Seder-Masochism is a 2018 American animated musical biblical comedy-drama film written, directed, produced and animated by American artist Nina Paley. The film reinterprets the Book of Exodus, especially stories associated with the Passover Seder, such as the death of the Egyptian first-born, and Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. The film depicts these events against a backdrop of widespread worship of the Great Mother Goddess, showing the rise of patriarchy.
Seder-Masochism is Paley's second feature film, following Sita Sings the Blues in 2008, an animated film loosely based on the Ramayana. In a similar fashion to her previous work, Paley mainly uses previously published music in Seder-Masochism, with popular and liturgical songs ranging from 1928 to 2018. She also draws from spoken voice recordings she made in 2011 with her father, Hiram Paley, who is placed in the role of the traditional Hebrew deity. Greg Sextro served as sound designer on the film.
With Theodore Gray, Paley formed PaleGray Labs to create a method for animating embroidery, which they call "embroidermation". In Seder-Masochism, embroidered animation is the basis for one scene: "Chad Gadya".
Debuting in the 2018 film festival season, Seder-Masochism was reviewed positively, with Paley's bright and satirical style compared to Monty Python and others. The film earned the Audience Award at the ANIMATOR film festival in Poland.
Plot
The Book of Exodus is retold by Moses, his brother Aaron, the Angel of Death, Jesus, and the traditional Hebrew God. The ancient mother goddess is cast in a "tragic struggle" against the new patriarchy.
Cast
Hiram Paley – Our Father
Nina Paley – Sacrificial Goat
Barry Gray – Jesus
Production
After Sita Sings the Blues, Paley was criticized by some observers for co-opting the culture of India as an outsider, an assertion with which she strongly disagreed. A recurring theme among the negative comments was "how would you like it if people made a film about your religion?" Paley thought that she would enjoy watching any such film. Accepting this as a challenge, she turned to her own Jewish cultural heritage for her next project: a revisionist retelling of the story of Passover. She pored over the Book of Exodus, finding details that were not part of modern Jewish culture, for instance, that Moses's brother Aharon performed some of the acts that are commonly attributed to Moses, and that the Jews were killing each other during their 40 years "wandering" in the desert. For inspiration, she also read The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner, and The Language of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas. She concluded that the Book of Exodus represents the final defeat of goddess worship by the patriarchy that had been rising since the agricultural revolution.
In 2011, Paley interviewed her terminally ill father, Hiram, intending that his voice would serve as the old bearded god figure of the Israelites. For herself, she chose to play the part of a sacrificial goat, because animal sacrifice was essential to many early religions, and because she has been seen as the black sheep of her family. Hiram Paley died in 2012 at the age of 78. Even though her father was a Jewish atheist, the Paley family had celebrated Passover every year so that the children would know their cultural identity. Paley, also a Jewish atheist, weaves the voice recordings of her father into the film as a way to understand the Passover story.
In September 2011, Paley initiated a Kickstarter crowd-funding effort to raise money for "Phase I" of the film, with a goal of $3,600. The campaign brought in $4,146. The intent of Phase I was to make recordings of various family Passover Seder discussions. Ultimately, the project took another direction, and the recordings were not used in the film.
Paley worked on the project over the course of six years, spending about three-and-a-half years animating and producing it. First, she animated some musical numbers – "This Land Is Mine" and "Moses-Exodus" – using Macromedia Flash 8 running on a first-generation Mac Pro tower, but this was not powerful enough to edit 4K resolution video in a practical manner. In 2013, she shifted the project to a second-generation Mac Pro, the vertical cylinder model, and settled on the application Anime Studio Pro. Paley initially found the Anime Studio Pro interface to be frustratingly complex, so she hosted Chilean animator Victor Paredes at her workspace for a week in 2014 to better learn the software. In 2016, Anime Studio Pro became Moho Pro, with an upgraded version. Paley said that it was not until 2017 that she could express herself easily in Moho Pro.