SPECIAL ARTICLE

The : Cinesexuality in and Social Life

Rita Brara

In trying to capture the power of Bollywood’s re we all cinesexuals now?1 commercial cinema, this paper looks at what is Nestling amid our multifaceted experiences of the described in common parlance as an item number. Asexual, cinesexuality marks out a terrain of desire, even a philosophy, where we succumb to the images created on The item number is a cine-segment comprising an fi lm as individual-cum-social beings. MacCormack (2008: 2) item-girl/boy, a racy song, a vivacious dance and a puts it p rovocatively: surround of erotic and immanent exuberance. At one We can ask “what is it you have sex with?” The answer “male” or remove from the cinema hall, item numbers circulate as “f emale” is imagined as a stable enough term to explain sexuality. But if we answer “cinema”, questions proliferate beyond rather than refer video clips and off-screen performances that recreate back to a pre-established system of desire. the cinesexual in social life. At this second level, the item From her perspective, cinesexuality does not seek a return to number, re-fashioned through spectacular familial and already-existing expressions of sexualities, but asks of the viewer social practices of the middle classes, draws its to look ahead to cinema’s offerings. I go along with the thinking that cinema, which is in certain sense from diverse, gendered and changing ways normed by the taboos of social life, queers and transgresses micro-contexts of cine-heterosexuality. that normative. Breaking free of restrictive sexual mores in the realm of the cinematic makes for a pleasurable surrender to trans- gression and excess alongside the forging of new norms and the retooling of what pre-exists. But granting the cinesexual its secret joys and desires as well as the new social becomings of the old normative, cinesexually transformed lives are still lived, albeit dif- ferently, in sexual worlds where pleasure and desire are both ex- pressed and constrained within milieu that are socio-economic, political and heterogendered (Foucault 1979; K rzywinska 2006). My questions turn to how the new normative fi nds variable ex- pression inside and outside of reel life. Cinesexuality may enable me to traipse from the cinesexual of one fi lm and onto another, creating my own archive in a happy movement of spectatorial in- teriority in conjunction with new visual media. But how does one capture the wanderings of new cinesexual desires as these move from the space of cinema and individual recesses/micro-social niches onto the wider social and sexual worlds outside? And what about the commerce of depicting desires on screen as these inter- sect with culture, gender and class before being internalised as cinesexual by spectators? The norm-orientedness that characterises heterosexuality or heteronormativity is often analysed to draw attention to the marginalising of non-heterosexual desires and relationships (Rich 1980; Butler 2004). Yet, even as a monolithic heterosexuality is increasingly contrasted with non-heterosexuality, the diverse practices that make up heterosexuality in cine- and social life demand attention. My intention in this paper is to explore the wider arena of heterosexual desire that is overlooked when the Rita Brara ([email protected]) is with the department of sociology, emphasis is exclusively on the norm-oriented heteronormative, School of Economics, University of Delhi. which is, then, equated with the heteroconjugal. The norming

Economic & Political Weekly EPW june 5, 2010 vol xlv no 23 67 SPECIAL ARTICLE and cine-norming of heterosexual life exists as a practice along- 1 Pre-History of the Item Number side its subversions. By delving into what is called an “item The item number shaped up as a discursive form and congealed number” in the cine-language of , I attempt to understand, into a cinematic concept over time. In contrast to the portman- dialectically, both how the cinesexual is normed by social life, teau term “Bollywood”, the item number as an expression is, and in turn, casts social life in its own and changing images. cinematically speaking, homegrown. Its usage is subcontinental I begin by noting what several of my acquaintances and inter- and straddles the otherwise linguistically differentiated streams net sites2 describe as the item number’s striking, cinesexual as- of Indian cinema. Unsurprisingly, the item number reveals the pects – one, that it features a hot, tempestuous performance by deployment of English words to connote a contemporary, Indian an item-girl dancing to a racy song, replete with dramatic light ensemble of onscreen song, dance and desire. The term “item effects and a supporting cast. And that it is a discrete or stand- number” fi nds an entry in the Wikipedia now as part of the alone performance that is loosely connected to the fi lm’s plot. As language-in-use for Bollywood fi lms. a delineated block of song and dance, it is often envisaged as the By making connections with differing but semantically related fi lm’s erotic piece de resistance. discourses, where the term “item” surfaces, we can