This is part of a roundtable on copyright and free culture issues. You can read the whole Cuckoo for Copyright roundtable here.
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Caro discussed the copyright issues involved in Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues in a post a couple of weeks ago. I’ll quote her summary of the film and it’s relation to copyright issues:
Around the same time that Lethem’s article was hitting the newsstands, cartoonist Nina Paley was hitting a brick wall in the production and distribution of her blues-inflected animated full-length feature film, Sita Sings the Blues. Made by Paley single-handedly in her Manhattan apartment, Sita brings together an embarrassment of source-material richness: Paley’s own humor-filled story of breakup-by-email, the ancient Indian epic Ramayana, and the blues songs of ‘20s American songstress Annette Hanshaw.
Despite the “open source” culture of indigenous blues, it’s those Hanshaw recordings that led her to the brick wall: the recordings’ are restricted by copyrights held by large corporations like Sony and EMI. The cost of licensing the music used in Sita would have cost her more than it cost to make the entire film…
Paley’s imaginative solution to the problem has been to give the film away for free, and the result has been a firestorm of enthusiasm for all things Sita. Paley says that her new “free culture” lifestyle has eradicated her cynicism and made her even more creative than before.
I saw Sita earlier this week, and it’s well-constructed and lovely to watch. Cutting back and forth and in and out between styles and stories, Paley’s visual inventiveness is impressive. I particularly liked the scenes of bloodshed and carnage, invariably done in a slick, cartoony animation style, with Rakhasa demons whimsically disintegrating into piled-up bloodily gushing bits as Rama’s wife Sita trills along in Annette Henshaw’s gosh-gee flapper vocals. I love Paley’s housecats too; drawn in a simple, line-art style with paws that open and close like hands, they trot across the screen with adorable insouciance.
Despite the movies pleasures, though, I had some reservations. Maybe those are best expressed by
this comment from Vikas over at Roger Ebert’s blog.
I”m intrigued by the take this woman has on the story of Rama and the Ramayan.
The story is actually, 98% of the time, told regarding the main part of the Ramayana story which is about Ram who is a an incarnation of God – of brahma, the spirit, of Christ, of Krishna, or who you will — he is God, he embodies God.His role on earth is to demonstrate dharam – duty, and how to live one’s life. He is a good husband, he loves his wife, he is humble, he turns the other cheek against those who offend him, and wins hearts with love, humility, and peace. When his hand is forced, he fights for what is right.
This is the actual story of Ram the prince, and it is a very beloved tale by all Indians. There have been countless adaptions of it. It is very important to know this aspect of the story, though this animated tale seems to concentrate on a part of the tale that is actually not considered a large part of the Ramayana epic itself, and in fact is often considered a part of the epic that comes in a “sequel” if you will.
at any rate, the epic, as we recall, is about Ram (who embodies God), and later then suspects his wife of adultery. This is meant to be God himself, demonstrating the frailty of human beings, when they lack faith in the divine, when they disrespect the feminine aspect of God. In the epic, Ram himself knowingly, in consciousness, acts out this betrayal of the feminine, as a lesson to humanity, then is punished for it.
I thought these aspects of the tale are important to consider; the epic is not just about some evil husband who betrays his wife. The main Ramayana is not this story; but this tale of doubting his wife is toward the end of the epic, after many countless tales and lessons and acts of valour, heroism, and love by Ram for his wife Sita.
This woman, who has made this enchanted film, seems to have concentrated on the betrayal aspect (is she a feminist? is she bitter???? Her choice seems to betray an extreme vision of the epic, and does not take into account the metaphor and the knowledge by Indians that Ram was God-consciousness manifested on earth, AS WAS Sita, both to enact the frailties of human beings and the cost of disrespect to the feminine divine, in the final, last act of the Ramayana.)I just see it as unfortunate that an animated fable such as this casts Ram as a villain, and suspect it has to do with the maker’s own somewhat imbalanced view of the epic as a whole.
Vikas
Parts of Vikas’ comments here seem irritating and wrong-headed (I mean, of course Paley’s a feminist! And what’s wrong with being bitter, anyway?) But I think there’s something to his overall point. The Ramayana is a religious epic central to India’s culture. Paley takes it and essentially presents it as a metaphor for her own relationship troubles. She uses Henshaw’s recordings in a similar way; the songs are taken out of context, so that they’re no longer about Henshaw, but rather about Sita, and through her about Paley. The movie is an engine for turning culture into Paley; Ramayana and 20s jazz are there to reflect Paley back to herself so she can be comforted and heal.
