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If you've watched the three seasons of Battlestar Gallactica you'll love this 8 minute review of the show. It's hilarious!

My cousin sent me this link to the trailer of a film called "Sita Sings the Blues", by Nina Paley. The film is still a work in progress but the stills should give you a sense of the attractive visuals in this shadow-puppet style animation. Its 72-minutes long and narrates the Ramayana from Sita's point-of-view.


Considering how most creative interpretations of the great Indian epics go through a lot of scrutiny and ridicule and are rejected for making a "mockery" out of our religious sentiments, this film is a BOLD attempt! I am glad to see that there are still some people who are not threatened by standpatters and are willing to celebrate their interpretation with ease. Sita Sings the Blues is definitely funny and imaginative, and not one to adhere to the customary plot.

For one thing, Nina completely omits Lakshmana in this film. She felt that the length of the film was too short to accommodate Lakshmana and do justice to his character.

On her website, Nina talks about her vision for the film and says some things that I thought were particularly interesting. She says she can relate to Sita in Ramayana, and draws parallels between her life and Sita's, especially during the disintegration of her marriage.

Here are some excerpts:

[After the divorce], I desperately tried to move on emotionally, but I couldn't get over my husband. Why was my heart devoted to him, when he'd treated me so badly? My husband's peculiar behavior resembled Rama's: no violent explosions, just mysterious emotional implosions. Why had he frozen up? Why had he rejected me, when I loved him so much? Why, why, why?

The Ramayana doesn't answer these questions. It is as mysterious and ambiguous as life itself, which is why I came to love it so much. We never really know why Rama banishes Sita. Common interpretations resemble rationalizations and apologies: Rama "had to" abuse Sita to maintain the traditional order of his kingdom, in which the opinion of the lowliest man ranked higher than the life of any woman. As literature, Rama's behavior towards Sita makes no sense...except it's so realistic. It is the Ramayana's ambiguities that make it so compelling.

The Ramayana never answered why, but it assured me people have behaved this way since the dawn of time. Even the gods have these kind of relationship problems.

I came to love Sita for her courage and purity. How can I say this "doormat" is courageous? Because, unlike me, she never fears her own heart. Sita never apologizes for loving Rama, no matter what he does. Paradoxically, by loving Rama she defies him.

In my experience, when men reject lovers, they usually want "no hard feelings" - in fact they want no feelings at all. But Sita has feelings, in spades. When Rama in Lanka tells her to run off with someone else, Sita doesn't say "ok, no hard feelings, seeya." Instead, she is unapologetically devastated and angry - she literally goes up in flames. My interpretation of Sita's "trial by fire" is that her purity of feeling spares her death. The flames are her pain, and by feeling them fully, instead of repressing, fighting, or ignoring them, she emerges unscathed. To paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, that which doesn't kill Sita makes her stronger.

Sita also has serious chutzpah to end her life in front of Rama, her sons, and thousands of onlookers. When she takes off at the end, it's one of those moments when the divine and the worldly pull apart and regard one another with surprise and horror. Sita's final scene contains more delicious ambiguities: Is she hurting Rama by leaving him for good, or helping him by finally getting out of his hair? Is she delivering him from the shame of having a wife who - gasp - "slept in another man's house," or is she shaming him further by demonstrating her own purity, aided by the gods and Mother Earth herself? What a great story!

The Ramayana is world literature. Although regarded by Hindus as sacred scripture, the story is popular with South Asian Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, and others. In other words, it is secular literature as well as religious text. And the Ramayana extends far beyond India, to China to all over South East Asia - Indonesian performances are especially famous. I learned that most of the world is familiar with the Ramayana. Only in the West is it any way exotic, and that is changing.

Obviously I'm not Indian, but the themes of inexplicable betrayal and heartbreak in the Ramayana are universal. American blues songs tell the same story. Reinterpreting the epic with my own cultural and personal spin carries on a grand tradition of retellings spanning millennia.

There are some more short animated film's by Nina Paley on her blog that I really enjoyed watching. They all have a social message and make quite an impact. Check them out!

My brother found this amazing music video of a french rock group called Mickey 3D. It's called Respire.

He said,

I was looking for a video for Ananya (his daughter) and came across this French video, which absolutely blew me away. I was completely mesmerized in the beginning, and the ending made me and Miru (his wife) reflect upon our future…