perhaps fathom Chronologically speaking, the term “item number” came into how this apparently bland term emerged as a signifi er of a sexual- linguistic currency among the urban middle classes in India (and ised dance performance. The labelling of the item number and the the south Asian diaspora) in the late 1990s. On the one hand, the underlying linguistic work is not entirely accidental. For one, the item number remains an aspect of cinesexuality, not its entirety. term item is etched in the menu cards peddled by urban eateries. On the other, the item number grows its meanings from diverse Items here constitute distinct entities that are tempting, chilli-hot, signifying constellations – both onscreen visual entertainment and often what men drool or salivate over. Moreover, such items which gave rise to the term and the varying social contexts of are served outside the home or the domestic sphere. When in consumption. Engendered in the specifi c discourse and practice street language, an attractive girl, especially one who is viewed as of popular fi lm culture in India, the item number’s practice ranges provocatively dressed, is termed an item, some of the connota- beyond the fi lmic. tions that spill over from food items served in eateries outside the Drawing on Deleuze’s (1995) triadic assemblage, I fi nd it pro- home are carried across to the context of the girl who is outside ductive to envisage the item number as concept, affect and per- her domestic realm, bringing out intersemiotic associations be- cept, at the fi rst level. As a concept, the item number frames the tween these domains.5 And so the sense of an item number that cinematic and allegorical space and time of erotic, heterosexual may be diffi cult to verbalise gathers its meaning from associational desire. As affect, the item number expresses that which may be fi elds that commodify sex and eating (cf Liechty 2005). viscerally or sensually experienced in the course of its onscreen The word item also denotes each discrete, cultural perform- dance and song performance.3 Perceived as a new mode of seeing/ ance staged at urban variety or cultural programmes, such as a hearing, the item number is also put to work as a “percept” (De- stand-alone song or dance (or song-and-dance) performance. leuze, ibid). The item number’s presence is marked in Bollywood This usage seems to have entered the cinematic conception of an and the regional genres of commercial Indian cinema. It is enacted item number that is understood as a distinct segment within the at off-screen social venues and events ranging from urban dance fi lm. The word “number” too lent itself particularly well to bars and live concerts to wedding celebrations and dance schools.4 express economically, in a single word, the blending of song and At a second plane, I peruse the item number in wider socio- dance that was not exclusively one or the other. sexual contexts where its practice reveals continuities and differ- ences from the cinesexual as screened. Item numbers form part 1.1 The Emergence of the Item Number of a “cinema of attractions” (Gunning 1990), that leads to com- The specifi c use of the term item number is attributed to a descrip- plex connections and disconnections with gender, class and fam- tion of sensuous dance-performances, often to the accompani- ily as well as the economic and the cultural. The sense of an item ment of old Bollywood songs that were popularised by MTV in the number acquires a new relevance or excises an earlier semblance late 1990s. The appellation item girl was fi rst associated with Ma- as it taps into the newer currents which circulate outside the laika Arora. As other channels followed suit, the item girl came to fi lmic in the attempt to “retain and resist links to its traditional constitute a new and visible role that highlighted the gym-toned, sense of self” (Nayyar 1997). g yrating “body beautiful” as part of a contemporary aesthetic. This I argue here that the present emphasis on everyday life in soci- challenge from item numbers on television came home to roost in ology (and the social sciences) eclipses our understanding of Bollywood that set about incorporating the item number as a dis- spectacular performances, including the enactment of spectacu- tinct assemblage within its own productions (The Hindu 2007). lar, cinesexual item numbers within the domain of the domestic. The early use of the term item number is associated with Malaika I am not saying that we should now concentrate on spectacular Arora and Shahrukh Khan’s item number “Chaiyya Chaiyya” performances, but simply that we should focus on spectacular (Dil Se 1998) and Shilpa Shetty’s performance in Shool (1999). and everyday performances together. Moreover, while I appreciate In a cine-sense, the genealogy or pre-text of Hollywood item that the dovetailing of heteronormative images of desire and numbers certainly goes back to the cabaret numbers of which the commercial is pronounced in our times, and especially, in Helen, and to a lesser extent, Nadira, Aruna, Bindu and Padma Bollywood fi lms, that does not, in my view, make the production were well-known exponents.6 As history gets rewritten in the of the item number an object of slight or ridicule. language of the present, Helen, who performed in the years