So…what’s wrong with that? After all, nobody owns the Ramayana — and nobody owns Henshaw either, even if her recordings are copyrighted. Why not take from culture what you want, apply it to yourself, and turn it to your own ends? Another of Ebert’s commenters, Sumana Harihareswara makes essentially this point:
To vikas’s comment, and those of others who fear that this film doesn’t respect the epic: I’m an Indian and I love this movie. If you watch the trailer you’ll see that throughout the entire thing you’ll hear Indians commenting on characters, motives, and the versions of the story they heard growing up. A list of collaborators, including many Indians.
http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/collaborators.htmlIt’s an epic, a classic. No one gets to say “This is the One True Ramayana and any retelling that focuses on a part I don’t care for is Wrong.” And that goes for Beowulf, the Iliad, and all those spinoffs of Austen and Eyre.
If you watch the film, you’ll see that it is indeed a tale of love, romance, exile, reunion, and then the episode you consider an optional sequel at the end. But if the Ramayana is a tale of hard ethical choices, then the ugly episode fits right in. Dasharatha must choose between his promise to his heir and his promise to his wife. Sita chooses between chastity and giving in to her kidnapper’s demands. And Rama chooses between his credibility as a king and his loyalty to his faithful wife.
You could see it as a testament to the epic’s continuing power, after all, that a woman from a different culture and a different era can still see herself in it. Culture is there to be used. It lives when we transform it. Right?
That’s the theory of the free culture movement that Paley promotes, in any case. And I’m fairly sympathetic. Having giant corporate conglomerates sitting on Henshaw’s recordings doesn’t benefit anyone but giant corporate conglomerates…and surely they have enough going for them as it is. And if nobody should own Henshaw, then surely, as Harihareswara says, nobody can own the Ramayana, any more than anyone can own the Bible. These texts are part of humanity’s cultural heritage; they’re riches we all share.
But…are they riches, and do we really share them? The free culture movement t presents itself often as an alternative to capitalism; a way to get culture out from corporate dominance and let it return to its free, natural state. The thing is, though, that “free” is still a price point — culture is still treated as part of the marketplace, albeit as a free sample rather than as a commodity per se. The happy jouissance of sharing and bricolage, or reinterpretation and personal healing, matters more than the original context of the Ramayana, or of anything. The freedom of culture becomes more important than culture itself — which seems to me like a classic formulation of humanistic capitalist ethics.
The fact that capitalist art is capitalist isn’t particularly shocking, or even condemnatory. And Sita and other manifestations of free culture (like, say, mashups) are fun. Irreverently taking bits from here and pieces from there and tossing them all together, regardless of context — it’s startling and exhilarating.
The downside is that it’s also glib. The 560th mashup of “Single Ladies” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit” starts to feel less like high-spirited transgression than like a lack of imagination. You get that sense of lurking pedestrianism while watching Sita as well. Paley goes to India — so, hey, her love life is just like Sita’s! And Annette Henshaw singing “Mean to Me” is just like when Rama is mean to his wife! It’s amazing how those go together! By the end of the movie, the whimsical cuteness with which the Henshaw songs commented on the action had moved past entertaining and on into actively irritating. Indeed, the insistent preciousness of the film eventually becomes grating, from the oh-aren’t-they-ethnic modern-day Indians who provide adorably confused commentary to the Sita stories, to the animated Sita’s winkingly gyrating Betty Boop hips.
Watching Sita in this context, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the free culture movement isn’t so much a repudiation of modernity as it is an extension and perfection of it. We’re all consumers, we all want everything as cheap as possible — and there’s nothing cheaper than free. With culture liberated, we can all flit from distraction to distraction, stopping just long enough for a single sip before rushing off to the next taste sensation. In capitalism, we’re all tourists and all local color, performing cheerful parodies of our ancestor’s native dances for the elucidation and healing of our pathologically rootless neighbors.
Was “glib” today’s vocabulary word on your page-a-day calendar? Fumi Yoshinaga and now Nina Paley… sheesh.
Whoops! Maybe it’s my bi-weekly word…I wrote the Yoshinaga thing last week…or possibly even the week before?
Perhaps my use of glib is too glib? Alas, just because I’m glib doesn’t mean Paley is not…(or Yoshinaga for that matter — though I thought the review of All My Darling Daughters ended up being pretty positive….)
Paley is not glib; she is pithy. Pithiness tends to be pointed rather than complex, though.
My boss at the AFI would talk about the difference between “entertainment” and “diversion”, claiming that entertainment was a step up from diversion because it left you with something to think about, even if it didn’t present the full range of issues worth considering. I think Paley’s work falls into that category: it is entertaining and pithy, it is not glib and diverting. Nonetheless, it is also not complex and challenging. I think there is room for all.
Despite the fact that I do largely share Gary Groth’s allergy to entertainment, to me the problem of contemporary readers preferring to be diverted than challenged is more serious than the problem of contemporary creators refusing to be complex. Not to imply that the two are unrelated as the saturation of our culture by diversion is surely due to demand. But I think Paley’s film suggests complex issues and debates that it doesn’t try to fully represent, and that seems to me a perfectly valid benchmark for entertainment. It puts the onus on us to engage. I think that makes a nice resonance with its copyleft license and the explicit invitation to re-use the work for our own conversations.
