayana. When Sita gets taken away from Rama, the suffering she experiences from being separated from him is compared to Nina’s own personal troubles with her husband. The similarity of the desperation that is felt by Sita reflects how Nina felt about how she could not save her own marriage from collapsing. Nina saw how similar her personal life at the time was to the story line of the Ramanyana so she decided to incorporate the two together to show a the original version along side the modern day “version”. Nita also included humor into voices of the characters that are explaining the story of Ramayana in order to make it more amusing for the watchers to follow the story.
t.kathy // Mar 24th 2015 at 9:43 pm
Paley found Rama and Sita’s story similar to her real life story. Like Rama and Sita her wedding life was not successful too. Paley can feel Sita’s sorrows after being rejected by Rama, because she felt the same pain after being rejected by her husband. She wanted to let people know about the sorrows and sufferings that she had gone through at that moment but she was shy to tell. That’s why decided to made this movie that is similar to her real life story. Her purpose was to let people know about her sad story through the movie. When I read the book I though Rama is a great men. His duty is always his first preference. He is a great husband, great judge and he was always fair with everyone. However, after watching this movie, I found that Rama was not really a very good husband and was not always fair with Sita. Rather, Sita was a great wife. She was always faithful to Rama but Rama did not want to trust her when she came back from Ravan. Though Sita was loyal to Rama, she waited for him and when he came back to her, then she forgave him. From this movie, we can see that Rama was a responsible king but he was not a responsible husband because Sita was always her last preference. Rama’s love for Sita was not as pure as Sita’s love for Rama.
Indian culture and tradition is associated with Ramayana. Some people do not prefer to watch cultural movies. Therefore, she tried to make the movie interesting so that people do not get bored. She made the movie in animation style. She has given the characters a carton look and made their clothing and jewelry traditional. She has made the clothes and jewelry traditional so that she can bring the traditional part into the movie. I think she has done a great job. She has made a creative and unique theme. The theme of this movie is a mixture of animation and tradition, and this is what is unique about this movie. It is interesting and enjoyable to watch.
pr158314 // Mar 24th 2015 at 10:12 pm
Something I noticed that Nina Paley did with this epic was turn the main character into Sita. I believe that she ruined the story completely by doing that, because now every time I think of this book I’m going to remember the movie. I’m going to remember the weird animations of the characters and I’m also going to remember how Nina decided to use songs from a women as a majority of her movie. The characters are from a book and the words are from a song, and now Nina is attempting to get some fame and fortune using other peoples ideas. I don’t believe somebody should be able to profit by adapting other peoples works together and calling it your own. I will also remember how whiny she made her self and Sita seem in her movie. Nina Paley completely ruined my view of the epic The Ramayana. I cannot think of Sita of Rama or any of the characters again without also remembering how much I disliked this movie.
k.jackson // Mar 24th 2015 at 10:44 pm
Personally I really enjoy modern Interpretation of classic film and reading. Its so phenomenal because you get to compare the diffraction between culture value of their time to our time of society, so obviously after watching Nina Paley film I enjoyed it. Paley film was quite interesting because she uses her personal life to incorporate Narayan’s version of “The Ramayana”. Haley film is mainly on Rama. This is what makes it interesting because focusing mainly on Paley feeling with her divorce makes you think more about Sita and her went through with Rama not wanting to marry her. She tells Sita story through her story. You notice from after reading Narayan epic and watching Paley film of “The Ramayana” is set around different cultural time. You see the back then that a women life and goals is raped around marriage.
ht165037 // Mar 24th 2015 at 10:57 pm
One decision Nina Paley makes in adapting the epic is she focuses the entire film Sita Sings the Blues on Sita and her relationship with Rama. Nina Paley does a phenomenal job incorporating her own defective personal relationship, connecting her heartbreak with Sita and Rama’s broken marriage. This adaptation truly highlights the amount of unconditional love Sita had for Rama and how Rama really didn’t care whatsoever about his wife, he valued his reputation as a prince/leader higher than his love for his wife Sita. This direction that Nina Paley chooses to go forth with brings out these issues between the two couple that weren’t so apparent in the original work, thus makes the viewer look at the original piece with a different set of eyes. I enjoyed this adaptation. Nina Paley did an amazing job with this film, putting her own life experience truly put Sita and Rama’s relationship into perspective. I love all these different adaptations; in the end they always seem to make the viewer look at the original work differently.
rh161368 // Mar 24th 2015 at 11:04 pm
Nina Paley decided insert singing throughout the epic in the point of view of Sita. Through this singing Paley shows us her perception of how Sita feels throughout the epic. She uses this singing to give us an in depth view on how Sita felt during the many trials she went though with and without Rama. Her interpretation of “The Ramayana” was how she related the epic to her life and how she viewed the story in the eyes of Sita instead of the story’s telling in the view of Rama. I think her decision to represent “The Ramayana” in the perspective of Sita provides a new way of looking at old text. Her interpretation of the story allowed her to relate the story to her life and share that story with us.