68 june 5, 2010 vol xlv no 23 EPW Economic & Political Weekly SPECIAL ARTICLE 1952-72, is now described as the original item girl, especially in here but the item number as an entirety brings together talented the language of the younger sections of urbanites. Yet, neither exponents from different streams to produce the erotic assem- the cabaret artiste/dancer (nor Mona Darling, the sex moll), ade- blage of dance, song, music and image. quately capture the cognitive and affective space that has been Distinct specialisations contribute to the making of the elements created by the new item girls.7 that constitute the item number. Lyric writers choose their words Former cabaret dancers in Indian fi lms were cinematically and and idioms carefully to be in sync with the gestalt of upbeat item socially typecast in their roles. They could not make the leap to songs. For example, the renowned lyricist-cum-poet, Gulzar, uses the status of leading actresses. Nor were the heroines ready to alliterative phrases (like “Chaiyya Chaiyya” or “Kajra Re Kajra Re”) consent to cabaret performances though they were willing to be to create evocative word images. He notes that even if the item cast in leading roles as (Chakravarty 1999). This type- number features only during the credit titles, as in Saathiya, 2002 casting was a co-production of the background expectations of (or Slumdog Millionaire 2009), for him the song expresses the “sto- leading actresses, fi lm producers and cine-audiences. The dis- ryline in a nutshell”.8 Playback singers are handpicked for item- tance that has been travelled in recognising Helen as an out- song renditions – to take an example, Sunidhi Chauhan’s husky standing cine-artiste is perhaps captured by the fact that she was voice is currently celebrated and she is referred to as the “queen of awarded a Padma Bhushan in 2009. item numbers”. Choreographers, such as Farah Khan, contribute Now, on the other hand, the item number is envisaged as a to the creation of a distinctive Bollywood dancing style that is performance that may be inhabited by an item girl who may have now going global. And music maestros tap into their expertise for debuted in that fashion (Malaika Arora, Urmila Matondkar, Lara fast-tempo dance numbers (A R Raman; Shanker Ehsan Loy). Os- Dutta, Isha Koppikar); in a cameo or guest appearance by a lead- car – winner A R Rahman declares that he does not believe that ing actor or actress (Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai); by a former “item numbers are a compromise and enjoy(s) creating them”.9 leading actress (Rekha in Parineeta 2005) or by top-billed actors These chains of detail then create a spectacular assemblage of (Shahrukh Khan; Abhishek Bachchan, for instance). The cine- more-than-verbal communication – what may be aptly alluded to matic typecasting has diminished, and in addition, hybrid forms as Spinoza’s “structure of affect”. The performance when of dance, including the cabaret style, are clubbed together in cur- described in words often evokes adjectives such as “hot”, “steam- rent item number performances. Further, the item number works ing”, or “sizzling” but the impoverishment of mere words is pal- well as a generic description since these dance performances pable when you watch it. In this “spectacle of excess”, the actors draw on varying traditions – Indian classical and folk as well as display the contents of their parts in advance through their cos- popular western repertoires. tumes, gestures and props (Barthes 1973). At this pitch, Barthes The insertion of a new term in our lexicon – item number – and notes, it does not matter whether the passion is genuine or not the adjectival use of the term item as in item girl, item boy, item- because what the spectators want is the image of passion or in song, item-dance, item-contest, etc, I think, points to the emer- Baudelaire’s words “the grandiloquent truth of gestures” (ibid). gence of a novel phenomenon. It affi rms the signifi cance of the As the self-contained spectacle nested within the fi lm- as- item number as a cinesexual concept that is savoured by specta- spectacle, the item number reworks the performance traditions of tors, incarnated in contemporary Bollywood fi lms and broadcast India, such as the nautanki, that present a story-within-the-story by the print and visual media, quite apart from fi lm magazines. set to song or the Ramlila that enacts an episode-within-the-epic The term acquired a wider currency as re-mix music video pro- in the context of contemporary visual media (Manuel 1988; ducers began to market CDs that depicted skimpily clad item girls Morcom 2001). The structure of the item number has more or less dancing to old Bollywood hits. Semiotically speaking, the sex- crystallised for the present. Change here consists in changing the neutral term, item-actor, has not been espoused to include both elements rather than in dismantling the format. Variations within item girls