No…it still seems glib to me.
And not because it’s entertainment; I’m perfectly happy to have some things be mindless, and I’d prefer something just try to entertain me than to have it try to be meaningful and fail.
Pithy is Oscar Wilde; throw off lines that actually make interesting connections and cause you to think or say, “ha! that’s right!” Bloom County is pithy. Peanuts is pithy (and other things too, of course.)
But “my heartbreak — it is like Sita’s! in part because I’ve been to India!” That’s not pithy. It’s irritating. And also kind of presumptuous.
Which isn’t to say the film has nothing going for it. The animation is lovely and clever. The story is entertaining. I don’t hate it. But I think it definitely illustrates some of the down-sides of appropriation.
This is just one of our repeated points of difference: “I’d prefer something just try to entertain me than to have it try to be meaningful and fail.”
Things that don’t even try to be meaningful to me aren’t entertaining. They’re just stupid and glib.
You’re basically saying, in that sentence, that things can’t be smart unless they’re brilliant and if they can’t be brilliant they should be as dumb as possible. Hello?
That aside, I don’t think she’s saying “my heartbreak is like Sita’s blah blah blah,” and I think the fact that she went to India is almost entirely irrelevant. It’s the way she found the Ramayana but otherwise had it not happened it would not matter. She could just as easily have picked up the Ramayana from an Indian neighbor and gone to Kansas in the film. The point would not have been different.
I think the point is that this experience, of being unfairly tossed aside, of being judged against cultural pressures and for selfish aims, is something that happens to people regardless of their time and place. That’s not a shockingly deep point, but it’s not glib.
It is, however, a very Western, Christian way of reading a religious text — one that emphasizes the text’s personal resonance rather than its cultural significance and context. But I think that’s a “pithy” contrast.
I personally wouldn’t use “pith” to describe Wilde, though, so this is to some degree semantics. I’d use wit: wit meaning “keenness and quickness of perception or discernment” versus “precisely meaningful, forceful and brief”. Wilde is subtle whereas “pith” is not. I think Sita is a series of pithy, forceful, obvious encapsulations of the same point. It’s the same point throughout, but it’s not a glib point. Glib suggests “insincerity, superficiality, or a lack of concern”. You can accuse Paley’s reading of the Ramayana of being too linked to her own experience, but I don’t see how you’d get that it’s “insincere.”
I do, of course, realize you’re trying to say that her point is superficial, but the grounds you’re basing _that_ on is that it’s too personal a connection for you, and not cerebral or historical enough given the weightiness of the source material. But you have defended plenty of things that are equally and more superficial in the scope of their meaning; it seems like you just like them better if they’re more raw. This review reads to me like you’re reacting to the fact that the emotional resonance of the film is hiding behind the source material and Paley’s sense of humor. I don’t get the impression that you sensed the sincerity behind Sita’s artifice.
Oh, no. I think it’s sincere. It’s awfully, awfully sincere. Yay for it. I don’t see why that’s an out from being glib, myself. And I think it’s quite important that she goes to India — why put that in the movie otherwise?
It’s not that it’s too personal, or that it’s too slick and insufficiently raw (it’s actually fairly raw in terms of the representation of her own pain, I think.) It’s that she’s using a major cultural artifact in a really facile way — linked not so much to her own experience as to glib narratives of healing and broken-heartedness that are al over our culture.
Something can be intended primarily to entertain and not be stupid. It can even be smart. I dunno; I was thinking about the Transporter — very unpretentious action film, great effects and action sequences, well drawn characters, even some interesting gender relation stuff. Much preferable to Sita in my opinion.
I’m curious what you think I’ve defended that is more superficial than Sita? Twilight maybe? I don’t know that I think Twilight is better than Sita; it’s less pretentious and more reviled, so I’m more inclined to defend it… I think it’s overall weirder and more perverse in a lot of ways, but it’s not as technically accomplished. I guess I’d say I enjoyed it overall more, but the low points were clearly worse than anything in Sita….
As a contrast, the School of Night vampire books are a straightforward entertainment that is really quite dumb, badly written, and way, way worse than Sita. (Sorry VM.)
” This review reads to me like you’re reacting to the fact that the emotional resonance of the film is hiding behind the source material and Paley’s sense of humor.”
Nah. I’m reacting to the fact that the emotional resonance is very familiar; that the sense of humor is painfully precious; and that the rich source material seems used as a prop in a way that’s really problematic. IMO.
Uh….”I think it’s sincere…I don’t see why that’s an out from being glib, myself.”
Because “glib” means “insincere and superficial.” Like, according to the dictionary. :P~~~
The film’s point is that the emotions are familiar, so familiar that they’re almost universal, “transcending time and place.” That’s an odd critique to make against the film, when that was so intentional. In this case, given the premise of the film, you gotta defend your expectation that the emotions represented will be anything else but familiar.
