On September 26th 2018, in an interview with Zoom TV, Tanushree Dutta, an actor accused her co-star Nana Patekar of misbehaving with her on the sets of a ‘special song’ for the 2008 release Horn Ok Please. She alleged that despite the song being a solo sequence, Patekar had insisted on her joining her in the shoot. Apart from which he grabbed her arms, asked the choreographer to move aside and taught her how to dance. He even persisted on doing an ‘intimate sequence’ with her, although her contract clearly stated it was a “solo” dance sequence. She added that Patekar’s behaviour made her uncomfortable to an extent that she eventually had to drop out of the song, and is still dealing with the trauma that the experience caused her.
In his defence, Patekar vehemently denied the allegations, “Tanushree is my daughter’s age and I have no clue what made her say such things about me. I have been a part of the film industry for nearly 35 years and haven’t heard anyone saying such things about me.” Things took a turn for the unexpected when Rakhi Sawant, the actor who replaced Tanushree Dutta in the song -- Nathani Utaro -- came out with a statement claiming that Tanushree is a ‘drug addict’, ‘a lesbian’, a ‘man who dresses as a woman’ and that she had been raped by Tanushree at a rave party. A few legal notices, and criminal defamation charges later, Rakhi Sawant issued a public apology and retracted her statement.
When this whole controversy broke out, it reminded me of how Bollywood like the rest of the nation is a casteist, classist and sexist workplace, only with sequins, satin and good music. For all the disbelievers, the evidence was there clearly to see. A video from 2008 of nearly forty men affiliated with Raj Thackery led Maharashtra Navnirman Sangh were seen attempting to physically harm Tanushree who had just left the sets of Horn Ok Please complaining of sexual misconduct. Dutta says that back then, “Nana Patekar called up this political party who has a reputation of vandalism and causing damages on the sets. And the producers called up the media to gain publicity from the whole situation. On one side we had the media and on the other side, we had the political party workers. They vandalised my car completely. So, I got off my vanity van and headed towards our vehicle… If the police had come even 5 minutes late, I shudder to think what could’ve happened to me or my parents who were accompanying me in the car,” she said. Additionally, the Association of Motion Picture and TV Programme Producers (AMPTPP), demanded Dutta pay Rs 65 million rupees to compensation to the producer of Horn ‘OK’ Pleassss for defaming him
This story is so familiar in its contours and so credible that you would have to be delusional to disbelieve it. The public debate that followed was dominant caste women arguing about which man is allowed to grope them in the item numbers. Would the liberal feminist framework of consent or choice be applicable to this incident too? Item numbers are defined in an essence by the presence of an item. Traditionally, it would be an upcoming actor looking to shoot to fame with a hit-song and a few catchy moves to accompany the song. The construction of the figure of the item is entrenched in objectification and fetishisation of the woman’s body as being available for consumption. Its almost as if the woman is a dish being displayed in the menu cards peddled by urban eateries that consumers salivate or drool over. Often these songs have nothing to do with the plot and are added for ‘masala’; titillation. The lyrics of these songs often have ‘double meaning’; are filled with sexual innuendos, and the songs are deployed to attract a largely male audience to the theatres.
During the 60s and 70s, these songs were seen as a speciality such as the songs performed by Helen, but increasingly it appears that every commercially viable film must include an item song. Chronologically speaking the term item number gained currency among the urban middle classes in the late 1990s. The item number allegorizes or frames heterosexual erotic desire in a film. But often it is enacted at off-screen social venues and events ranging from urban dance bars and wedding celebrations to live concerts and dance schools. The title of the item girl was first associated with Malaika Arora. The early usage of the term item number is associated with Malaika Arora and Shah Rukh Khan’s performance in Chaiya Chaiya. Despite the fact that this, is not a new phenomenon considering the presence of Helen or other cabaret artistes/dances such as Mona Darling, none of them are able to capture the affective space that has been created by the new item girls. Former cabaret dancers or artists were traditionally typecast in their roles; they could not leap to the status of a leading actress. In 2009, Helen was awarded a Padma Bhushan showing the distance that has been travelled in recognising Helen as an outstanding actor. Now, item numbers are thought of as a performance that may be marked by the presence of an item girl who may have debuted in that fashion (Manisha Koirala, Malaika Arora Khan), in a cameo or guest appearance by a lead actor (Aishwarya Rai or Sushmita Sen) or by top-billed actors (Shah Rukh Khan).
