Seder-Masochism is an animated film by Nina Paley. It is a Spiritual Successor to Paley's earlier work Sita Sings the Blues.
Based on Judaism in a similar way Sita was on Hinduism, the film retells the story of the Book of Exodus from The Bible through pre-existing musical numbers, framed by a narration about a traditional seder dinner that commemorates Moses leading out the Hebrew people from Egypt. The story is intersected with Nina Paley interviewing her father Hiram Paley about his experiences as a Jewish man. In these scenes, Hiram is visualized as a Grandpa God and Nina as a sacrificial goat. The film also has a heavy feminist theme, showing the struggle of a Mother Goddess getting gradually replaced by the male and extremely patriarchal Abrahamic God.
The film was created over the course of six years, finally getting completed in 2018. The first completed scenenote , "This Land Is Mine", was uploaded to YouTube in 2012, and became a viral video in 2014 thanks to heavily reflecting on the Arab–Israeli Conflict.
Contains examples of:
- Artistic License – Religion: The film promotes a common belief among feminist neo-pagans, that all of humanity worshipped some version of the Mother Goddess before Abrahamic religion came about. There's little to no archeological or sociological evidence for this claim, and many of the oldest known religions (Zoroastrianism, for example) follow male creator gods. It is true that some goddesses of the Near East (particularly Asherah and Astarte) were competing with Yahweh and their worshipping cultures enjoyed at least some degree of sexual freedom; this seems to be the main textual implication, but the opening equates these with Palaeolithic and Early Neolithic European "goddess" imagery, which both alludes to the disproven Ancient Matriarchy hypothesis and there frankly isn't any connection between these symbols and the Near Eastern goddesses.
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The opening throws in the Bulgarian folk song "Kalimankou Denkou" juxtaposed with Matriarchal Goddess imagery. Besides using a fairly recent language as a proxy for "ancient" because the audience is Anglophone, the use doesn't even make a lick of sense since the song is about a man talking about his love. How proto-feminist.
- Author Tract: The film is not very subtle when it comes to Nina Paley's views on Judaism, patriarchy versus feminism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In the final scene, as various people fight for Israel, the only winner is the Angel of Death.
- Big Good: The Mother Goddess. Not the Abrahamic God, who is extremely sexist and genocidal.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: During the plagues, the locusts are far bigger than any real insect.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: God's burning bush form has one eye on each of its leaves.
- Freud Was Right: The mountain on which Moses talks to God intentionally looks like a giant penis, with two smaller hills at its foot as testicles.
- God Is Evil: Yahweh is a patriarchal oppressor as opposed to the Canaanite and Egyptian goddesses.
- God-Is-Love Songs: There are two songs in the film that are re-contextualized from simple love songs to religious songs. "Woman" by John Lennon becomes an ode to the Mother Goddess (and the Golden Calf idol representing her), and "The Things We Do For Love" by 10cc is now describing the complicated relationship between Jewish people and their God.
- Grandpa God: Hiram, Nina's father looks like this. Averted with God in the Moses segments, who instead appears as a burning bush, a column of flame, or a giant hand in the sky.
- The Grim Reaper: The Angel of Death looks like this, being a skeletal figure in a black robe.
- Instant Gravestone: In an appropriately Egyptian variant, most of those killed by the Angel of Death are instantly made fully mummified, with the exceptions of the plants and the falcon.
- Jukebox Musical: The Moses segments all use pre-existing songs.
- Multiboobage: The goddess Hathor, who in this version is the model for the Golden Calf, looks like a cow with a human head and a large number of human breasts on her belly.
- Public Domain Animation: Nina Paley released the film into the public domain.
- Rule of Three: The Angel of Death makes three appearances: during the tenth plague, in a song, and at the very end of the big finale.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The film makes heavy use of this, using cheerful and uplifting musical numbers while horrifying scenes happen on-screen.
- Straw Misogynist: The film paints Judaism (and by proxy other Abrahamic religions) as heavily patriarchal. In one particular scene Moses has an angry rampage destroying female idols and killing their worshippers, set to "Your Time Is Gonna Come" by Led Zeppelin.
- The Swarm: As in the source material, the Plagues include swarms of frogs, lice, flies and locusts.
- Talking Animal: Nina appears in the movie as a talking goat.
- Vocal Dissonance: In some scenes, Moses, an old, bearded man, sings in a female voice.