I do get that you’re critiquing the choice to make that the point of the film, that you wish she’d dug deeper, but you’re relying on her “problematic” use of the Ramayana to make that argument, and you aren’t successfully defending IMO why using the religious text in this kind of personal way is problematic. Paley reads the Ramayana exactly the way mildly agnostic Christians read the Bible — and the way Westerners read literature period, to no small extent — allowing it to resonate with personal experience and allowing identification with the deity based on that experience to underpin meaning.
The only argument that I see you making against that type of reading is that it is not the way Hindus read the book. But the point of the film is that culture resonates across boundaries, so that’s got the same problem as the emotional bit. In this context, given the film’s premise, you gotta defend the expectation that cultural context will be given that degree of deference.
(You don’t love her humor; there’s not much I can say to that…)
This is, interestingly, pretty much exactly the same argument in reverse that we had about Likewise: I said “look it could have done this cool thing with Ulysses and didn’t quite get there” and you said “but it was trying to do this completely other thing and is really consistent in doing it.” This is the same argument, isn’t it?
Are you seriously offering up The Transporter, an ACTION CRIME THRILLER, as your counterexample here? Do you just WANT me to call you out on a gendered response?
Quoting the dictionary? How glib :-)
I talked about Twilight too, I believe. But if you want me to come up with something else…Ranma 1/2 is something with few pretensions but with a enjoyably bizarre sense of humor and storytelling which I find much superior to Sita.
Glib doesn’t have to mean insincere; it can just mean thoughtless or easy. I believe your original sentence used “or” rather than “and” right (“insincere, superficial, or,….)
“Paley reads the Ramayana exactly the way mildly agnostic Christians read the Bible — and the way Westerners read literature period, to no small extent — allowing it to resonate with personal experience and allowing identification with the deity based on that experience to underpin meaning.”
Yeah…you don’t see any problem with appropriating some other culture’s text and deciding it means what westerners say it means?
“the point of the film is that culture resonates across boundaries, so that’s got the same problem as the emotional bit. ”
And I’m saying that this is a glib reading of culture, one that cheapens both the appropriator and the appropriatee. Cultures mean things; they have context. Capitalism urges us to ignore that and just jump around freely from aesthetic experience to aesthetic experience — which is one of the ways in which capitalism is gib and soul-destroying.
With Likewise you were saying you weren’t that interested in what Schrag was doing, and that she could have done something else. In this case, I’m saying that I disagree with what Paley is saying. Yours was a pragmatic argument; mine’s ideological — which is why this discussion is somewhat more heated than that one was.
Or, you know, a closer example would be Mariah Carey. Focuses on similar themes of heartbreak, extreme polish and craft, but without the appropriation or the concomitant pretension. (Most things aren’t as good as Mariah Carey, of course.)
Sita reminds me a little of Vampire Weekend, actually — though Paley’s technical competence and inventiveness is far superior to theirs.
Well, this:
“You don’t see any problem with appropriating some other culture’s text and deciding it means what westerners say it means?”
is basically the argument that the fundamentalist Hindi are making, the ones who want to get Sita banned from the Internet. The ones who are threatening the Indian man who worked on the film and making him afraid for his children’s physical well being. You’re both basically saying that Sita Sings the Blues is disrespectful of Hindu sacred texts and Indian culture, and you’re both opposing it on ideological grounds.
I see where you’re coming from, because disregarding cultural context CAN be glib. But — setting aside this disagreement about whether the Paley’s particular appropriation is or is not glib — I’m skeptical that it might be a really dangerous critique to insist on.
Who exactly is hurt by the kind of cultural appropriation made by Sita Sings the Blues? I think the bad guys who want to control culture are more hurt than the good guys, even the good guys who want smarter culture, because the bad guys don’t want to control culture so it can be smarter, they want to control it so it can be purer. You can’t force people to be smart. All you can do is make sure they have the freedom to be smart.
That’s why I’m not satisfied with the argument being “this is appropriative.” I don’t think the problem you’re describing is due to appropriation. I agree that capitalism makes us glib. But I do not think that appropriation — especially appropriation that doesn’t then lock things down for reuse, the way Disney does, is necessarily capitalist.
You say that this aspect of capitalism, jumping freely among aesthetic experiences, “cheapens both the appropriator and the appropriatee.” But “cheapens” is a very capitalist metaphor: the Ramayana has use value to Nina Paley — the film only represents that use value — but you feel that use diminishes its exchange value as an aesthetic object for you and as a religious object to Indians. I don’t think Sita is making the capitalist error here…
Just to be clear, Sita is definitely a Western film. It’s perspective on other cultures is a Western perspective. You’re saying that perspective is bad. Appropriative. Perhaps even, gasp!, colonialist.
