Sita Sings The Blues is a full-length feature film produced by Jewish superwoman artist-cartoonist Nina Paley (available for free download at http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/watch.html). In the film, Paley mines an ancient Sanskrit epic to retell an archetypal story: Devoted woman gets done by the egocentric man she loves.
The narrative of the epic (Sita and Rama love, lose, and love again only, in the end, to lose big time) is Paley’s comment on her own ex-husband-bum’s behavior, but the film is ever so much more than that. Envision diamonds and rubies and sapphires, golden tiaras and cascades of silver filigree. Sita Sings the Blues is so dazzling you simply can’t take it in in one go.
The key to the treasure is the treasure, as John Barth’s Scheherazade points out in Chimera. The key to Sita Sings the Blues is not – appearances aside – the wild display of color or the imaginative jazz soundtrack, but Paley’s willingness to ask questions, to provoke her audience. Sita and Rama are not All Nice, and their actions cause pain and suffering – even death. The shadow puppets who narrate events also comment on the epic, noting the difficulties with standard interpretations that paint the hero and heroine as paragons of virtue. One narrator points out that Sita’s demands cause a terrible loss of life for those who would save her (she’s a bloodthirsty woman, the narrator exclaims). Another counters immediately: “Don’t challenge these stories!”
When I visit churches to speak about biblical texts, when I unpack them in university settings, I often find folks in the pews or students in my classroom growing nervous. I ask questions, and they proffer the formulations they learned in Sunday school, interpretations that will reconcile difficulties.
They’ve been taught these readings as if they were the text itself. But the interpretations they offer are often designed to obscure contradictions, to paper over ambiguities, to create more comfortable characters and a reassuringly omnipotent deity. They don’t want to challenge God.
I don’t think God would fear the challenge, though.
The God of Tanakh is compassionate and mothering, tender and loving. But YHWH also bumbles, fumbles, and grumbles. God complains. God worries. God roars.
YHWH is a moody deity, even murderous.
In Exodus 3-4, God entreats Moses to agree to take on the mission of saving his people. Almost immediately after Moses finally sets off for Egypt, God launches an inexplicable and vicious attack on his prophet. Of course, there are many readings attempting to make sense of this bizarre passage, including the claim that Moses is threatened with death because he has failed to observe an important Jewish ritual. (Just guess which…)
But seriously, now. God first commissions Moses for a really big job, and then, in the middle of the night, reminds him of forgotten obligations? This particular divine reminder comes in the form of a direct assault on Moses’ life.
Seems just a tad over the top, no?
Interestingly, it is Moses’ wife, Zipporah, who figures out how to propitiate the deity. She takes a flint and manages to circumcise their son — in the middle of the night, no less. Tanakh is dark in places.
It’s also hilariously funny.
Take Genesis 2:5 – 3. In the entertaining second version of How Things Worked (Genesis 1 tells the story of creation quite differently), God creates Adam, decides he needs a helpmeet and parades a slew of animals before him for inspection. Turns out, our presumably omniscient deity is a bumbling yenta.
Imagine the scene: God and Adam just hanging out, being guys together, checking things out. Both are strangely unaware that chickens and porcupines are not appropriate playmates for the recently created man-person. Woody Allen would have a field day with this material. He should, actually.
Adam, so the rabbis say, tries out each and every creation God produces. But the plumbing isn’t compatible. No “fitting helper” was found. The rabbis conclude: “Adam attempted to have sex with all the beasts and animals, but his sexual desire (knowledge) was not cooled off by them” (see b. Yevamot, 63a).
You can imagine the response of my students and church audiences to rabbinic interpretations of this sort. You can imagine their response when I point out that our Bible is – at least sometimes– awesome burlesque.
What I love about Tanakh and, in fact, any great literature, is the refusal to offer pat answers, to make life’s questions easy. The whole point is to challenge these stories, to ask questions, to wonder, to laugh out loud. Curiosity is a good thing – a great thing. No religious tradition should be without it.
Sacred stories can and ought to bear challenges of all kinds. That’s what keeps them alive.
It’s the questions that give us the rewards we seek. The key to the treasure is the treasure.
But what I really wish to know, oh wise one, is whether Mrs. God has eliminated bankers from my next life, finding them unnecessary and, largely counterproductive. It is my understanding that Hindus hold that bankers will become cockroaches in their next lives, so I find that comforting.
It is my deepest hope that the next life will see utopia, and I don’t think bankers are welcome there…. Surely, they will be transformed into creators of great art — if only to replace the shlock that one finds in present-day banks.
There is a scene in Chaim Potok’s “Davita’s Harp” where the young girl, Iliana, has proffered a passage interpretation in opposition to Rashi, the only commentary they are allowed to use. Her version requires Genesis to be written after the time of Moses, the supposed author. Her Orthodox teacher’s comment: “God wrote the Torah, not a writer. God. It’s the holy word of God…If people wrote the Torah, why should we bother with it? Why should we sacrifice ourselves for it?…Why should we be willing to die for it? God spoke every single word of the Torah to Moses, who wrote it all down, every word…the Torah is not a piece of make-believe. It is not like Shakespeare or like…James Joyce. The Torah is God’s stories…The truth of God. the eternal truth given to us by the Master of the Universe.”
Every belief system has some faction of folks who want to clutch and smother rather than release and grow. I like your interpretation better.
Yes, the treasure IS the treasure! How important it is to have a discussion about a question rather then just accepting what you hear. It is unfortuanate but true that in today’s world acceptance seems to be the norm. Too bad.
It was so nice to see you yesterday!
Carol