{"id":2611,"date":"2009-02-17T12:26:52","date_gmt":"2009-02-17T12:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb.html"},"modified":"2009-02-17T12:26:52","modified_gmt":"2009-02-17T12:26:52","slug":"animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb.html","title":{"rendered":"Animated Ramayana to Air on PBS: &#8216;Sita Sings the Blues&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I first learned about cartoonist Nina Paley&#8217;s animated retelling of the Ramayana, a classic Indian myth (it&#8217;s 3,000 years old), called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sitasingstheblues.com\/\">Sita Sings the Blues<\/a>,&#8221; through an <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2008\/05\/becoming-part-of-the-story-sit.html\">Idol Chatter post by Aseem Chhabra<\/a> who has a personal relationship to the film. I was reminded of the full length feature, by a recent New York Times article, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/15\/movies\/15roch.html?_r=1&#038;scp=2&#038;sq=ramayana&#038;st=cse\">Hindu Goddess as Betty Boop? It&#8217;s Personal<\/a>&#8221; by Margy Rochlin, who brings us some happy news: &#8220;Sita Sings the Blues&#8221; will air on March 7th on PBS (WNET) in New York.Of Paley&#8217;s self-produced, self-made film, Rochlin writes: <!--more-->&#8220;As engaging as the film is, explaining it is tricky: along with traditional 2-D animation there are cutouts, collages, photographs and scenes with hand-painted watercolors as the backdrop. At certain points Ms. Paley mixes laughs with exposition by having three flat silhouette characters dispute the details of the Ramayana&#8217;s tragic saga of the Hindu goddess Sita, who is exiled by her husband, Rama, who fears she has been unfaithful after she is abducted by a demon king. At other points Ms. Paley weaves in the story of her own collapsing marriage, and the time switches from ancient India to present-day San Francisco and Manhattan, the images hand-drawn and jittery. In between everything else are flash-animation musical numbers featuring Sita in voluptuous Betty Boop-like form &#8212; almond-shaped head, saucer eyes and swaying hips &#8212; accompanied by the warbling voice of a real-life flapper-era singer named Annette Hanshaw.&#8221;To see just how Betty Boop-like Paley makes this Hindu goddess, check out the trailer:<object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/7y5_zJ1xfQs&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/7y5_zJ1xfQs&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/embed><\/object>.And be sure to tune in to PBS on March 7th for a full viewing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first learned about cartoonist Nina Paley&#8217;s animated retelling of the Ramayana, a classic Indian myth (it&#8217;s 3,000 years old), called &#8220;Sita Sings the Blues,&#8221; through an Idol Chatter post by Aseem Chhabra who has a personal relationship to the film. I was reminded of the full length feature, by a recent New York Times&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Animated Ramayana to Air on PBS: &#039;Sita Sings the Blues&#039;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Animated Ramayana to Air on PBS: &#039;Sita Sings the Blues&#039;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I first learned about cartoonist Nina Paley&#8217;s animated retelling of the Ramayana, a classic Indian myth (it&#8217;s 3,000 years old), called &#8220;Sita Sings the Blues,&#8221; through an Idol Chatter post by Aseem Chhabra who has a personal relationship to the film. I was reminded of the full length feature, by a recent New York Times&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-17T12:26:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Donna Freitas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Animated Ramayana to Air on PBS: 'Sita Sings the Blues'","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Animated Ramayana to Air on PBS: 'Sita Sings the Blues'","og_description":"I first learned about cartoonist Nina Paley&#8217;s animated retelling of the Ramayana, a classic Indian myth (it&#8217;s 3,000 years old), called &#8220;Sita Sings the Blues,&#8221; through an Idol Chatter post by Aseem Chhabra who has a personal relationship to the film. I was reminded of the full length feature, by a recent New York Times&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2009-02-17T12:26:52+00:00","author":"Donna Freitas","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb.html","name":"Animated Ramayana to Air on PBS: 'Sita Sings the Blues'","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-02-17T12:26:52+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-17T12:26:52+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/59a2667b18839bc220bd4c3c2d2ed70a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/02\/animated-ramayana-to-air-on-pb.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Animated Ramayana to Air on PBS: &#8216;Sita Sings the Blues&#8217;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/59a2667b18839bc220bd4c3c2d2ed70a","name":"Donna Freitas","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/3bb\/3bbee96f022df7191e7ff477ca6c7f09x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/3bb\/3bbee96f022df7191e7ff477ca6c7f09x96.jpg","caption":"Donna Freitas"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/dfreitas"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}