But in objecting to the West’s cultural acceptance of the free interplay of culture you’re not only equating that with capitalism, when historically it predates capitalism and it is only something that capitalism has exploited, you’re sidling up to some pretty insidious non-Western ideologies that value things like “purity” and respect for cultural norms over individual freedom. That’s what I mean by “dangerous.”
We can debate whether this is a good thing in the West, and that will be a very heated ideological debate if you take the side of “cultural purity”, but let’s not reduce the entirety of post-colonialist theory to two sentences of Marx.
Well, nobody gets outside of capitalism. And any discussion of art in a capitalist context is going to be fairly capitalist.
But I think “cheapens” in this context could actually mean “assigns a use value to,” yes? Is the point of the Ramayana to have “use value”? Paley’s attitude towards culture is, as you suggest, utilitarian. There are other attitudes possible, I’d argue.
It’s also worth noting that the most effective current opponents of capitalism are radical Islamists. In that particular battle, I’d rather have the capitalists win, for a whole bunch of reasons. On the other hand, as (I think) Terry Eagleton suggests, I think we can possibly learn something from religious, and even Islamic, critiques of capitalism. Not all of those critiques automatically involve blowing things up.
For that matter, there are certainly dangers in capitalism as well. Assuming that human experience is universal and that you understand what other people are thinking because you have some superficial acquaintance with their culture had something to do with killing lots and lots and lots of people in Iraq, for example. Moreover, killing those people in that way is a sin that we, in this culture, are quite prone to.
The bad guys aren’t always the folks who want to keep culture pure; you can also have bad guys who want to dilute and spread culture hither and yon, yes? And as many people have been brutally slaughtered in the name of “freedom” as under the banner of any other slogan.
I also think that this:
“appropriating some other culture’s text and deciding it means what westerners say it means”
is just not a defensible description of what the film does. The fact that Paley puts her own story in there sets up her use of the text as “use” not “ownership.” That’s why it does, after all, matter that she goes to India. Not because it’s “enough” to warrant her “appropriation” but because it reminds us of her Otherness from the context of this text and mitigates any authority her voice in the film might claim.
And Indian voices and perspectives are represented as well, through the shadow puppets, and also through visual and aural references to Indian popular cultural representations of the Ramayana, particularly Ramayan.
I think there’s no real assertion in the film that the Ramayana “means” anything objectively…it means these different things to the different voices. The film, isolated from culture, has a take on it, but nobody’s isolating it from those ongoing conversations and debates except you…
(BTW, I haven’t read your last yet. This is still in response to the previous.)
“But in objecting to the West’s cultural acceptance of the free interplay of culture you’re not only equating that with capitalism”
Well, cultural interchange goes back a ways in most places. The way cultural interchange works in the west is pretty thoroughly enmeshed with capitalism at this point, though, I’d argue.
I don’t value purity over individual freedom; as I said, if you’ve got to choose one or the other, I’ll end up taking individual freedom, capitalism and all. Still, I think claiming that only the other person’s ideology is potentially “dangerous” is fairly myopic.
Let me ask you this before I dig into your last: how do you feel about The Satanic Verses?
“And Indian voices and perspectives are represented as well, through the shadow puppets, and also through visual and aural references to Indian popular cultural representations of the Ramayana, particularly Ramayan.”
The representation of Indian voices…I don’t know. Roger Ebert says:
“These voices are as funny as an SNL skit, and the Indian accent gives them charm: “What a challenge, these stories!””
Accents — how cute! I think Ebert’s right that that’s how Paley sets it up; it’s another precious, exotic touch. I don’t find that especially winning.
They are more than accents though; they ARE imitating their parents Indian-immigrant accents, yes, and that is a question of whether you find it precious etc.
But they’re not a bunch of white people doing Indian accents, either. They’re actual Indian people, talking about their knowledge and recollections of this epic. Paley didn’t write those parts of the story; the Indian people talking did.
FYI, from Sita Sings the Blues FAQ:
Q: The narration of the shadow puppets—how much of that was scripted?
A: None – it was completely unscripted, 100% real.
Here’s how I got them all in the studio: I met Manish Acharya (Loins of Punjab Presents) through Manish Vij…I guess Manish V told Manish A to check out Sita, and then Manish A asked me to do animation for a Loins music video, and part of the payment was he’d let me record an interview.
Aseem Chhabra had written about me and Sita and I bumped into him at the Loins of Punjab screening. I asked if he’d lend his voice to an interview and he said yes. He actually met Manish the day of the recording – he interviewed him that morning for an article. They sound like best friends who have known each other forever, and they’re great friends now, but they’d just met that morning.
