Smearing, moments now, moment spelling too your theme fast things too well,
and it will so restual. We welcome to this special Passover episode of Amusing
Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and contributions to American popular culture. The
story of Moses and the Exodus is no stranger to film, whether it's the
Ten Commandments, the Prince of Egypt, Exodus, Gods and Kings, or
some other adaptation. The problem for me is that these movies are too safe
and too pious, and trying to appeal to mass audiences and trying not to
offend religious viewers. They don't really say anything interesting. There is, however,
one exception, Sader Masochism, an uninhibited, one of a kind animated
critique of the well known Passover tale. I'm Jonathan Friedman and I'm Joey Angelfield.
Producer engineer Mike Tomren is working somewhere behind the scenes. Amusing Jews is
a project of a dot Cavareem Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, the Cool Shool Jewish
Cultural Community, and ATHEC United Studios. Our special guest today is Nina Paley,
a cartoonist, animator, and free culture advocate. She's best known for
her two thousand and eight animated feature film Sita Sings the Blues, based on
the Ramayana, and her twenty eighteen animated feature Sader Masochism, a jukebox musical
recounting to Exodus, the eradication of goddess worship, and the rise of patriarchy.
Lena, Welcome to Amusing Jews. Hello, thanks for inviting me.
In your two thousand five Team tedex presentation, which I was just rewatching,
you describe copyright as a sort of brain damage that stifles the collective mind of
culture and interrupts the natural flow of transmission, remixing, and innovation. How
is this copyright abolitionist philosophy expressed in your work? Well, in Sado Masochism,
it's expressed in me using any music that I wanted. I was not
going to worry about that. So much censorship happens inside the artist's mind before
a work ever gets expressed in the first place. So I decided I was
not going to cooperate in this that if it was going to be censored,
it would have to be censored externally, which YouTube has done. I have
not posted it on YouTube, but YouTube does not recognize fair use, the
doctrine of fair use, which all of the music uses in Sadomaschism are in
fact fair use. But that doesn't matter. YouTube just has a little robot
and I would need big legal resources to challenge YouTube, which I don't have.
But I do believe if I challenged YouTube, I would win. But
still little artists no money, doesn't get to do that. Could you explain
the concept of fair use? And I know that if you were to pay
the rights for all the music in that film, that will probably cost a
billion dollars or something like that. I don't know if it'll cost a billion
dollars, but yeah, there's very clearer exceptions to standard copyright protocol for transformative
uses, parodies included, also educational uses, also commentary. There's like a
set and there's some requirements it has to fulfill. One of them is that
the use actually is transformative, and another is that it does not threaten the
income of the so called copyright owner from those works. And fair use is
like use it or lose it, And we've been losing it because no one's
using it because the movie industry is somewhat conservative, extremely conservative and cowardly and
people just don't assert it. But I'm not the movie industry. I'm just
an artist. I'm independent. I don't have to answer to investors or anyone.
So when I set out to make Sader Masochism, that was that was
part of it, as I was, and one of the first songs that
I wanted to use. I immediately my immediate reaction was, oh, I
can't use that. And it was hard for me to overcome that, but
I did use it. It was go Down Moses, even that classic.
You can't use amazing, Well, you can't. You can use anything if
you just use it. I was asked a screening, you know, how
did you how were you able to use this music? And I said,
well, I bought deeping decent the music, and I put them in my
DVD drive and I copied them onto my hard drives and then I put them
in my editor Enjoying the show, click like and subscribe. Well, the
designs and animation you created for Sadrmasochism are striking and hard to forget. I
personally can't see The Exodus the same way after watching the movie. I don't
want to call it propaganda art, but there's a clear and compelling anti normative
provocative message that comes through, whether it's the brutal slaughtering of ancient goddesses or
the disconcerting image of Jesus at the Last Supper speaking with the voice of what
sounds like an old reform rabbi from an instructional passover record many long years ago.
