Sample: Analytical Essay

Sita Sings the Blues: Painting a Picture of Women Across Cultures and Time

Sita Sings the Blues, a 2008 film by Nina Paley, is a fascinating and unique adaptation of
Valmiki’s Ramayana. The Ramayana has been adapted repeatedly and in a variety of ways, but Sita Sings the Blues sets itself apart by executing a feminist reading that speaks cross-culturally and cross-temporally to the Western woman by directly comparing the story of Sita to Nina Paley’s own divorce. Although Sita Sings the Blues has been criticized as a “Western appropriation of the Ramayana tradition” (Jacob 2), the meaning found within the film exemplifies the global impact of the Ramayana and shows how meaning can be found across both time and culture without appropriation occurring (Lodhia 374). Sita Sings the Blues positions itself as a modern feminist reading of Valmiki’s Ramayana, critiquing Rama’s treatment of Sita, and more broadly the treatment of women by men in Western society, showing that there are comparisons that can be drawn between the two cultures. The film accomplishes its
critique through the juxtaposition of Paley’s own modern/Western love story with that of Rama and Sita, different animation styles, and music. These elements create a picture of women in two seemingly opposed times, cultures, and landscapes that are mistreated by men in the name of “love” and serves as a warning for Western female viewers.

The interspersed story of Dave and Nina, based on Nina Paley’s own divorce, serves both
to underscore the story of Rama and Sita as well as to expand the implications of their love story by comparing the two. By juxtaposing her own story with that of Sita’s, Paley draws
comparisons between two women from very different cultural and temporal backgrounds. Both women find themselves in a largely submissive role to their respective husbands, which speaks to the similarities in the roles of women in both East-Asian and Western culture. While Sita is bound by a religion and a culture “…where divorce is hardly ever an option” (Ghosh 2016), Nina is bound by the conventions of modern heterosexual marriage, which often echo the same sentiment regarding how a woman should behave toward her husband and divorce (Jacob 19). Of
course, it is more common for South Asian women to divorce in modern times, but it is similarly taboo as in most Western cultures. “Indian societies have preconceived notions about a woman’s role and position. And when divorce becomes inevitable, it is the woman who carries the biggest burden of stigma, trauma, shame, and isolation” (Narayan 2020). Women in both cultures are bound to their husbands (by law, name, and/or religious creed) in a way that manifests in a sort
of “unconditional love”, making divorce or separation shameful and traumatic. One of the
strongest instances within the film of the similarity between Sita and Nina’s stories occurs in the comparison between Rama’s reception of Sita after he rescues her from Ravana and Dave’s email breakup with Nina during her business trip in New York. At this point in the film, both women have sacrificed greatly for their men, and both are shattered by their rejection. “While Sita cries and does puja to Rama every day, Nina calls Dave to beg him to take her back” (Jacob 24). This cements that “unconditional love”, despite poor treatment stemming from patriarchal systems, is present both in modern Western convention and East Asian/Hindu culture.

The animation styles throughout Sita Sings the Blues lend to the creation of a shared
female experience across South Asian and American cultures by separating different storylines and exaggerating physical form. Nina and Dave’s storyline is animated in a style referred to as squiggle-vision while sections of the Ramayana are done in a traditional Rajput-style (Morgan 2015). The drastic differences between these two animation styles keep the stories separate and
contained and suggest quite a bit of difference between the two. Where Paley is inserting her
own meaning and connecting her story with Sita’s, a vector-graphic style is used (Morgan 2015). The use of the vector-graphic style signifies Paley’s modern takes on the Ramayana storyline and allows the viewer to separate Paley’s own meaning-making from the direct source content. Additionally, this vector-graphic style affirms the ongoing discourse of similarities between
modern/Western tropes and direct source content of The Ramayana by emphasizing Paley’s assertion that Sita and herself were objectified. By literally making Sita’s body a compilation of circles and ovals, the feminine “object” is made obvious and literal.
“The frame within which the Sita of the story is fixed visually is represented from the
outset by the outlined female form which exaggerates the heroine’s physical
attributes…drawn from Valmiki’s description of a particular form of nayika.” (Chanda 4)
Similarly to modern Western beauty standards, this “nayika” is a voluptuous, impossibly endowed woman, shown in vector-graphic with stark circular shapes that make up Sita’s cartoon body. Animating Sita in this way allows Paley to draw the narratives of her own story and Sita’s story even closer together through contrast and bodily form.

