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This article considers how 'item numbers,' song sequences that serve as vehicles for sexualized female performance in popular Indian cinema, are re-animated through embodied -danced and sung -performances outside the films themselves. I examine a single song sequence from a 2009 Tamil film and two kinds of re-animations of it: first, the song as conceived and sung by the original playback singer in performance outside the context of the film, and second, as performed by young women in TV shows and in live stage shows. These performances participate in complex projects of selffashioning that exceed the conventions by which female voices are given meaning within the Tamil culture industry.
Asian Music, 2008
CINEJ Cinema Journal, 2019
Item Songs have recently become established as new genre of songs in the mainstream Indian Cinema, although they have remained a part of Bollywood movies since at least the 1970s. Such songs, despite their widespread appeal to masses, have often been panned by Film critics (particularly from the Radical Feminist School) for their erotic dances, and an overly glamorized and sexualized depiction of half-nude female bodies. Based upon the textual analysis of two popular item songs in recent Indian cinema, Sheila ki Jawani from Tees Maar Khan (2010) and Munni Badnam Hui from Dabangg (2010), this paper seeks to problematize such readings which focus exclusively on the issue of the objectification of women through the concept of the male gaze. Drawing upon more recent studies in Psychoanalytic Feminist Scholarship, the paper departs from this conventional understanding. It argues that such item songs can also be interpreted as a means of liberation for women, and as devices for reclaiming...
Popular Music, / Volume 33 / Issue 01 / January 2014, pp 182-184 / Cambridge University Press, 2014
BioScope, 2018
2017
In this paper I examine the representation of a minority community, the Kodava, in film songs. The Kodava are frequently portrayed in popular discourse in India as ‘internal exotics’: the men warrior like, the women fair, beautiful but slightly racy. I first outline why representations in song and dance sequences matter, whilst framing discussion of exotic representation within a discourse developed in the study of exoticism in Western music. I will then make some observations on depictions of other Indian‘exotics within’ – tribal groups, Christians and indeterminately exotic women – showing how such groups are variously depicted as assimilable, unthreatening, or dangerous. After a brief description of the Kodava as a group, with attention given to their image in popular imagination, I will show that images projected effectively and affectively through songs in the two Kannada language films, Muthina Haara and Mungaaru Male, not only exoticise the Kodava, but do so along gendered li...
Much of the current scholarship on DVDs within the context of India specifically, and the global South more generally has explored emerging informal economies, shifting urban landscapes, and re-mapped relations within and between the global South and North with respect to copyright and piracy. In order to broaden the scope of this research, I approach the DVD as a textual object and explore how the DVD technology's (re)produces intergenerational cinephilia as well as ‘visual’ and ‘aural’ stardom. In pursuing this line of inquiry in the context of Bombay cinema, I seek to widen the range of available textual analyses of DVD, which are largely anchored in western cinema. This research focuses on the fidelity and technical virtuosity of sound on DVDs; here, sound, remains, an aural entity. A cursory glance at the DVDs produced in India show that the picturization sound is also a crucial feature of DVD organization. DVD compilations of Hindi film music offer a particularly rich site for beginning research on how DVD technology has re-structured sound, stardom and cinephilia as the songs are untethered from the filmic narrative and re-classified.
Popular Music, 2008
v. 46 n. 4, 2023
Art is the embodiment of national culture and spirit. Singing and dancing are one of the earliest and richest forms of human art. It is not only the product of experience and emotional experience but also the transcendence of vulgar daily life. As the most distinctive feature of modern Indian films, the art of singing and dancing inherits the traditional Indian aesthetic ideas and religious philosophy in the modern audiovisual environment can be found. It maintains a distinctive national impression in the tide of internationalization. This kind of art form is of great significance to the exploration of the nationality of Chinese singing and dancing art.
South Asian Popular Culture
Song-and-dance sequences have widely been studied as disruptive elements in the narrative of popular Hindi cinema and as quintessential traits of this industry. While the utopic dimension of such musical intervals has largely been theorised, the aim of this article is to expand on this framework to articulate the heterotopic dimension of these interludes. Foucault's concept of heterotopia allows further study of how song-and-dance sequences are elements responsible for communicating both social and cultural aspects. On a similar note, it must be mentioned that the use and representation of foreigners in Indian cinema dates back to its origins, when foreign actresses were often employed in films, replacing local performers. Through historical exploration, this paper will specifically investigate how song-and-dance sequences are important 'malleable elements' of the narrative, which are able to articulate identity and to discourse on the representation and articulation of firanginess in popular Hindi cinema.