On this night, our ancestors heard the call of freedom, and tonight
that call rings out once more, commanding us to champion the cause of the
oppressed people's throughout the world. I am imagine only an atheist Jew with a
secular upbringing would come up with this stuff. Why did you decide to make
Sado Masochism? Well, I'm an atheist Jew with a secular upbringing here,
so apparently it had that happened. So one reason I made Sada Mraschism was
that after my first film, Sita Sings the Blues, came out, some
Hindu fundamentalist nationalists called my collaborators on that film self hating Hindus, and there
were a lot of oh well yeah. There was a strain of criticism of
the film and of me for cultural appropriation because as a what they assumed was
a white Christian woman working with the Ramayana that was not okay, I was
not the correct ethnicity for that, and so I thought, but like,
oh, really, you know, well you want me to work with Supposedly
my cultural heritage is determined by my genetic makeup. Okay, I don't think
you're going to be any happier with that, but I'll do that. And
so, yeah, I was going to be Passover because that's the one big
holiday that I was raised observing. But another reason I made Sandramascism was because
my father was dying. As I got the idea for it, and I
did want to do something about my father, some attempt to connect with my
father somehow. And I am Jewish, well, both my parents are ethically
Jewish, but my father was. He was from a religious family, and
even though he was a hardcore atheist himself, it was very important that we
had some sort of connection to Jewish identity. So that came more from him.
My mom's Stapleague was a lot more assimilated and relaxed about Judaism. Yeah,
I think. And there is that beautiful juxtaposition in the film between like
the harsh takedown of tradition and then some sprinkles of tradition, which I don't
know. It makes for an indefinable experience in some ways. Yeah, well
that's being a secular Jewish American. It's a somewhat indefinable experience. I mean,
it's been a trip, especially lately. Like I really did not think
much about being Jewish. It was just sort of this birky fact about me.
I did not experience anti Semitism growing up. I experienced little to know
anti Semitism in my life and just look at the world now, this is
just bizarre. So yeah, like I didn't even bother while using my jew
card is what I called it. I had literally made a juke card.
When I started making Sadr Masochism, It's like I can make this movie,
which was you know, it's been so many things have changed in the last
ten years or fifteen years. You have some delightful scenes in the film where
you depicted as a lamb, are chatting with your bearded god in the sky
father, who was a mathematics professor. The audio was taken from interviews you
recorded with your father. I know first Handoo, it's like to do something
that your family's not that your family doesn't like. Oh yeah, I like,
what like dropping out of college. It was a stupidity on your PARTI
it has nothing to do with religion. What inspired you to put those in
the movie. When I started making the movie, I did a lot of
live recordings of people's satyrs and I used none of those recordings. But I
also recorded my father. Those recordings are well, it was just one recording.
Really, he was at a hospital a few months before he died.
We thought he was dying that time, but he wasn't. But I really
wanted to get an interview with him, So yeah, I was getting interviews
in that one I included, but the scenes with him were the last scenes
that I made. In producing the films, I started with the musical numbers
and the audio I did with my dad, I just did not want to
play for several years. I just felt very ambivalent about it. And I
think it was five years after his death that I returned to them because I
had to finish the film. And you know, I knew I wanted that
stuff in, but it was just hard for me to listen to the whole
thing. And yeah, film, Well, that's part of the sweetness of
the film. I think. The other part is that kind of harsh edge,
and whenever war flares up in the Middle East, as it often does,
I have a habit of sending around the scene from the movie set to
the Triumphalist song This Land Is Mine from the movie Exodus, sung by Andy
Williams, and the animation shows the never ending back and forth conflict in that
land, beginning with early Man, through the Canaanites, Egyptians, Assyrians,
Israelites, Babylonians, Greeks, Maccabees and others, to the Crusaders, Turks,
Arabs, British Palestinians, Israelis and others, culminating in the Angel of
Death, who you describe on your website as the real hero of the Old
Testament and right now too. The message isn't exactly ambiguous. But what did
you hope viewers would take away from this jarring, darkly humor portrayal of perpetual
brutality. Yeah. People sometimes ask me what I want viewers to take away,
and it's not like I really know. I think I make art to
be less alone myself. If other people feel less alone witnessing this world when
they see my art, then perhaps I want them to just take away some
comfort or camaraderie or the knowledge that you are not alone. Yeah, it
seems that people maybe aren't as open about talking about cyclical violence because that's really
what we're dealing with. And the fact that you portrayed artistically in a very
evocative and strident kind of way, I think it does articulate that sense of
anxiety and hopelessness that people aren't comfortable maybe saying themselves. Yeah, I guess
that's the one thing that I'm skeptical of with the Middle East situation, the
Land of Canaan situation is just when people think that they have an answer and
that everybody should go along with this answer. If everybody would just do the
they we'd all be great. And it's like, no, people are not
going to do the thing. The reason that they're not going to do the
thing is because of a couple of thousand years of stuff. And yeah,
it's it's difficult to live in a world with an unsolvable problem. Another great
scene in the movie has ancient Near Eastern goddess figuring singing and dancing to the
Pointer sisters. You've gotta believe they taught Moses with the lyrics why not believe
in me? In the film, you make the case that the god of
Moses is by no accident Mail. Can you elaborate? I knew I was
making a film about the passover story, which was Exodus, but I didn't
know how I was going to find meaning that was resident with me. I
didn't know how I was going to really get into it. What you're supposed
to do with the Exodus story is Moses is the hero, and you make
a hero story, like all those other films you mentioned, the Ten Commandments
and Prince of Egypt, the for feminists for women, women are supposed to
relate to the story through Miriam Moses the sister, which they did a little
bit in Prince of Egypt. Miriam was hardly mentioned at all in the text.