and item boys in order to highlight the item number’s item numbers are captured on the different registers of lyrics, emphasis on youthfulness and heterosexual difference. By con- music, dance, costume, and locales and contemporarily in the chang- trast, the term actor now refers to both actor and actress in cur- ing blends of the global and the Indian in each of these aspects. rent Bollywood discourse. Incorporating an item boy displaying his muscles, alongside or instead of the item girl, accords with Bollywood’s recognition of 1.2 Elements of an Internal Structure nascent female desire that is not pathologised. In an analogous The item number has what one may describe as distinct elements manner, changes in the costumes of item girls (ranging from eth- interlinked to constitute an internal structure. Exuberant danc- nic chic to bikinis or hybrids now), shifts in locale (including ing by a cine-star or a starlet, especially written lyrics to anchor beaches such as Miami), or increasingly sexualised dance move- the images, songs set to music by maestros in a complementary ments, for instance, go beyond what has already been framed. vein and the razzmatazz of sound and light effects in a staged setting are intended to resonate together. The supporting cast of 1.3 Positioning the Item Number chorus girls, too, lends “rhetorical amplifi cation” to the perform- From one angle, the item number may be regarded as a complete ance (Barthes 1973). semiotic composition, a thing-in-itself, and a consummation of the The item girl/item boy is a synecdoche of the cinematic item theme that is without a location in the plot. The positioning of the number, representing it in the manner that a peak, for instance, item number to mark the beginning or conclusion of a fi lm here can represent a mountain. She/he has a visually dominant role may not be altogether different from Shakespeare’s insertion of the

Economic & Political Weekly EPW june 5, 2010 vol xlv no 23 69 SPECIAL ARTICLE clown’s sonnet as a dramatic technique at the beginning, middle or By contrast with Goffman, who engages primarily with the idea of end of a play. Often, the item girl, like the clown in Shakespeare’s everyday performance, what I may refer to as performances with a plays, offers a character that is out of sync with the normative. small p, the idea of a performance in the item number confronts However, the item number cannot be treated as extrinsic to the me with a spectacular performance or performance with a capital heterosexual subtext of the fi lm that celebrates the dancing P, that is intended for cinematic entertainment and profi t. f emale/male form. Even when Bollywood’s cine-directors seem Closer to our own times, Judith Butler (1993, 1999, 2004) too, to de-centre these enactments by asking questions about item engages with the idea of gender as performance which is a “styl- numbers in the course of the narrative these performances are in ised repetition of acts” and distinguishes it from the notion of e ffect re-centred. During a scripted aside in the movie No Entry, performativity – or what can be expressed as the reiterative (2005), for instance, the lead actress lets us know that the item norm-orientedness that underlies our (gendered) performances girl’s husband is stricken with cancer and that is why she has (Butler 1999: 179). Butler delineates the signifi cance of performa- taken to this profession, inviting the spectators to identify with tivity, especially in relation to the norming of sex and gender. She her reasons. In the fi lm Page 3, (2005) the item number is at fi rst addresses her concerns primarily to transgressions of heterosex- reviled as a truck driver’s song by the elite but those who scoff at ual norms, such that homosexual performances, in her view, lead it are later shown as unable to resist dancing to its beat. Refl exive to the production of abject or “uninhabitable zones of social life” fi lms too deal with item numbers. while heterosexualising practices produce what she terms valua- Do Bollywood’s item numbers hold some features in common ble bodies or the bodies that matter (Butler 1993: 3). with the strip dance sequence that was characteristic of Ameri- I fi nd Butler’s suggestion that the norming of sex is indeed per- can burlesque cinema in the period 1945-60? Although a strip- formed and leads to the materialisation of a particular type of tease is not part of the performance in the Indian item number, body useful for an understanding of item numbers. However, both these forms seek to reach out to the audience’s desire for here I have adapted her ideas to unravel the workings of norma- spectacular, cine-sexualised dancing as entertainment. Writing tive heterosexuality apparent in Bollywood’s current repertoire on the burlesque fi lm, further, Schaefer (1997: 55) notes that bur- of item numbers. I argue that in the cinematic context of India, lesque sequences attempted to grip the spectator’s attention item number performances and the discourse surrounding them “solely by the performance without the distraction or restrictions produces women’s bodies that are regarded by