Nina Paley’s choice to use Annette Hanshaw’s music to express Sita’s woes throughout the film emphasizes Sita as the everywoman by bringing in a third cultural/temporal perspective (the Jazz Age, 1920-30). Annette’s songs were used in conjunction with the vector-graphic style of animation, creating stark contrast between the modern animation style and the 20s jazz music. However, this contrast is undercut by how accurate the lyrics of the songs are to the particular scene they are ascribed to. One example of this is the use of the song “Moanin’ Low” when Rama is shown abandoning a pregnant Sita and exiling her from Ayodhya. The lyrics, “Don’t know any reason why he treats me so poorly, what have I gone and done? Makes my troubles double with his worries when surely, I aint deservin’ of none” are extremely accurate to the scene and add another layer of the Western female expression of grief over the actions of their
partner/husband throughout time. Paley states herself on the website for Sita Sings the Blues that Hanshaw’s music is inextricable from the message of the film because they are “…historical evidence supporting the film’s central point: the story of the Ramayana transcends time, place and culture” (Paley 2008). Annette’s songs about her own relationship grievances in the American jazz era of the 1920s fit with both the scenes of Sita and Nina perfectly and add more cultural relevance to the central argument of the film.

In conclusion, Sita Sings the Blues presents a thought-provoking and profound feminist
interpretation of Valmiki’s Ramayana that transcends both cultural and temporal boundaries in order to critique the treatment of women in both Western and East Asian cultures. Despite being criticized as a western appropriation of the Ramayana tradition, the film successfully demonstrates the global impact of this epic and the ability to find meaning across different cultures and eras without appropriating them. Through the use of Paley’s personal divorce story juxtaposed with the ancient tale of Rama and Sita, unique animation styles, and the music of Annette Hanshaw, the film sheds light on the mistreatment of women in both Western and East Asian societies. By doing so, Sita Sings the Blues serves as a cautionary message to Western female viewers, urging them to question societal norms and demand better treatment. The significance of bringing in multiple cultures and depictions of Western and East Asian women lies in the fact that all of them can be compared to Sita, a character who was written between seven thousand and nine thousand years ago. The fact that her story holds relevance to a culture that far in the future and that geographically and culturally separated is a topic worthy of further analysis, and proves that women who live under patriarchal systems are affected similarly. A Western appreciation of both East Asian culture and the Ramayana itself is extremely powerful, as shown by Sita Sings the Blues.

Works Cited
Chanda, Ipshita. “An Intermedial Reading of Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues.” CLCWeb:
Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 13, no. 3, Sept. 2011. Gale Academic OneFile
Select, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A268403889/EAIM?u=gale15690&sid=bookmark-
EAIM&xid=59999418. Accessed 18 Sept. 2023.

Ghosh, Asmita. “A Feminist Reading Of Sita Sings The Blues.” Feminism in India, 23 Nov.
2016, feminisminindia.com/2016/11/23/sita-sings-the-blues-film-review/.

Jacob, Claire, “Does Sita Sing the Blues? Reworking the Ramayana Narrative” (2018).
Undergraduate Honors Theses. 60.
https://digital.sandiego.edu/honors_theses/60

Lodhia, Sharmila. “Deconstructing Sita’s Blues: Questions of Mis/Representation, Cultural
Property, and Feminist Critique in Nina Paley’s Ramayana.” Feminist Studies, vol. 41, no. 2, June 2015, pp. 371–408. EBSCOhost,
https://doi.org/10.15767feministstudies.41.2.371

Morgan, Conor. “CEL Mates: Sita Sings The Blues.” One Room With A View, 25 Nov. 2015,
oneroomwithaview.com/2014/08/31/cel-mates-sita-sings-blues/.

Narayan, J. On being a divorced Indian woman. South Asian Mental Health Initiative and Network. December, 2020. https://samhin.org/on-being-a-divorced-indian-
woman#:~:text=Indian%20societies%20have%20viewed%20divorce,of%20strong%20I
ndian%20family%20values.

Paley, Nina. “Sita Sings the Blues: Why Annette Hanshaw?” Sita Sings the Blues, Dec. 2008, http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/why.html.