She's sort of an invention. Well, her character is sort of made
up by well meaning feminist leaning liberals Jews who want to make the story seem
more feminists or inclusive with women than it is. It really is not,
So I didn't want to modify the story to be something that it wasn't.
Have you read the text. I read the version in my King James Gideon
Bible, But well, I don't know if I should admit this, but
I do have a PhD in Hebrew Bible. Wow, so you read it
in Hebrew, Yeah, it's not any better. Yeah. So you know,
this is pretty harsh women and very male oriented, very patriarchal. I
mean, Moses was a patriarch. It's a patriarchal religion. So yeah,
I was really not seeing Moses as a hero, and I wasn't really seeing
Aaron as a hero. And the fact that Leebke family seemed pretty corrupt,
especially after Aaron did that whole Golden Calf thing and everybody got killed except Aaron,
and Aaron got to be made a priest and all of Aaron's descendants got
to be priests forever. It was like what he like enabled that Golden Calf,
Like he did that. So the question was how am I going to
relate to this without Moses being the hero? And I was just you know,
I read lots of commentaries and interpretations and books about Exodus, and the
one that I liked the most was called When God Was a Woman by Merlin
Stone, and it's you know, it's a fallible book, but I did
like her basic thesis, which was that the Hebrew religion emerged in a world
where goddesses were worshiped, and that's the idols that they were talking about,
and that's the neighbor's religions that they were talking about. And that's what got
eliminated when Hebrew Monotheism became dominant. You can't worship goddesses when you know,
thou shalt have only one God and have no other gods before me, and
you know, Goddess worth that was the practice there, that was the land,
That was what people did. I liked that and I pursued it.
But in order for me to tell that story, I had to sort of
resurrect the goddess. And we can't really do that in modern times because we're
cut off from goddess religions as they were historically practiced. People have kind of
reinvented them, but uh, that's really you know, reinventing and reimagining them
isn't the same as having a tradition that's handed down. We are cut off
from that. Humanity is cut off from that part of our legacy. But
I had to make it up, so I did. So I have like
these different representations of the Goddess, like just as many as I find,
and those animated goddess figurines, the statues. Those were all images that I
was looking at when I was trying to design like a character of the Goddess,
and my plan was to redraw them. But I was using animation software,
a new animation software for me, and after a while I realized,
Hey, I don't have to readraw these, I can just use the reference
material. And that's how those guys got animated, or goalps, I should
say, that's how those galps got animated. You're reminded me of something as
well. The founder of humanistic Judaism, Rabbi Sherwin Wine. He would ask
rhetorically, what's so great about monotheism anyway? You know, there's this thing
in Western culture where we believe that monotheism is somehow an advantage or some better
version of theology. And what you're saying is one reason I think, why
maybe that isn't so right. What do we lose when we decide upon one
deity, one male deity? And your film very much captures what is lost
and violently shows how it was lost and so forth. It's quite provocative.
Well, thanks, and you know, my first feature, my only other
feature was about the Ramayana which is a Hindu story set in the Hindu pantheon,
with you know, lots of different gods and goddesses and avatars thereof,
And I had no problem relating to that story, that story like knock me
up inside the head, whereas Old Testament really did not do that at all.
Your work in some of your views have stirred cut controversy over the years.