these women imposed by narrative”. Item numbers and burlesque sequences themselves as valuable from certain subject-positions and shared the emphasis on the segment’s deliberate self-containment debased from other vantage-points. and adherence to a standardised format. As such, it could be e asily and economically inserted in the fi lm, even as it stretched 2.2 Item Girls: The Production of the limits of onscreen sexual propriety. Spectacular Performances In a classic statement, Mulvey (1975) put forth the argument The spectacular performance of an item number that the viewer that mainstream Hollywood fi lms enjoin a male gaze such that sees on the screen is a front-stage and valuable performance for the male spectator identifi es with the hero while the onscreen the actor. However, it is not without its elements of cinematic actress becomes the object to be looked at. She believed that fem- norming imposed upon the actor by the combine of the fi lm’s pro- inist fi lms would challenge such portrayals in a cinema of their ducers and directors who attempt to depict a salable product and own making. Depicting women as objects for the spectatorial a desirable body. These norms may sometimes run counter to the male gaze would seem plausible in the context of Bollywood fi lm actor’s own predilections but there is a realm of her performance production but as Carroll (1990) suggests, not all of it is per- that is not entirely determined by the fi lm-makers. versely “voyeuristic” or “fetishistic”. Men and women in the audi- The item girl’s attempts to transform the sexual politics of cine- ence, too, may identify cine-sexually with feminine or masculine matic visual display is mediated by performances on television, subject positions, as Mulvey (1999) recognised later. chat shows, fi lm magazines, internet sites, blogs and other media Looking at the heteronormative context of Bollywood fi lms, that is facilitated by the new array of interactive technologies. The moreover, it is the item girls who seek to resignify the meaning of actor’s subjective assessment of her cinematic item numbers is ex- their sexy cinematic performances. Instead of holding out hope pressed in these other media. Small differences between the cine- from feminist fi lm producers for an alternative cinema, they sexuality envisaged by the combine of fi lm-makers and the actor’s enunciate their positions on item numbers and their objectifi ca- own take, broadcast in visual and print media, are perused by fans tion for the male gaze with the help of adjacent visual and print seeking out the cine-actor’s viewpoint. Such windows open up the media, the subject of the next section. At the same time, item- dialogues with nascent cine-sexualities and lead to new discourses boys are increasingly grist for the cine-sexual mill. on the becomings of the sexual and the cinesexual.

2 The Social Lives of the Item Number 2.3 Resignifying the Item Number: What Do the Item Girls Say? 2.1 Item Girls: Recasting Heterosexual Abjectdom The statements made by cine-actors on being termed item-girls As is well known, Goffman (1959) developed metaphors derived question the “derogatory” connotations of this appellation. from the stage for his insights into everyday interactions, and es- Asked what it means to be an item girl, Rakhi Sawant avers that pecially, the distinction between the front stage and the back stage. it implies that “you are beautiful, you have a great fi gure and you

70 june 5, 2010 vol xlv no 23 EPW Economic & Political Weekly SPECIAL ARTICLE are a fabulous dancer”.10 Malaika Arora opines that she loves abject. But the spectacular cinesexual as normed on screen and dancing and doing item numbers, which also enable her trips to reproduced in other mass-mediated performances spills over as exotic locales, money and fame to boot. Since cine-stars, increas- norming for a section of youngsters in the urban middle class. ingly, perform as item girls in guest appearances their voices a ssume an amplifi ed importance. Bipasha Basu states: “There was 2.4 Resignifying the Item Number: The Item Girl Contest a time when people considered looking sexy as doing something The tremendous diversity in the reception of item numbers de- heinous…but today’s scenario is completely changed”.11 Or, to mands audience segregation. Here, I shall focus fi rst on that fringe quote Celina Jaitley: “I hate the term ‘item number’. It sounds so of youngsters that aspires to careers in visual entertainment. derogatory. It’s a performance of a different type.”12 When queried Bollywood’s item numbers, increasingly seen on TV or as video-clips, on which part of her body in her view is most attractive, Kareena are now an intervisual presence across distinct visual media. Kapoor declares that it is her heart, while Sushmita Sen avers that The arc lights attract a small but growing margin of middle there is nothing wrong in her wearing her skin. class youngsters who have the requisite talent and are willing to Such statements question the implied debasement in item undergo the grooming necessary for item numbers. The paths to number enactments and attempt