VALERIA KUBLIY // Mar 25th 2015 at 12:18 pm
Sorry, k.menzer , but I have to disagree with you.
Yes, this adaptation is odd, and not true to the original story, but it does not have to be. This was a very personal project for Nina Paley. Nina took an old story about Rama and plucked Sita out of her husband’s story to make her a star in her own right. She interwove her own personal emotions with Sita’s. Therefore, this work is not interpretation of Ramayana is not even new version of “Sitayana” this story is Paley’s emotions , revealed, shockingly open and real; this is her exposed heart right in front of us. It was her own choice to show it “ugly”, it was her choice to keep this level of honesty with an audience. She done it for purpose, “I wanted people to feel my pain. And believe me, that’s just a little taste of it. When this sort of thing happens to you, it’s so shameful, so humiliating. Which is why I included that scene of Sita sitting there on the banks of the river saying, “I must have committed a terrible sin in a previous life to deserve such suffering.” There’s always a sense that, if something bad happens to you, that there’s something really wrong with you. And I love that even Sita believes this, because she’s completely stainless, that’s the whole point of her character. I feel that airing this stuff out is the way to take the shame out of it. Plus, pain is funny!
Making the film allowed me to get in touch with my inner Sita. I didn’t know why I was feeling the way I was feeling, wanting this man who rejected me. A normal, self assured woman, I related so much to Sita and the Ramayana, and I felt the pain of the failed relationship could consume me if I wasn’t careful. Basically the pain was going to burn me. For me that’s a metaphor of pain. It can either burn you or it can fuel something.”(N. Paley FAQ)
So, k.menzer, this her right to feel what she has been feeling, a conventional rule for love, or for how people should respond to times of desperation or separation doesn’t exist. Moreover, as a free artist she has all rights to depicts everything that she feel right to. You would not test Salvador Dali’s odd illustrations, why you question Paley’s way of depicting her real emotions.
m.ruiz // Mar 26th 2015 at 6:51 pm
@ht165037
“Nina Paley did an amazing job with this film, putting her own life experience truly put Sita and Rama’s relationship into perspective”
Paley’s own marriage was her own personal business. It was unique to her and her husband; every couple is different. It is crazy to me that this woman would compare her relationship to Rama and Sita’s relationship. Also, I do not see how her own personal issues can put Rama’s relationship with Sita into perspective. They are unrelated. I am not even sure how to continue without sounding too judgmental of Paley because this film is so personal to her.
Sita had an obsession with her husband; she did not necessarily unconditionally love him. Obsession and love are two very different things. Being literally obsessed with someone should not be a universal theme.
Basically, I’m trying to say that Paley’s making of this film was nutty and that I don’t think your sentence that I quoted is a valid statement.
dh141373 // Mar 26th 2015 at 10:29 pm
Paley does make Sita and herself look desperate and kind of whiny fort their male partners, which does ruin the story to some extent. It takes the seriousness away from this epic that the people of Indian culture value so much. However, you guys should take into consideration the simple idea that it has to do with rejection. Both females tried to preform their duties as wives, Sita followed Rama to the forest and Nina followed her husband to India. In both stories, things went wrong and the relationships suffered. I don’t think we should take this movie too seriously but we should take away that simple theme, rejection. The movie was not meant to be taken seriously and you can tell that by it’s humorous take and silly animation that was not even kept consistent throughout the movie.
ct154628 // Mar 27th 2015 at 2:32 pm
What greatly interested me in Paley’s adaptation of the epic were her shadow/side characters (the three black outlined/sketched people). I felt that those characters made the movie more engaging and it definitely held my attention. They added emphasis on different parts of the story and provided comedy. When they were making mistakes then correcting each other, commenting on “how the god’s would be mad at them” for mispronouncing names, and adding modern jokes it made the movie fun to watch because it was a technique I haven’t seen before. It definitely made the story more interesting and made me more inclined to reopen the book and catch up on this reading since I was falling slightly behind.