Since my friend Alice Samson from EFL University, Hyderabad, India suggests that i should write brief posts on blogs, and i respect her views, i will herewith comply.
for some time i have been wondering about the role played by the item in Hindi films. so here are some observations presented unsystematically before i put them down in a better structured piece.
first of all, the item seems a regressive developement in the Hindi film form in a non-pejorative sense. the item is perhaps a throwback to folk theatre, where the main performance would be interrupted by side shows that could be both desultory or highly attractive. to demystify this formal jugglery, these sideshows allowed the artists to change their costume and makeup, e g from that of a pretty princess to an unpretty hirsute demon, whic is not something you can do in haste. at any rate, they carried more enertainment content than the ad breaks on the TV channels these days. and the audience stuck on to their seats without seductive supplications from the long-legged VJ, unless nature called.
today's items may remind us of the vamps of the yesteryears, but this is false memory. item girls are rarely full-blooded 'characters' like our olden vamps, whether Nadira, Helen or Bindu. they seem to do their bit and move away from the stage...
...the point is, what is the 'bit' done by them for which an artist gets payed an entire temillion rupees these days? here is my response.
i have felt for some time that Hindi movies have traditionally been very uncomfortable with intimate but prosaic, everyday love scenes. they tend to confine sexual intimacy to song sequences picturized among flowers, bees, mountains, mist and rivers. the idea is to treat the universe as a dance floor and as Chidananda Dasgupta claims in 'The naked Mask' , to attain orgasm through a duet!
the item seems another attempt to fill up sexual spaces with crowds, riotous crowds such as in 'Beedi Jalaile' in 'Omkara', but also genteel corporate crowds as in Mallika Sherawat's dance in 'Corporate.'
i will now present a strong proposition - Hindi cinema [thus far] believes that if you have no right of entry into a love scene, it turns pornographic, and you are just a dirty voyeur. otherwise you are a normal healthy participant in an orgy of exposure and stripping, and your fawning and pawing are easily forgiven.
it will take me a while to recover from this ontological topsy-turvy, but i will be back with a longer piece even if i end up defying Alice's advice.