These performances in visual media outside of cinema may be viewed as back-stage performances relative to the front-stage enactments in the film. According to Rita Brara, ‘depending upon where you train your lens, the performances of item-actors are screened and revealed from different angles ranging from the valuable and professional to the mercenary and abject.’ She terms the item numbers as the phenomenon of the spectacular ‘cinesexual.’ Though it’s important to keep in mind that apart from onscreen media, item numbers are performed at travelling shows in cities, small towns and rural fairs. They are also often reproduced at the sites that are shown as their typical locales in films -- dance bars. But unlike item-actors, female bar dancers perform Bollywood’s item numbers live before a male audience without the cushioning that the status of a cine-actor affords them. The discussion of these item performances pushes us to consider gender as an independent axis as bar dancers try to see beyond the assumed debasement of their bodies. But on the other hand, a drive for entrepreneurship within a sexualised economy drives bar owners and underprivileged women to look for economic stability from bar dancing. The rendition of the item number is part of the bar dancer’s professional life but in contrast with the item girls onscreen, within an environment of masculine pleasure seeking and drinking, she becomes an object of the male gaze, and her body is available on the visual display as well as for tactile entertainment.
Drawing from the culture of the traditional mujra, the women bar dancers often inhabit the sexualised, public spaces that cater to masculine desires. Yet when they protested in 2005 against the Maharashtra Stae Governement’s ban on bar dancing, their social visibility was heightened. When dancing in bars was banned on the grounds of obscenity and immorality, one of Maharashtra's elected representatives claimed, “Everything should be banned except for Bharatanatyam and Kathak.” Feminist lawyers while arguing against the proposed ban stated that if dancing in bars was considered immoral then so should item numbers in Bollywood films. Dancing is considered a fundamental right to livelihood and the Bombay High Court quashed the Maharashtra government's order. Following this, anti-trafficking activists mobilised in support of the ban claiming that most women involved in bar dancing were trafficked at a very young age and often unable to escape the cycle of exploitation and poverty. Eventually, Mumbai’s bar dancers sought to promote their interests within the industry and organised to form a Bar Dancer’s Union. They protested the ban and questioned the grounds on which their livelihood was put under scrutiny and marked as ‘immoral’ while dancing in elite bars went unquestioned.
A reinterpretation of the cinematic item number also occurs within the carnivalesque and spectacular dimensions of celebrations of heterosexual monogamy; marriages and sangeet functions. Within heteronormative family milieus, a distinct space is provided to sexualised songs and dances. Here the item number becomes recontextualised to become celebratory themes of female heterosexual desire. A common sight in urban middle-class Indian weddings is to see women of all ages performing such numbers. A few years ago, I remember attending a wedding in Bangalore, where after performing Kajra Re, a twelve-year-old told me that she had practised the heaving motion of the chest, which is Aishwarya Rai’s signature move in the song, for at least three weeks with the help of a DVD and a mirror. This becomes a space provided for girls and women to enact female heterosexual desire within the limits of the family. In some ways, the erotic powers of dance and song are harnessed for extraordinary events in a heteronormative familial setting that distinguish these moments as heterosexual rites of passage.
Such an analysis of cinematic item numbers invites to readers to differentiate and understand a wider arena of heterosexuality and attractiveness along with the more reductionist focus on heteroconjugality as portrayed in Bollywood films and social life. The personal histories of item girls such as Rakhi Sawant or Malaika Arora take a backseat to ordinary spectators or enactors. Although these desires are focused with a masculinist and patriarchal systems, it is important to acknowledge that item numbers provide women too with opportunities for entertainment, profit and act a means to secure livelihood as in the case of Mumbai’s bar dancers.
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