What do Julia Child\u2019s life story and the Ramayana have in common? Very little, except that they are both pilfered and somewhat misused by contemporary writers who come across as far more concerned with \u201cwhat the story means to me\u201d than with what these other stories might have meant in their original contexts. Both Julie & Julia<\/em> and Sita Sings the Blues<\/em>, though enjoyable in many aspects, have a troubling approach to other people\u2019s stories. <\/strong><\/p>\n Julie & Julia<\/em>\u2019s frame story feels very specific to life as a twenty-or-thirty-something in the 2000s. Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is a former aspiring writer who now finds herself answering phones for a government agency\u2014actually, though this is never indicated in the film\u2019s trailer, answering the questions of people who lost loved ones in the Twin Towers on 9\/11. We see Julie crying over callers\u2019 stories, so we know she has some level of empathy\u2014sadly, that\u2019s really the last we see of her concern for others within the film. When a successful friend of Julie\u2019s starts her own blog, Julie decides she will do the same. Her topic: a year of cooking through all 524 recipes in Julia Child\u2019s 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The film, with a script by director Nora Ephron, interweaves Julia Child\u2019s own story (adapted from her memoir written with Alex Prud\u2019Homme) with Julie Powell\u2019s (adapted from her book, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously<\/em>), and some of the parallels and contrasts give the film added punch. For example, when Julie\u2019s blog posts are followed by Julia and Paul Child\u2019s letters from France to friends and relatives back home in America, the movie makes you consider the differences and similarities between writing for an unknown audience and writing for a well-known audience of one (though the film also includes the revelation that Julia has never met one of her best friends until a key moment in the movie\u2014they\u2019ve only corresponded through the mail).<\/p>\n One of the problems many reviewers have noted in Julie & Julia<\/em> is that Julia Child\u2019s story is far more interesting than that of her unacknowledged prot\u00e9g\u00e9e. Her character, with all its enthusiasm and determined unflappability, is also a great deal more appealing than Julie\u2019s self-absorption. While other characters, including Julie herself, confront her narcissism, Julie\u2019s character never seems to change significantly. All the changes in her life are external and culminate in . . . a publishing deal for her blog (which, you know, would be exciting if it happened to us here at CaPC, but it makes for a rather lackluster high point in a film).<\/p>\n In the midst of calls from literary agents, Julie receives a call from a reporter asking her to respond to a quote from Julia Child (then still alive, but almost 90) implying that the blog is disrespectful and that it uses Child for Julie Powell\u2019s fame and publicity<\/a>. What does Julie take away from this reported comment? \u201cJulia Child hates me.\u201d Not even \u201cJulia Child thinks my writing is bunk,\u201d but \u201cJulia Child hates me<\/em>.\u201d The response from Julie\u2019s husband is even worse. \u201cThe only Julia Child that matters is the Julia Child inside your head,\u201d he tells her. Oh. Good. We\u2019ve just denied Julia Child\u2019s objective reality, rather than actually dealing with the consequences of insulting her.<\/p>\n Later on the same day that I saw Julie & Julia<\/em> in the theater, I also watched the animated film Sita Sings the Blues<\/em> on DVD (though the whole film is also available for free online<\/a>). Like Julie & Julia<\/em>, Sita Sings the Blues<\/em> alternates between a contemporary frame story and an older story that is supposed to be its parallel\u2014though in Sita Sings the Blues<\/em>, the older story is very old indeed: it\u2019s the Ramayana, the ancient Sanskrit epic that tells the tale of Rama and his astonishingly devoted and long-suffering wife Sita. As in Julie & Julia<\/em>, the contemporary story seems unnecessary to the film and is included here only because it was important to the creator herself. Director\/writer\/animator Nina Paley splices the story of her own break-up with her husband Dave into the story of Rama and Sita. According to Paley, she read the Ramayana during her divorce: \u201cI was moved by the story and it seemed to speak so much to my life at the time, my problems at the time. It was cathartic to retell the story. . . . It was a very personal project from the beginning. Including the autobiographical bits emphasizes that. I didn\u2019t set out to tell THE Ramayana, only MY Ramayana.\u201d<\/p>\n Now ancient epics have no existence outside our own heads, either.<\/p>\n I\u2019m trying to be careful here, because I don\u2019t want to say that there is a single, objective interpretation of a text. In fact, Paley does an admirable job, in the non-autobiographical portions of the movie, of showing that even within India, there are multiple versions and multiple interpretations of Rama\u2019s and Sita\u2019s tale. In fact, my favorite part of the film (aside from a snippet of a cat demanding its breakfast<\/a>, which I admit to playing constantly over the past few days) is the chorus of three native Southeast Asians who offer their own sometimes confused, sometimes contradictory takes on the legend. Paley also suggests that the Ramayana need not be limited to its original cultural context by animating sequences with Sita lip-synching to recordings by 1920s American jazz singer Annette Hanshaw. With the Southeast Asian commentators and the Annette Hanshaw recordings, Paley already accomplishes the task of opening up the Ramayana to contemporary audiences of many cultures; adding the story of her own divorce actually has the effect of closing the Ramayana off again, making it into one individual\u2019s therapy.<\/p>\n Indian criticisms of Sita Sings the Blues<\/em> have come from two main camps: Hindus on the \u201cfar right\u201d (Paley\u2019s phrase) who feel it\u2019s sacrilegious to treat Rama\u2019s and Sita\u2019s marriage on the level of an ordinary human marriage, and secular academics, who believe that Paley\u2019s appropriation of the tale to her own (white, American) ends is an act of neocolonialism. Though I enjoyed the film, I have some sympathy with both critiques. Paley\u2019s own response<\/a>, \u201cAn artist\u2019s responsibility is to be true to his\/her own vision,\u201d leaves me less than satisfied. Yes, it\u2019s at least partially true, and stories don\u2019t exclusively belong to the culture that originated them (if I believed that, I could hardly be a Christian), but, at the same time, Paley\u2019s mantra too easily abdicates responsibility to the external world.<\/p>\n