Do you set out to be provocative or are you simply being true to
yourself? In other words, do you think that your art, or maybe
art in general, has added cultural value if it is controversial. I do
not set out to be controversial. I know that's hard to believe, but
I really truly do not. I'm just trying to tell the truth because I
don't like being alone. You know, like we're all witnesses of this world,
and I witness things, and I need to talk to other people about
the things that I witness, and occasionally we're not allowed to do that.
Occasionally we're in grave danger if we do that, but I need to do
it. I really don't like provoking people, I really don't, but I
can't be alone. I can't be the only person that sees what I see,
and so I talk about it, and that is very upsetting, especially
if you do it six or eight or ten years before the rest of the
world realizes that they need to talk about it. To Boo, yeah,
I get that sense that you're just sort of presenting the world as you see
it in your art, and there's certainly a personal reason for doing that,
and like you said, kind of resonating with others who may feel the same
way, and maybe giving them a voice even or making them see things more
clearly and helping them to articulate perhaps their views on these issues as well.
If you're seeing stuff that's like clear as day right in front of your face
and nobody else around you sees it, you feel really crazy and really alone,
and going through this world alone is really terrifying and difficult. And I
can shut up. But the depression and like the loneliness and the depression that
that causes is actually worse than what happens when other people are provoked. But
no, I don't set up to provoke people. I don't know why I
am like this, or I don't know. I don't enjoy it. I
don't enjoy provoking people. In your view, what are the chances of patriarchy
ever going away. Zero. Patriarchy will never go away. So I'm not
like, smash the patriarchy. We can't smash the patriarchy. We you know,
we can do our best in it. So this has been a tough
decade for feminists because feminists wanted to smash the patriarchy, but you know,
you can't really smash physical biological differences between men and women. And there has
been this reckoning and a lot of women have had to acknowledge what we never
wanted to, which is that men on the whole are stronger and bigger than
women on the whole. And when that's the situation, there's an inherent inequality
between the sexes, an inherent inequality of strength. And on the most basic
level, if you have a class of people that's stronger and in most cases
more violent than the other class of people, the stronger and more violent ones
are gonna dominate the weaker and less mildent ones. That's just gonna happen.
And as humanists, we can say like, oh, okay, well,
you know, let's try to make things as equal as possible. Let's try
to balance this out. Let's try to give some protections to the weaker ones
so that they're not constantly intimidated or dominated by the stronger ones. You can
try to do that, but the you know, the reality is there's those
differences. I sort of feel that way too when we're talking about economics and
the desire for sort of a compassionate capitalism, because capitalism isn't going away either
as far as I know, and you know, it doesn't have a soul
and it doesn't have the best interests of everyone in mind. So the idea
of creating a compassionate capitalism, is there a possibility of a compassionate patriarchy or
is that also kind of a dream too far? I don't know. I
mean, when it comes to capitalism, I think of this. I think
it's a line in the New Testament the poor will always be with us?
Didn't they figure that out a long time ago? Like you can't have everyone
in the same class. Human beings are hierarchical, and they sort themselves into
upper and lower and top and bottom. That's what they do, and we
do that because we're they that's what we do. We're animals, and animals
have some animals, some social animals have just in anate sense, of that
of the pecking order. So those who want to eliminate capitalism, they want
to do it because it's so unfair. These hierarchies are so unfair. It's
not right that there are poor and rich and that some people get the low
the short end of the stick. But I think that that's a part of
group nature, you know, human group nature is. Now we can make
it less extreme. We do make it less extreme. Right, We have
some regulations, some social policies that take the edge off of it, and
it would be good to have more of those, But we can't eliminate hierarchy.
Like, even if you eliminate something that's called capitalism, you're still going
to have probably even more grotesque, even more covert hierarchies that are even harder
to deal with. Yeah, as you're alluding to, we are primates.
I think we forget that, and primate societies tend to be hierarchical and unfair.
And what can you do? I mean, yeah, but you know,
we should do our best, right, We should try to be decent
human beings and have principles and think about our principles and then apply our principles
and reevaluate our principles. If they're not working, we should do all that.
Well. On that positive note, it's been great talking to you,
Nina, and it's been great talking to you and to our audience. Now
back to your regularly scheduled lives. Amusing Jews is here to amuse you.
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