I really like the shadow puppet commentary — I like the way it showed the story as multiply-interpreted by differing story-telling traditions. It meshed well with the collage of differing animation styles mapped to variations of the narrative with their different tones: “serious”, “snarky”, “musical”. That emphasizes the living nature of the myth as a mirror to life. Really, it could be seen as a commentary on the need for a read-write nature of culture. For me, as another free-culture advocate, that resonates well with the way the film was produced and distributed. It’s also kind of cool that that was a real discussion, rather than being scripted.

I must confess I am not familiar with the Ramayana, so this film is my first impression of it. But, in contrast to those here who seem to fear that it makes an unfair caricature of the original, I can only say that it is completely clear and up-front about being such a caricature.

I feel like I’ve seen about as faithful a reproduction of the Ramayana as Veggie-Tales is of the Bible! But what’s wrong with that? I think Veggie Tales is cute, and I don’t see that it detracts from the original, because no one thinks it’s claiming to be the original. Likewise, SSTB is an interpretation in a limited context for a limited purpose based on a limited part of the story. If I decide to explore the Ramayana further, I’ll read it (probably abridged, with apologies to the purists).

FWIW, I’m not comparing SSTB and Veggie Tales on aesthetics — I think that SSTB is artistically much classier — I just want to alay the fear that an outsider is going to get a false impression of the original from such a reflection. I think not, because we know it’s a reflection. Some of the posters here seemed to be so worried about this that I thought it needed to be said.

As for the “right” of a modern American to reinterpret an ancient Indian work? Myths belong to everyone — that’s what gives them value. Whether the myth has any historical truth in it is almost irrelevant — the truth of such stories is internal.

Would I so-easily accept such interpretations from a foreigner of Western ideas? I already have, one of my favorite modern interpretations of Revelations (which has got to be the weirdest product of the Christian religion, IMHO) was made by a Japanese animator. I’ve cursed Neon Genesis Evangelion for having a lousy ending and other narrative flaws, but it was a stylistically fascinating external look at the Christian apocalypse myth. Indeed it really made me think about the fact that I come from a culture with an apocalypse myth — how weird and scary must that seem to the Japanese that we have the end of the world all planned out in our mythology?

And again, that leads back into the issue of free-culture and revising and reinterpreting art. So we come around again…

Though of course it is questionable whether I have any artistic tastes at all. Also, a general ignorance of the Ramayana might have helped in maintaining my interest.

As Jerry Seinfeld would say: It offends me not as a jew but as a comedian.

Personally I’m proud that my gods and goddesses are so bangin’.

In Sanskrit, noun endings in the nominative case, first person singular, are pronounced Ramah, Ramayanah, Arjunah. When transliterating into English, the last h sound probably got dropped by the first person who ever did the translation, thus making it Rama instead of Ramah, etc., and the rest of the folks just adopted the convention. In Hindi the entire ending is dropped, so it becomes Ram.

Last September at a parent/teacher open house, we were informed the obligatory coming of age/puberty films for 5th graders were made entirely by Disney. After hearing that, there were a couple of groans and a few giggles among the parents. Luckily, none of the students were present to hear that.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[Do not want.]

How horrifying can you get? You want that bunch of content-bereft copyright-fascists to get their hands on yet another indigenous epic so that they can castrate it and add an Elton John soundtrack? Wasn’t it bad enough that they did it with Hua Mulan and Alladin? What are you, an equal-opportunity masochist?