Avatar as a Rorschach Test

On the cab ride back from the theater where we saw Avatar, my friend Uthra remarked how it was odd that protagonist Jake Sully's avatar in the movie appeared with a U-shaped marking on his forehead which very closely resembled the naamam of the Indian Vaishnavite Brahmin subcaste. She also remarked that the blue colouring of Na'vi, the alien race to which Jake's avatar and many other characters belong was similar to Ram and Krishna, two of the avatars of Vishnu. Clearly, she said, the Na'vi were Vaishnavites.

Of course, we just had to stretch the metaphor further. The very concept of Avatars is Vaishnavite in origin. Also, the Na'vi are worshipers of Eywa, a force that maintains the balance of life on their world. This is also the prime motivation of Vishnu. The Na'vis' human antagonists, on the other hand, wish to destroy much of their world to extract resources for their own civilisation - a motivation that can broadly be described as Shaivite. The main human villain, Colonel Quaritch, ever has three horizontal slashes on his head that resemble the tilak that Indian Shaivite Brahmins wear on their foreheads. Clearly, by our reasoning, Avatar is Vaishnavite propaganda aimed at showing Shaivites in a negative light and positing a victory for the Vaishnavites in the future struggle between the two (this is obviously nonsense - Shaivites are the the Vaishnavites' superior in everything that matters).

But when I came back home and read the multitude of reviews of Avatar, I realised that almost everyone else that saw the movie had been engaging in similar allegory. Some praised it as a metaphor for the displacement and genocide of the Native Americans. Others hailed it as a commentary on the unjust seizure of private property by corrupt local governments using eminent domain. Ross Douthat of the New York Times eviscerated it as an advertisement for taking up pantheism in preference to the Western world's more prevalent Abrahamic religions. Annalee Newitz of io9 decried it as an escapist fantasy seeking to assuage white guilt while maintaining white privilege. Other people looked through their 3D glasses and saw variously notions of the white man's burden, the noble savage, blame-America-first liberals, Iraq War criticism, the military-industrial complex, gorilla researchers in the Congo and many other things besides. And they either loved or hated the movie for these reasons.

Make no mistake, Avatar is a path breaking movie. It is perhaps even a historical movie - the first to utilise technologies such as performance capture, the first to depict CGI characters in primary roles without entering the uncanny valley, the first to use 3D in a non-gimmicky fashion in a mainstream film. It is visually appealing and an incredible experience to watch and listen to. But in spite of all this, Avatar serves as a kind of Rorschach test to project our hopes and fears into. We either love or hate Avatar based on not what it is, but on the deeper meaning we read into it. It becomes to us either a needed confirmation of cherished views, or an unwelcome statement of positions we despise and we develop strong feelings based on these readings of the movies.

So what I am basically saying is that Avatar is the cinematic equivalent of Barack Obama. Stay tuned for the inevitable Nobel Prize next year.

Sita Sings the Blues

A couple of years ago, I started reading Ashok K. Banker's Prince of Ayodhya. I couldn't finish the book for various reasons, not least of which was that I did not like it. But I remember the introduction Banker had written to the book, which spoke about how there are many, many versions of the Ramayan, and its silly to uphold one version as canonical over others. Furthermore, we do not have an original written copy of Valmiki's Ramayan and surely much of the story has changed as the story was passed from generation to generation through spoken retellings*. In such a situation, it is a little silly to say that a particular version of the story is wrong and promote, instead, another version of the story that might differ from what actually happened. It is a little like dissing 300 for its un-historic depiction of the Spartans and praising instead The 300 Spartans where the "Persians" have blond beards and the "Spartans" are clearly wearing Roman legionary armour (as a friend of mine once did). But I digress. Basically, Mr. Banker basically said that there is no reason for our epics** not to be retold in a more modern way. It is not necessarily disrespectful*** to the epic to come up with a new version where the characters behave a little more like modern people. And I totally agree with him. It would be cool to have a version of the Ramayan where we can identify a little better with the characters, where they speak our language, so to speak.

Well, while I agreed with Mr. Banker's sentiment, I just didn't like his story. It is true that I did not give it enough of a chance, and perhaps I should have at least read the first book through. And perhaps, some time in the murky future, I will (yay NYPL!). But what reading the introduction and first half of that book did to me was leave me wanting a modern, non-bowdlerised**** version of this quite frankly amazing story.

Which sort of brings me to what this post is all about. Sita Sings the Blues is an animated film based on the Ramayan, from the point of view of Sita. SStB is the work of Nina Paley, an American animator, who made this amazing full-length movie single-handedly over the course of five years, working from her personal computer.

(The Trailer for Sita Sings the Blues)

The film tells the story of Sita using Flash animation alongside several other animation techniques, including rotoscoping (which I personally find very cool). There are song sequences set to songs by the 1920s jazz singer Annette Hanshaw (copyright problems due to the inclusion of the songs have so far kept the movie from a commercial release, but the movie just would not be the same without them). The film has a hilarious narration by three Indonesian shadow puppets, who tell the story of the Ramayan, and illustrate the various (sometimes conflicting) versions that many Indians grow up with. It has segments that tell the story of Nina Paley's break up with her husband, and how it perhaps parallels Sita's abandonment by her husband. It has perhaps the coolest Hanuman in the history of animated Hanumans.

There is, in fact, no reason not to watch this movie. Unless you're one of those uncool people who thinks that any non-Ramanand Sagar/Amar Chitra Katha version of the Ramayan is disrespectful, or that it is "against Indian culture" for an American to make a movie about a great Indian epic. In fact, Pramod Muthalik would be very happy if you did not watch this movie. You wouldn't want to make Pramod Muthalik happy, would you? Then watch the movie.

Sita Sings the Blues can watched online here. If you're living in New York, you can watch it on WNET/NY Channel 13 on the 7th of March at 10:45 pm. Unfortunately, due to copyright issues, these are currently the only ways of watching the movie.

* As Neha Vishwanathan once wisely put it, it is "incredible how [Indians] managed to reproduce so much despite our oral tradition".

** I detest, detest, the use of the term "mythology" to describe the stories of the Hindu Gods and works such as the Ramayan and Mahabharat.

*** Doubtless it is possible to write a disrespectful version of the Ramayan; I remember several bawdy jokes based on Ram and Sita that my friends made while we were at school.

**** I'm looking at you, Amar Chitra Katha!