Frequently
Asked Questions
When
will the film be finished?
Hopefully
in early 2008. It depends on money. If I have to take time off to freelance
to pay rent, the release will be delayed.
Is
it available on DVD?
Not yet.
It'll be available on DVD once it's finished and finds a distributor.
What
is "Sita Sings the Blues"?
Why are you interested in the Ramayana?
Why is Sita the hero in your story?
Why are you using Annette Hanshaw songs?
How dare you call Lord Rama as a jerk?
What
happened to Laxman?
How is the project funded?
How long will it take to finish?
What software do you use?
Do you have a studio?
Where can I learn more about the Ramayana?
How can I contact you?
What
is "Sita Sings the Blues"?
"Sita Sings the Blues"
is an animated feature (72 minutes) based on Sita's adventures in the ancient
Indian epic the Ramayana.
Why
are you interested in the Ramayana?
In June
of 2002 I moved to Trivandrum, Kerala, India, to be with my (American) husband
who'd taken a contract job there. I first encountered the Ramayana
at his workplace, in the form of comic books. Initially I was fascinated and
appalled: the story was bizarre and extremely misogynistic. I couldn't relate
to any of the characters - Sita especially seemed weak and pathetic.
In Kerala, I was affected by the art I saw all around me. Posters, ads, market
stalls, temples - there's not a square meter in Trivandrum that's not covered
with some kind of art. I began filtering the images I saw into characters
for my own Ramayana comic book, which I called "The Sitayana"
(Story of Sita). I planned to end not with Sita jumping into the Earth, but
leaving Rama to join a progressive agricultural collective. Oh, how arrogant
I was.
Meanwhile, my husband was having a mid-life crisis and our formerly healthy
relationship was disintegrating. When I visited New York on a business trip
in September, he dumped me by email. I was left homeless and heartbroken.
Not unlike Sita, although it took some time to realize this.
In fact, as time went on, my life began increasingly to resemble Sita's. 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.
Why
is Sita the hero in your story?
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!
Why
are you using Annette Hanshaw songs?
After my dumping-by-email,
I was temporarily homeless. I couldn't return to my old apartment in San Francisco,
which was rented out, and I couldn't go back to India. So I "sofa-surfed"
in New York for a while. One sofa belonged to a jazz collector, being house-sat
by a friend of mine. During my stay I had access to his huge record collection,
and there I heard Annette Hanshaw for the first time. The song was "Mean
to Me," and I was hooked - it became my "theme song." My friend
later gave me a whole CD of Hanshaw songs, which I played over and over.
These songs - Mean to Me, Am I Blue, Daddy Won't You Please Come Home,
Moanin' Low - tell the same story I found in the Ramayana. Woman
loves man, man does her wrong, woman loves man anyway and suffers horribly.
They're the Blues; they're Sita's story, and mine. It seemed a natural fit.
Annette Hanshaw was the perfect voice: delicate and girlish, vulnerable and
strong. Hanshaw was billed as "Society's Blues Singer," also appropriate
for a princess like Sita.
How
dare you call Lord Rama as a jerk?
So
there I was, an American in 2002, re-living an Indian story from at least
500 BC. There was some deep insight in the Ramayana I hadn't caught
the first time. I read even more versions, and critiques, and scholarly commentary.
I discovered there are countless Ramayanas already, as explained in Many
Ramayanas by Paula Richman:
http://texts.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft3j49n8h7&chunk.id=d0e97
There also exist unpublished women's retellings of the Ramayana in
which Sita is the hero and Rama is criticized, as this excellent Manushi
article documents:
Lady Sings the Blues by Nabaneeta
Dev Sen
note: the URL for this article keeps breaking and moving.
I've taken the liberty of posting it on my web host. If this is against the
copyright holder's wishes, I'll take it down immediately.
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 inexplecable 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.
What
happened to Laxman?
It's
true, I omitted him from the forest scenes where he traditionally accompanies
Sita and Rama. Mostly because, at 72 minutes, this film will take at least
3 years to finish, and doing justice to Laxman would make a much longer movie.
With little time and less money, I decided to downplay his role for economic
reasons. Laxman does appear later in "Sita," to drive our heroine
out of Ayodhya on Rama's orders, but I admit this is a smaller part. Mostly
Laxman acts as an agent of Rama, and since my story is about Sita, I depict
her primarily in relation to Rama.
It would be great if someone avenged my omission and made a Ramayana from Laxman's point of view. I'd love to see that!
How
is the project funded?
"Sita
Sings the Blues" is a low-budget, independent project, but I still need
money. Interested investors should definitely contact me. I also gratefully
accept donations:
How long will it take to finish?
I estimate 3 years total. 6 months down, two-and-a-half
to go...
What
software do you use?
Flash and Final Cut Pro.
Do
you have a studio?
I am a studio of one - I
am designing and animating the film alone.
Where
can I learn more about the Ramayana?
Online Ramayanas
Valmiki's Ramayana
an unfinished but very detailed translation online
The story
of Rama, as translated and retold by Professor Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
Ramayanas
brief and long
Ramayana Books
Valmiki
Ramayana translated by Arshia
Sattar (excellent, but hard to find in the US)
The Best Ramayana Ever
is by Aubrey
Menen and was
banned in India. Try to find it used!
Many Ramayanas
a Review of Many Ramayanas
Sita
Lady Sings the Blues: When Women
Retell the Ramayana
Yes to Sita, No to Ram!
Sita Devi
Another Sita
story - Trial by water!
Sita in the City
Ramayana Images
Traditional Ramayana
images
Ramayana
Image Library