Bhavana Nagaulapally I met at a play reading of Anuvab Pal… Apparently, I stuck out like a sore thumb because I was the only white woman in the audience, and she asked, “are you Nina Paley?” She had a great voice, and I asked if she’d consent to the interview too. I didn’t know if she would – luckily she showed up, and was awesome, and the rest is history. (source)
They’re all from different regions of India and speak different mother tongues, and grew up on different versions of the story. So naturally they remember “the” Ramayana differently from one another. There is no one Ramayana. Their discussion makes this clear.
I haven’t read the Satanic Verses. I read one other Rushdie book, which I found irritatingly smug.
My impression is that Rushdie’s relationship to the texts he uses is a lot more involved and deliberate. I find calculated sacrilege more congenial in general than chirpy appropriation. Slayer is better than Peter Gabriel.
I’m going to let you finish, Caro, if you want to have at me again. I need to do work at some point….
Satanic Verses certainly is calculated sacrilege–and Rushdie is certainly smug at times. Also very smart and an interesting writer, though.
Working on a graphic novel apparently…fan of comics since childhood.
Sorry if I’ve worn you down, Noah. I’m as worked up about what you’re saying as I am because I think you’re using Sita to make a point about glibness and capitalism that Sita is not a good example of. It’s a pretty good point about glibness and capitalism, but your average youtube mashup — and honestly, Disney — are much much better examples of it. By targeting Sita, I think you’re diluting your point.
If you want to argue that the “chirpiness” disguises the thoughtfulness of the engagement, that’s a valid critique. If you can’t tell from the film how thoughtful it is, or if you actually object to the simplicity of the thesis, then that’s fair to point out. But this film is careful in ways that your review does not notice. It is not profound, but it is careful. And not just in the technical sense.
For your critique to work as you’ve built it, for the film to be glib in this particular ideological way that you are saying it is, you need to be right that it actually is disrespectful to the Ramayana.
And there are only two ways that I see you claiming that THIS film could be read as disrespectful to the Ramayana: either because of the fact that it is not a thickly historicized treatment that prioritizes cultural context over Paley’s own personal experience/position as a Westerner, which to me is demanding cultural purity, or because you object to the tone of the film — the “precious humor” or the exoticism or whatever — and are drawing these ideological conclusions from those objections.
You haven’t convinced me that this film reproduces the problematic type of exoticism, like you see in war-era representations of the South Pacific or the various forms of early-century orientalism. It’s far too affectionate and multi-voiced for that. That’s why I think you’re flattening post-colonial theory far too much here, and ignoring very real elements of careful engagement with Indian culture in the film.
And this film does represent a pretty high level of engagement with Indian culture. You just didn’t catch it, because her tone got in your way.
Now, if ALL you really want to argue that Sita Sings the Blues is more fun than deep, we’re on the same page. But I’m just not buying Sita as an example of this particular ideological path you seem to be tracking – that it’s disrespectful and glib, that its glibness is due to it being appropriative without Deep Engagement, that that kind of glibness is an aspect of Capitalist culture that we can’t escape, and that glib Capitalist appropriativeness is insidious because it dilutes culture.
That argument connecting glibness and capitalism doesn’t hold water if the only definition of “glib” is as a synonym for “superficial.” There has to be a flippancy, an insincerity, a “lack of concern” about the material under scrutiny — that isn’t present in this film — for glibness to feed into the commodification of culture in the way you describe. If someone buys a beautiful painting, and they put in in their house and they love it and care for it for simple reasons, because it reminds them of a loved relative or something, it is not more commodified than if they understand its history and who painted it and the techniques that went into it. What makes an object commodified is not the sophistication of the person who appreciates it enough to buy (“use”) it. It becomes commodified when it loses any value as itself. This is when appropriation is commodifying, when it emphasizes the exchangability and disposablity of culture, when an object can be replaced by any other object of equal economic value.
I think you are reading that kind of exchangability into this film, when it isn’t there. No piece of this film is exchangable for any other piece.
The appropriative bits in Sita, particularly the ones that reference tropes from Indian TV, but also the songs, are the LEAST superficial and exchangable bits of the film, the most culturally engaged — and they’re also very much the locus of the film’s resistance to the capitalist system. Capitalism was trying to protect those bits from appropriation; their successful appropriation certainly doesn’t bolster capitalism’s hold over culture.
I’ll buy that her thesis about the treatment of Sita in the Ramayana is not something that academics are going to be arguing about for a generation or even probably a week. This is not a film with many layers of meaning. But as an example of glib appropriation that is going to dilute culture? This is not the text you want to use to make that case, because it’s actually, empirically too engaged with Indian culture to be fairly described as glib.
The word you all are looking for is “patronizing.” Whenever NPR profiles the latest Ry Cooder musical fusion crossover between Mongolian throatsinging and Cherokee nose fluting, with an electronic cumbia bassline, the reason your stomach should churn with shame as an educated privileged cultural consumer is because, ever so quietly, guilt is being atoned for with tokenism. THere are worse things than trying to atone for sins, but hardly a more irritating way of going about it.
