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ABSTRACT
A recurring staple of the popular Hindi film is when actresses dance as if they were drunk. Underlying such performances are notions of nasha (intoxication) and sharam, or shame. This article explores the recurring tendency of Indian women to either feign or otherwise embody states of intoxication in popular Hindi film songs from the late 1960s up to the present era, as well as the underlying motivations for such intoxicated performances. In the process, this article will also consider the erotic threat posed by such figures and the historical and contemporary methods used to contain such threats, both within and by the Bollywood film. This article also examines how such moments of intoxication have evolved with the advent of liberalization in India in the 1990s and how such changes have, in turn, reshaped contemporary narratives and representations of women who perform in an intoxicated manner. In relation to these themes, this article also considers tropes surrounding the public woman and the dancing woman as well as what such representations imply for questions of female agency and sexuality within an Indian frame.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. See, e.g., Asha Kasbekar (Citation2001), Jyotika Virdi (Citation2003), Ranjani Mazumdar (Citation2007), Anna Morcom (Citation2013), and Usha Iyer (Citation2020).
2. This impression of spontaneity comes despite the fact that such sequences were in fact carefully choreographed (Jane Feuer Citation1993, 5–6).
3. As Morcom notes, “[T]he ‘item song’ exists as a means of inserting particularly sexy songs in the narrative, which go beyond the bounds of acceptability for most heroines in terms of their narrative context and levels of erotic display” (Citation2013, 242n44).
4. In narrative film, as Mulvey has noted, woman has traditionally functioned on two levels: “as erotic object for the character within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator” (Citation1989 [1975], 19). Women in mainstream cinema connote what Mulvey calls a “to-be-looked-at-ness,” in which being displayed as a sexual object becomes “the leitmotif of erotic spectacle” ([Citation1975], 19).
5. Along with Kal Ho Naa Ho (Citation2003) and Dostana (Citation2008), see, e.g., Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl (Maneesh Sharma, Citation2011), Cocktail (Homi Adajania, Citation2012), Race 2 (Abbas-Mustan, Citation2013), Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (Ayan Mukerji, Citation2013), Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (Karan Johar, Citation2016), and Befikre (Citation2016), for instances of such sequences.
6. The difference between earlier popular Hindi cinema and contemporary Bollywood can itself be largely defined through the figure of the dancing heroine, i.e., the additional bodily gestures and narrative possibilities afforded to the heroine, and thus to the overall plot, themselves constitute key components informing such a difference, along with attendant shifts in the composition of song and dance sequences. Such a way of distinguishing between the two forms resonates with definitions of Bollywood that align this latter form with the advent of liberalization (Ashish Rajadhyaksha Citation2003 [2008]) which itself creates such possibilities. We will return to this issue—of what does, and does not, comprise the “Bollywood” form/at, when looking at Queen and Befikre.
7. The distinction between the female protagonist’s feigned and actual intoxication is an important one, as we will see in the ensuing discussion, and, following the previous note, serves as an effective way of distinguishing between the representational politics and underlying logics of earlier popular Hindi cinema and those of contemporary Bollywood.
8. See Kasbekar (Citation2001, 301–302), regarding such narrative strategies.
9. Such a setting is a recurring motif in Bollywood films, particularly for the development of forbidden heterosexual romance, as in the song “Hum Tum,” from Bobby (Raj Kapoor, Citation1973).
10. “Bebo” is Kapoor’s pet name (Madhu Jain Citation2005).
11. The ensuing shift in female playback voice is also worth noting. It was during the first decade of the twenty-first century that fuller, deeper female playback voices began to be paired with the heroine, reflecting a shift from the “innocent, very Indianized sound of the female playback singer,” which maintained a “girl-like vocal quality” and “transmit[ted] the traditional notion of sharam or shyness,” to the deeper pitched and more sensual sounds of singers like Chinai (Natalie Sarrazin Citation2008, 213–214).
