Reading Notes: Week 5, Sita Sings the Blues Part A

Reading Notes: Week 5, Sita Sings the Blues Part A

Source: Nina Paley, Sita Sings the Blues (2008)

(Sita Sings the Blues Film Cover, Source: Blogspot)
  • Sita is really the main focus of the story here
  • This version of the Ramayana focuses a lot on the love between Rama and Sita rather than the heroics of Rama. It also includes a love story about Nina and Dave
  • We don't see much about the brotherly love and respect between Rama, Bharata, and Lakshmana
  • Ravana steals Sita because he wants her as his wife her rather than to get to Rama
  • 18:00 The golden deer story focuses on Ravana stealing Sita and doesn't show Ravana running after the deer. Lakshmana is also gone.
  • I like this idea of two different seemingly unrelated stories being told at the same time then being connected in the end.
  • Ravana is portrayed as loving Sita here, but the other story seems to be more like Ravana just wants to rape her.
  • I really like the comical and musical elements in this film version
  • 28:20 I don't like that Sita repeatedly calls Rama daddy in her song. 
  • Even when Hanuman burns down the city, the focus is on Sita and her song, and the action happens in the background
  • I love the narrators arguing about parts of the story
  • The songs Sita sings foreshadow the events that will take place later in the story
  • I can't tell if the intended audience is for children or not because it is slightly inappropriate (37:00) but looks like a children's cartoon
  • Nina and Dave's relationship is like a modern day Sita and Rama
  • Ravana seems to be vilified extremely in the action stories since he didn't touch her because of a curse, whereas here he let her consent by his own virtue
  • In the action story, Sita knows the pyre is a test, but here she doesn't seem to know
  • Sita walking through the fire here reminds me of Daenerys from Game of Thrones. 
  • If you want the rainbow you must have the rain seems like a western conception of karma and accepting events as old karma






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