VIDEO: Animated Film Roils Hindus in NYC
THE DAILY BEAST
By Salil Tripathi
NEW YORK - Something unremarkable was going to happen on the evening of July 21 at Richmond Hill, a suburb in the diverse New York borough of Queens, where an 82-minute animation film called Sita Sings the Blues was going to be screened at the Starlight Pavilion. Drawing on the Sanskrit epic, Ramayana, the film tells the parallel story of an American animator whose marriage breaks down in India, but who finds inspiration from the life of Sita, the queen at the center of Ramayana.
Protest letters arrived immediately. The part of Queens where the film was being shown has a substantial South Asian population, and many of the residents are Caribbean Americans of Indian origin.Hindus had stayed away from identity politics, but noticing that other faiths are able to attract attention by challenging text, interpretations, films, books, music, and imagery, they have begun to show their assertiveness. Watch: Sita Sings the Blues (82-min). [link]
By Salil Tripathi
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| A scene from "Sita Sings the Blues" featuring Rama (far left) and his wife Sita (second from left). , Nina Paley |