Eric — Rushdie’s not actually planning to draw this novel, right? He’s just going to write one?
I admit to skepticism. I would love a graphic novel on par with Midnight’s Children, but I don’t think the art forms are quite so readily, ahem, exchangable.
I mean, seriously, even I know the difference between red and green Kryptonite. How, um, glib.
Bert — point taken, but it actually isn’t patronizing, either, and certainly not in the same sense as the work you describe.
Paley’s engagement with Indian culture is more visual than conceptual, but it’s very detailed. There are references and treatments of a great many versions of the Ramayana in the film. It definitely assumes that it is possible for an outsider to engage with another culture in a meaningful and non-patronizing way that’s also not particularly philosophical or academic, but the content is by no means decontextualized.
I really wish the podcast from Paley’s talk at American University would hurry up and get online, because in that talk, she showed the sources that she appropriated and contrasted them against what she did in the film. It’s just not an uninformed borrowing by someone who doesn’t have a clue what the originals mean. Paley is not a slapdash consumer of Indian culture; she has a much more sophisticated appreciation of it than that, and this film does reflect that appreciation and understanding. I will post a link to the podcast as soon as I it comes online.
Her appropriations are primarily visual, and I think some of this sense that it’s not a particularly meaningful engagement comes from that. I think, though, that’s our own tendency to read visual culture as objects. I don’t think the only options here are “conceptually complex and nuanced” versus “patronizing glib appropriation.” I think there’s an “affectionate appreciative adoption” option in there that stimulates conversation and the flow of free culture and does not instantiate a rigid power dynamic between the appropriater and the appropriated.
Ry Cooder knows a ton about the music he plays. He’s done a good bit more than Paley to bring recognition, fame, and money, to the artists in the cultures he references. And yet, I think Bert’s critique holds.
You can be knowledgeable and patronizing. It’s a requirement, arguably.
I assume Rushdie is only writing the thing. I also am skeptical…but I wonder if my skepticism is jealousy…I’m kinda hoping he can’t manage it, even though I’m both a Rushdie fan and a comics fan (and he’s a comics fan too). It kind of feels a bit like jumping on the “graphic novel” bandwagon, now that its got some cultural cache. He also wrote the Midnight’s Children screenplay–I think it’s getting produced, but am not sure. That sounds like an inevitable dud to me…way too much in that book to cram into a movie.
Well, if Bert’s critique holds, and yours does too, then perhaps Ry Cooder is trying to atone for his sins by bringing recognition, fame and money to the artists in the cultures he references.
But I still remain unconvinced that Paley has done anything she needs to atone for, let alone that her affection for Indian culture deserves the labels of either “patronizing” or “glib.”
I agree that it feels like jumping on the graphic novel bandwagon. But I do hope he pulls it off! Although I’d prefer the person who writes that kind of graphic novel not be someone who has already done it in prose. It smacks a little of “we can do it better…”
A movie of Midnight’s Children? Good lord no.
Again…Rushdie is a huge film buff and actually began his post-undergrad career as an actor….so it’s natural that he would be interested in making a film (actually, Saleem’s uncle in the novel is a filmmaker)…and he already adapted it (mostly unsuccessfully, from what I hear–haven’t read or seen it) to the stage…so this is the next step I guess. In the aftermath of Slumdog Millionaire, I’m guessing interest was piqued/revived and so he was able to actually do it. So…there are various things pointing to the MC film, I’m just doubting it could be very good, regardless. Of course, I said the same thing about Watchmen (wait…I was right about that…)
Caro said ‘It smacks a little of “we can do it better…”’ My point exactly. That’s the whole thing with appropriation. Just taking ideas from a tradition is one thing (Elvis, Zeppelin), that’s cultural exchange, but the whole poser pantomime of respectful, erudite, and responsible thievery (Paul Simon, the Stones) is what really sticks in my craw.
Isn’t this just “I like Zeppelin, but not the Stones”–don’t see much difference in their appropriation of the blues, frankly. They sound different, yes, but the attitude is not worlds apart. Zeppeling rocked it up a bit harder most of the time–but how that makes it more cultural exchange is beyond me.
“Bring It On Home”–just listened to that one—uses the old black blues dude at the beginning to lead into the Zep version. Zep version good–still has the air of “responsible thievery”.
The blues lead in (I’d argue) is there for contrast; it’s like a classical intro in a metal song. It’s not “I’m paying tribute to this thing I admire” so much as “here is the thing and now watch how amazingly bad ass I am.” It’s not respectful or erudite. If anything, it’s in competition with the source material.