to resignify the meanings of item numbers are diverse and criss-crossing – modelling, VJ-ing sexualised spectacular, front-stage performances. What you or winning beauty and talent contests. Television is often a source get here, then, is a reformulation of the value of item numbers of information about talent searches held in conjunction with TV for actors against attempts that may cast them as abject bodily channels, audio-visual multinationals and movie-makers, who performances. have together created what is now known as reality TV. Examples These performances in visual media outside of cinema may be of talent searches in this milieu of reality TV recently included an viewed as back-stage performances relative to the front-stage en- Item Bomb contest and I look into some interviews with parents actments in the fi lm. At the same time, these performances also of contestants next. afford mediations between the subjective and the objective in the I have culled extracts of these interviews from the net – what actor’s life. Goffman (1959) alerts us to the appreciation that the may be called etnography as distinct from ethnography.14 front stage is no less real than the back stage. Moreover, such (1) On being asked what she thought of her daughter’s participa- i nterviews that deal in snippets of information about the back- tion in the item contest, a 65-year-old mother and retired civil stage of a fi lm’s production generate interest in the fi lm per se servant said: “My daughter has had a passion for dancing since and constitute a resignifi cation of the back stage for the upfront she was a child. And these days you have to go all-out if you want or spectacular cinesexual performance on screen. to be some one. This contest gives her a chance to showcase her In the continuing dance of difference within item numbers, talent. But we are not prepared for any other compromises.” wannabe female actors accede to more revealing item number (2) Yet another mom said that her daughter was the only earner in performances to procure roles in Bollywood fi lms. As an aspirant a fi ve-member family and she did not want her to forfeit the chance. put it: “We’re item girls: we have to stay a step ahead of the lead- (3) A third one remarked: “We had a problem with her choice ing stars”. And the competition is, indeed, hotting up with item- i nitially but we did not want to end her dreams”. girl entrants from eastern Europe and elsewhere whose per- (4) A fourth mother stated that though our daughter did not win formances, a fi lm producer declared, were less inhibited. On the fi nal round, in our minds she has, because she has been the other hand, leading heroines also feel the heat of the offered so many music video roles. competition from item girls – they are running against time in (5) And another mom observed that the item girl contest could their short-duration careers to ensure that their star status is not not really be obscene, if it was being aired on TV. jeopardised by this hot onslaught from item girls who materialise The contestants in the Item Bomb contest were judged on the bodies that are considered desirable from a box offi ce point of basis of their vital statistics, the ability to follow the choreo- view (cf Datta 2000). grapher’s instructions and what is described as the “oomph” fac- As non-resident Indian (NRI) venture capital begins to fi nance tor. Their proponents claimed that they were “taking care of the Bollywood fi lms, moreover, item numbers enactments are lubri- aspirational needs of the young urban India”.15 In their own cated by high monetary values for the relatively short duration of front-stage performances, the organisers argued that they the fi ve-six days necessary to shoot an item number. As that mar- offered the winner a chance to perform an item number in a Bol- ket becomes a lucrative segment for Bollywood’s products, what lywood fi lm. One of the judges saluted the “courage” of the con- we get is more globally trendy appearances. The old-urban middle testants though some of the judges stated that they were aghast class morality is often given short shrift, if and while the money at having to rate body parts. is good, and especially, during professionally leans p eriods when Reality TV contests have also come into their own in the realm an item number can shoot an actor into visual prominence in a of playback singing, apparent in the contest for the “Indian Idol” spectacular enactment.13 The backstage performance, however, (modelled after the American Idol). Increasingly, city-dwellers is about legal contracts that seal the worth of “revealing but are asked to rate the performance of participants by sending aesthetic” shows. replies through text messages. The winners may be signed on by Depending upon where you train your lens, the performances commercial enterprises, which successfully dovetail cultural and of item-actors are screened and revealed from different angles commercial production through such ventures. The beaming of ranging from the valuable and professional to the mercenary and the contests themselves, too, command good viewership ratings.