South Asian Popular Culture , 2022
This paper furthers the research done on the video industry located in Purulia District, West Bengal, India, namely ‘Manbhum videos’. ‘Manbhum’ videos imagined and produced in relation as well as in opposition to its big Other(s), which include Bollywood, and the reputable Bengali language cinema, generally comprise discreet episodes, which are intercepted by songs and dances. Working within popular narrative strategies and modes of address, some of these videos, however, use unique voices, of both singers and dubbing artists. I argue that, such application of music and voice do not only re-present specific conditions of production, but also inform us about the ways in which the actor’s ‘body’ and ‘voice’ may be used within parallel industrial practices. Therefore, this paper considers subjects of language, community, culture, geography, politics and the problem of Jhumur (songs) transfiguring into a so- called ‘vulgar’ form, and thereby, examines particular videos to study the characteristics of production, and the question of narration and recounting.
MUSICultures, 2017
Emerging Trends in Development Research, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2023, 25-34
Women's bodies have been used and abused in Hindi silver screen for ages. However, through the lens of Bollywood's item numbers, the politics of male gaze and eroticism are brought forth all the more prominently. Question remains, are these item songs only a representational import of male ascendancy being an imperative factor for big-budget cinema? Or is it the eroticism of the dancer that makes it ever so problematic? Within the rubric of this larger argument, this paper studies how female bodies in Bollywood's item numbers are glamorized and sexualized leading to an ever-increasing objectification of women. This study has attempted to focus on body politics through male gaze, literary analysis of lyrics, visual advent of dancers, uncouth dance movements, and bodily appearances. It has also been examined in this paper, whether item songs can be considered as weapons of reclaiming liberation or whether they can be construed as toxic male ascendancy, in its entirety. The analysis in this paper is qualitative in nature.
South Asian Popular Culture, 2019
This article explores the role of the song sequence as a narrative device in contemporary Hindi cinema. It does this through an analysis of select song sequences from six films -Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, Tumhari Sulu, Dangal, Highway, Tamasha and Udta Punjab. These songs play an essential role in the film narratives, and the article discusses them through a focus on song picturization, song lyrics and the absence of lip-synchronization. The broader context of my inquiry are the changes in the role of the film song in recent years marking both continuities as well as discontinuities with the established song tradition of Hindi cinema. I argue that even as a realist aesthetic is changing the form of the song sequence, the song scene continues to be a complex mechanism of storytelling in contemporary Hindi films.
Philosophy & Rhetoric 54.1, 2021
This essay responds to Alva Noë’s arguments that popular musics (rock, country, etc.) organize listeners through style and personality, while other musics, such as classical and jazz, organize listeners on the music itself. Noë’s arguments suggest that music is an existential phenomenon, and thus that music is ontological. There is much to like here, including the idea that musics can be existentially different. However, the work of pop musics cannot be confined solely to stylistics and personality; pop also has musical interest, which I explicate as the exploration of sound (3D)—timbre, groove, beat, tonality, texture, and so on. Classical, jazz, and other kinds of music may seek to emphasize the music itself (2D), but they are also caught up in style. Music, I conclude, is rhetorical in how it organizes or “moves” us, and we must attend to all its dimensions, musical and stylistic, in order to understand how so.
v. 46 n. 4, 2023
Much of the current scholarship on DVDs within the context of India specifically, and the global South more generally has explored emerging informal economies, shifting urban landscapes, and re-mapped relations within and between the global South and North with respect to copyright and piracy. In order to broaden the scope of this research, I approach the DVD as a textual object and explore how the DVD technology's (re)produces intergenerational cinephilia as well as ‘visual’ and ‘aural’ stardom. In pursuing this line of inquiry in the context of Bombay cinema, I seek to widen the range of available textual analyses of DVD, which are largely anchored in western cinema. This research focuses on the fidelity and technical virtuosity of sound on DVDs; here, sound, remains, an aural entity. A cursory glance at the DVDs produced in India show that the picturization sound is also a crucial feature of DVD organization. DVD compilations of Hindi film music offer a particularly rich site for beginning research on how DVD technology has re-structured sound, stardom and cinephilia as the songs are untethered from the filmic narrative and re-classified.
Gilles Deleuze's film philosophy is best known for its discovery of 'movement images' and 'time images' in the ubiquitous category of filmic images. The advent of Deleuze's film philosophy has not only pushed the boundaries of filmic images beyond their 'representational' territory, but unleashed a very innovative and relevant theoretical framework to examine the narrative locations of films produced in different cultural territories. Early Tamil cinema is best known for its potential to invoke the power of singing bodies through a countless number of songs. The Deleuzian notion of 'movement images' provides more than enough pointers to examine early Tamil cinema's attempts to construct 'movement images' through the singing bodies. In examining the singing bodies of the 1937 Tamil film, Chintamani, this article seeks to innovate by deploying Julia Kristeva's concept of 'abject' along with Deleuze's concept of 'movement images'. The analytical juxtaposition of these two different concepts reveals itself eminently in uncovering new layers of narrative locations of the singing bodies in Chintamani.
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Amanda Weidman