Remarkably, the animated film “Sita Sings the Blues” by Nina Paley accomplishes this. Paley uses five different animation methods, four different time periods, three different stories and two diverse cultures to create one film that is united and comprehensible. Paley accomplished this mix of concepts and ideas by having various stories interlace in and out of one another, each with their own unique style. Each style is critical to not only the story that is being told but helps the viewer in evaluating the purpose of each story of the film. The Ramayana is the depiction of how to be the perfect role that one is meant to be.
The two main characters are Rama, the hero of the story and Sita, Rama’s wife. Rama is painstaking the ideal man and Sita is painstaking the ideal woman and wife to Rama. Every action that Sita does in the Ramayana shows the viewer what is considered the right way for a woman to act. When Rama is exiled from the kingdom by his father, Sita follows her husband submissively into the forest despite the monsters that inhabit it. While the story of Rama and Sita is being told, the story of Nina Paley is being told at the same exact time.
Paley’s story is about her and her boyfriend and the plot of Nina’s story imitates that of Sita’s story. While Sita is hailed as the perfect woman for giving her life up for a man who treated her horribly, Nina seems unhealthy and would be told by any of her girlfriends that she is too good for him and that there are plenty of other fish in the sea. Paley makes apparent the differences in which the viewer interprets Sita and Nina’s actions through use of the shadow puppets. The puppet sequences help to enhance the differences between the ways these two women are viewed by the culture in which they live in through creative narration. In Sita’s time, a woman’s place was for her to be by her husband’s side no matter how horribly he treated her.
The Ramayana shows Sita doing just that, and then sings her praises. Nina, on the other hand, lives today and is seen as being in an unhealthy relationship, at least by me. Paley brings attention to these details for analysis to be made by the viewer and that is why so much thought and effort is put into the different segments of the film and their corresponding animation styles. However, I really feel that Paley could have pushed this concept about what is the ideal way for a woman to behave further.
In the end she does show Nina ending up happy without her man where Sita ends up sacrificing herself to mother earth to prove her worth. That is where the stories diverge and show the true space in time between the two women. I think Paley’s point was to say that the way Sita acted is no longer acceptable due to the ways in which women’s rights have evolved. What bothers me is that Rama and Nina’s boyfriend behave rather similarly in both stories.
Rama takes Sita for granted; Nina’s boyfriend takes her for granted. Rama asks Sita to leave her home for him and she does, and so does Nina for her significant other. Rama abandons Sita and Nina is abandoned as well. While Sita and Nina’s reactions to their break-ups change at the very end of each of their stories, have the way men act and what is considered as a normal way for men to treat women the same as it was when the Ramayana was written?