12. As Kasbekar observes, the typical strategy previously deployed by popular Hindi cinema in such sequences is to disavow “any erotic voyeurism on the part of the film spectator” by “the deliberate mediation of a diegetic spectator” (Citation2001, 296). Whereas, in such moments, the heroine typically feigns “an unawareness of [her] sexualized body and the camera’s voyeuristic gaze” (Virdi Citation2003, 146), the intoxicated Simrita does precisely what was considered “rare” for the heroine in the Hindi film, i.e., directly communicates her character’s sexuality to the audience.
13. In contrast, it is worth noting the case of Shruti Kakkar (Anushka Sharma), a young Delhi wedding planner, in the following year’s Band Baaja Baaraat (Band, music, revelry, Maneesh Sharma, Citation2010), who engages in drinking and dancing with her male counterpart, Bittoo (Ranveer Singh), which similarly culminates in the young, unmarried wedding planners sleeping together. The following morning, however, Shruti awakens not with a look of chagrin but contentment on her face; it is Bittoo who awakens with a troubled expression.
14. We see Dimple trying on this halter top before a mirror in the first images of the film, as her friends comment on her cleavage.
15. As with “Bebo,” Dimple’s playback is provided by a deeper pitched singer, in this case, Shraddha Pandit.
16. After discovering he has been swindled by Sunny, Dimple’s dad tells her he will break her legs if she ever meets him again.
17. Hatke is a colloquial Indian term for “off-center” films “made on smaller budgets by new production corporations […] feature[ing] lesser-known stars” as well as “formal innovations” (Sangita Gopal Citation2010, 15). In this instance, Queen can be considered a hatke film, and Befikre, a Bollywood film.
18. It is worth noting that the image from this scene subsequently used to promote Queen—Rani provocatively jutting out her hip—excises the indifferent Frenchman.
19. The configuration in this image ()—Shyra straddling Dharam—also serves as the promotional image for Befikre, providing a stark contrast with Queen in terms of how the respective films are promoted, with one assertively featuring heterosexual coupling and the other, individual pleasure (cf. note 18).
20. Preity Zinta’s performance in “It’s the Time to Disco,” from Kal Ho Naa Ho (Citation2003), is an early instance of the heroine adopting such habits. After downing a series of shots in a New York City nightclub named Nirvana, Zinta’s character, Naina, proceeds to erupt on the dance floor, yelling, accosting others and then, as the music starts, removing her glasses, unzipping her jacket and leading everyone in a high energy, highly choreographed dance routine while lip-synching to the deeper pitched playback of Vasundhara Das.
21. Some of these include “the noble sacrifice” (delivering a spectacle under duress), feigning intoxication (as in Inteqam’s “Kaise rahun chup”), and framing the performance as a fantasy (Kasbekar Citation2001, 301–303).
22. It is precisely this highly choreographed uniformity of gestures that lessens the poetics of bricolage in such sequences and thus the impression of spontaneity. The pulsing regularity of the “intoxicated” female’s gestural vocabulary in sequences such as Shyra’s, and her rigid adherence to such (predefined) bodily movement, belie her claims of a “carefree” nature and, at the figural level, an autonomous self.
23. As Hawon Ku observes, Queen “do[es] not adhere to the common structure or vocabulary of Bollywood movies” (Citation2020, 224n1).
24. To date, “Nashe se chadh gayi” has been viewed more than 600 million times on YouTube.
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Notes on contributors
Ajay Gehlawat
Ajay Gehlawat is Professor of Theatre and Film at Sonoma State University. His research and teaching interests include popular Hindi cinema (aka Bollywood), film and postcolonial theory, race, gender and sexuality in cinema, theories of popular culture, and South Asian diasporic studies. He is the author of Twenty-First Century Bollywood (2015) and Reframing Bollywood (2010), as well as editor of The Slumdog Phenomenon (2013) and co-editor of The Evolution of Song and Dance in Hindi Cinema (2019). His work has also appeared in numerous journals, including South Asian History and Culture, Celebrity Studies, Studies in South Asian Film and Media, as well as in multiple edited collections, including Music in Contemporary Indian Film, Stardom in Contemporary Hindi Cinema, and Bollywood’s New Woman. Email: [email protected]