Economic & Political Weekly EPW june 5, 2010 vol xlv no 23 71 SPECIAL ARTICLE These item-contests, replete with judges and ideas of “objec- “…If an item number can be screened in public theatres, then an tive” chance and appraisal, provide an avenue of career develop- imitation of the same cannot be termed as vulgar”.18 Dancing for ment for a section of the middle class through talent competi- a livelihood was a fundamental right and the tions. The aspiring item girl certainly mobilises her desires and quashed the state government’s order. talents but is it often the mothers who channel these aspirations. On the other side, activists engaged in anti-traffi cking sup- A new liaising of the cultural and the economic is apparent as ported the ban since they alleged that bar dancing led to the ex- middle class families reorient themselves to the commercial ploitation of women and the enrolment of minors in this profes- mode of onscreen production (cf Butler 1997). sion. Girls from poverty-stricken homes who were attracted to Bollywood fi lms were tracked as “items” and brought to ’s 3 The Reproduction of Item Numbers: Dance Bars dance bars (Nair and Sen 2005). An investigation by the Women’s Apart from onscreen media, item numbers are performed at Study Centre of the SNDT University reveals that some bar dancers staged travelling shows in metropolises, small towns and rural were initiated into dance bars by aunts or older relatives, who fairs. Item numbers are also reproduced at the very sites that are viewed bar dancing as an avenue for a livelihood that was preferable shown as their typical locales in fi lms – dance bars. to in brothels. The SNDT report notes that about 60% of The spectacular front-stage performance of the item number the bar dancers interviewed were the sole earners in their families on celluloid simultaneously screens and shields the item-actor’s and spent their earnings to support ageing parents, the education body from a literal onslaught by the cinesexual intensities of of their children as well as the wedding expenses of their siblings. viewers. Film-makers harness this feature of cinematic technol- Subsequently, Mumbai’s bar dancers were organised in a Bar ogy profi tably in that virtual rather than real bodies constitute Dancers’ Union that seeks to promote their interests within this the fi nal product. By contrast with item-actors, female bar danc- industry. The union protested the ban and demanded the right to ers perform Bollywood’s item numbers live before a male audi- dance for a livelihood against the diktats of the state that arbi- ence without cine-status. trarily marked out dance bars as immoral while dances in elite Micro-practices of difference bring out the continuities and dis- clubs went unquestioned. continuities between onscreen and off-screen enactments. On the The gendered underpinnings of economic processes are evi- one hand, any discussion of these item performances pushes us to dent as bar dancers carry out a dual struggle in the quest for wage consider gender as an independent axis, distinct from class, as bar labour as well as against the cultural devaluation of their per- dancers too try to see beyond the supposed debasement of their formances on the margins of a normative heteroconjugality and a bodies and their profession. On the other, a niche for entre preneurship sexualised economy. At the same time, in continuing to use their within a sexualised economy drives bar owners and impover- earnings to maintain solidary kinship links with their natal/ ished girls/families to look for economic gains from bar dancing. marital families, bar dancers also live within the existing matrix In Mumbai alone, about 75,000 bar dancers performed item of heteronormative familial relations. numbers to recorded music and live orchestras on specially de- Any discussion of heterosexuality is pluralised when one signed, akin-to-cine-set dance fl oors before male audiences in 2005.16 c onsiders sexual desire beyond what is framed as normative (for Many of them belonged to communities where women tradition- the conjugal unit) and non-normative (outside the conjugal unit). ally danced for a livelihood and were now a part of this new econ- This wider penumbra of heterosexual desire is delineated as motif omy. There were non-traditional entrants from the city as well. and practice in heterosexual and patriarchal societies, as, in- The dance-bar rendition of the item number is part of the bar- deed, in Bollywood fi lms. Individual and social expressions of dancer’s everyday professional life without the social privileges ac- cinesexual item nunbers fi nd a toehold in the cracks within the corded to cine-item girls. By contrast with item girls onscreen, heteronormative regulation of social lives by men/the family here real as opposed to virtual dancing bodies are the object of the (Butler 1997) in the shape of the item number, as I try to show next. male gaze, visual display and tactile entertainment in an environment of drinking and masculine pleasure seeking. Drawing on the cul- 4 The Play of Item Numbers: Middle Class Families ture of the traditional performances, the showering of cur- While the heterosexual and domestic family orients the everyday rency notes on favoured bar dancers is regarded as an aspect of lives of middle class women, this everyday realm exists alongside masculinity here (ibid). While women bar-dancers routinely inhabit spectacular and carnivalesque interludes of desire. The carniva- the sexualised, hidden-from-mainstream, public spaces that cater lesque dimension to wedding celebrations and festivals in India, to masculine desire, their social visibility in Mumbai was height- as counter to the socially established fl ow of domestic heteronor- ened on their protesting the state government’s ban on bar dancing. mative life, doubles up as the location for cinematic item numbers, In 2005, the state government of imposed a ban and in turn, infl ects these ritualised performances (cf Parveen 2003). on dancing in bars on grounds of obscenity and immorality. One of Maharashtra’s elected representatives, while approving the 4.1 TV and the Heterogeneous Reception legislation against bar dancing, declared that “everything should of Item Numbers in Homes be banned except Bharat Natyam and Kathak”.17 In a contest of The entry of television into urban homes, perhaps, marked the interpretations, feminist lawyers challenged the ban arguing that beginning of the engagement with the virtual image as spectacle the performance of item numbers in dance bars was no more im- within the domestic milieu that has been extended with new moral than the item numbers shown on screen. Agnes observed, o nscreen forms of cine- and cyber-entertainment. Very briefl y