Along those lines…and Caro is going to think I’m majorly confused and/or deliberately contrarian here…it’s exactly the carefulness and reverence in Sita that I find off-putting. If it was just presented as the best damn retelling of the Ramayana ever, no joke, hold onto your seats — I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all. It’s the efforts to situate herself in relation to the material (the autobiographical bits, the Indian voice overs arguing about how to tell it) that make it seem like she’s trying to teach us a multi-cult lesson rather than just grabbing the parts that speak to her and running with them. The ostentatious respect is actually the part that comes off to me as condescending.
I would argue its both (with Zeppelin)–they come out of the Yardbirds, which began as an uber-respectful blues cover/response band. The Stones too vary from semi-faithful blues covers (never really THAT respectful–they never sound much like Sonny Boy Williamson) to only loosely linked to Blues hard rock. Satisfaction is not particularly respectful of the blues tradition–
Not to deflect the discussion, but regarding the level of imagination in mashups and such, have you listened to DJ Food’s big ol’ Raiding the Twentieth Century? It has some interesting ideas about the uses of such musical gamesmanship.
http://www.ubu.com/sound/dj_food.html
I am Indian American. And although I am not Hindu, I was offended by SSTB.
The author wrote the story offensively
a. Although the author used Indians as narrators the ppl she chose didn’t even sound like they knew the story nor much respected the story. instead they treated the story like like the Greek myths instead of the living, religious tradition that it is a part of.
b. The author put her feminist and western twist on the story
i. For example, we have Ram showing shock at the idea of being banished to the jungle for example. Sure maybe a 20th century American white girl would express shock and dismay at being banished but an avatar of god might not.
c. I got the feeling that this was her revenge. “My BF dumped me and he did so because he was changed by India. He wasn’t changed for the better he became a sexist pig. I must show the world what kind of place India is and what it does to ppl.”
My response: thanks honey, we already know how bad India is after all white folks colonized it and looted it of its resources and honor.
Counter Response: Hey that is rude and an oversimplification
My response: YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT, just like your version of the Ramayana is an oversimplification of a beautiful religious tradition
Oh and by the way I am a hardcore feminist but I just have manners and do not shove my nose where it does not belong.
– Seafire
I think it’s probably not fair to suggest that she was trying to get revenge on India. It’s pretty clear that she’s enthusiastic about the Ramayana story, and is trying to express her affection for it and for the culture.
On the other hand, I think you have a point about treating it as a myth rather than a living religious tradition. That’s kind of what I was trying to say in arguing that deliberate sacrilege would almost be preferable. Sacrilege assumes there’s something to be defiled; there’s a recognition that there’s something sacred. There’s little sense that we’re dealing with a sacred text in Sita, rather than with, say, the Cinderella story or a folk tale.
If anyone is interested in the (extremely varied) perspectives of Indian and Hindu viewers on Sita Sings the Blues, Nina linked from her blog to a “Ban Sita from the Internet” petition that some irate folks started.
There are comments both to her post and as part of the petition itself, which you’ll have to click on her blog to get the link for ’cause I’m not gonna give ’em the direct publicity. Nina’s blog says you should sign the petition because she wants to be the first film banned from the Internet. :-)
ugh! I hate leaving a post without saying something positive… sorry, the author did render beautiful artwork and her incorporation of blues music was awesome.
But I disagree with you [Noah] on the idea that she wasn’t angry with India. I remember watching certain scenes and the story taken piece by piece – they don’t show a love for India but a dislike for it. Maybe it was done unconsciously.
I’ll give you an example. There is the scene where she meets her BF in India and jumps him. And he reacts coldly and is embarrassed. I am married to an Indian girl and I did something similar when I saw her, showed open affection in a public place. She politely rebuked me. And I didn’t take offense. Why, because I knew that was the culture of the place.
On the other hand seeing the scene in SSTB I felt that the author was displeased with the change in her BF. You could her her almost asking outloud, well why aren’t ppl allowed to show affection in public, ppll should be able to do whatever they want!
This kind of mentality is very American, very Western. And unless the culture is doing an evil I don’t see why it has to be changed.
Another point is that on the whole the Ramayana is a conservative story. It talks about the rules and traditions and duties of each person in a relationship. Again, I didn’t get the feeling the author respected those boundaries and was questioning them. And I don’t have a problem with that when done by Hindu scholars. Ppl who have skin in the game.
But I do have a problem with Western writers doing that. It would be akin to a Hindu making an animation movie about Mary and having the characters winking and nudging each other when she says that she was impregnated by God. The author had the characters reacting not as they did in the story but as she would have done if she was in the story. Again, as an American white girl in the 20th century SHE probably would have reacted that way but the characters probably would NOT have.
– Seafire
“Nina’s blog says you should sign the petition because she wants to be the first film banned from the Internet. ”
…which is a pretty darn funny thing to say. I need to look at some of her other comics maybe; I bet there’s something of hers I’d like…
I should send you the one where she kills off Gary Groth…
OMG! Please do!
Hell, you should just post it. You don’t even need to ask permission!