Rachel,
I completely agree. It is so harmful to approach such a massive religious and cultural tradition so reductively. I think it speaks to our need for bite sized, prepackaged, ready to consume content. The fact we have spent almost an entire semester on the Ramayana Tradition and the Crash course video was able to present it in 13 minutes is a little oversimplified and negates the hundreds of years of scholarship and belief attributed to it.
I completely agree. It is so harmful to approach such a massive religious and cultural tradition so reductively. I think it speaks to our need for bite sized, prepackaged, ready to consume content. The fact we have spent almost an entire semester on the Ramayana Tradition and the Crash course video was able to present it in 13 minutes is a little oversimplified and negates the hundreds of years of scholarship and belief attributed to it.