72 june 5, 2010 vol xlv no 23 EPW Economic & Political Weekly SPECIAL ARTICLE here, I will dwell on the heterogeneous views of item numbers Enacted at such rites of passage, item numbers became celebra- within urban middle class families whom I broached in Delhi. tory motifs of feminine heterosexual desire. First, there were those who rarely saw Bollywood fi lms in a I turn next to a brief ethnographic sketch of how the item cinema-hall but the numbers who did not watch television are number “Kajra Re” (performed by Aishwarya Rai in Bunty aur very few. Even older men who turned to TV largely for the news Babli 2005) was re-enacted within both the everyday and the claimed that they were often confronted by what some of them spectacular familial sphere of four urban families in Delhi. described as “skin-shows” of which I was told item numbers must (1) An eight-year old girl practised and danced to Kajra Re. She form a part. They regarded the skimpily clad front-stage per- enacted her dance before her mother’s friends with a little nudg- formances of item girls as obscene and subsequent statements ing. The pleasure that the emulation of a current number and a made by these actors were viewed as utterances intended to star gave her (and the women who watched her) was palpable. mask their transgressions. (2) A 19-year-old college girl danced to Kajra Re at her sister’s Among families that tuned into item numbers on TV, each au- sangeet ceremony. Her blouse was slightly modifi ed but her outfi t dience tended to get socially situated depending on whether the was fashioned after the cine-original. The group was an intimate item number was being watched with parents (mother or father) one, just the extended family. She would not agree to perform or siblings (brother or sister). There was a dimension of perform- outside the context of her sister’s wedding. Yet, her performance ativity in the kind of item numbers that mother and the daugh- was not unrehearsed. The DVD and the mirror, she said, had been ters watched together as they culled out the feminine aesthetic useful props for practising moves and gestures. and the heteroattractive, to what was family viewing that in- (3) At her silver anniversary, a 49-year-old woman was cajoled cluded father and that which a youngster viewed alone. into doing the Kajra Re number since the small group of friends Some mothers encouraged the heterodesirability of their daugh- and family knew of her passion for music and dance. Her daugh- ters through clothes fashioned in the style of cine or TV stars. ter joined her for a part of the show before this audience. All Daughters were sometimes enrolled in dancing schools that in- present hailed her item number. cluded contemporary Bollywood dances. Here current item numbers In an aside, she told me that she had to practise heaving her worked as percepts that were espoused within the contemporary Bol- breasts as part of the correct cinematic depiction. Her husband lywood genre. Reproduced in the domestic context, such dance per- hoped that she would not break her bones. formances took on a slew of functions ranging from the imprinting (4) At her son’s wedding sangeet, a 60-year-old woman requested of gendered norms to the realisation of a contemporary aesthetic. a friend to sing Kajra Re, including the dialogue that precedes the There was also a discernible attempt by mothers, and some fa- song. Her enactment drew a massive applause. Those in the know thers, to acknowledge the force of contemporary cinesexuality recounted that she had been an accomplished Kathak dancer in epitomised by cinematic plots and enactments. A few mothers her youth. Others averred that her abhinaya (expressions) were saw sense in not keeping heterosexual desire under a cloak. This indeed fi ner than Aishwarya Rai’s. view was strengthened by the discourse on AIDS and accorded What I want to underscore by recapitulating these ethno- weight by urban schools as sex education. Talk of sex was often graphic examples is that when item numbers are performed at occasioned by the visuals on screen. extended-family functions, they tend to become tamed as cele- Most young girls and boys who enjoyed item numbers at home bratory practices of song-and-dance without the hotter signifi - preferred to watch and enact them with peers when parents were cances of the body in an item number. Yet, these practices are in not around – backstage. Often a transgressive pleasure was ap- tune with the heteronormative familial milieu that, like the parent in viewing item numbers that contravened conventional Bollywood fi lm, accords a space and time for the enactment of attire and gestures or diluted the classical forms of dance and feminine heterosexuality, albeit within limits. song which were valued by some parents as markers of culture The erotic scripting that underlies the front-stage spectacular and distinction in Bourdieu’s (1984) sense. performance of Aishwarya Rai in Bunty aur Babli, is domesti- From a musical angle, however, the item song in its audio version cated but not without disassembling and reassembling a new and was tuned into without the reservations associated with item acceptable face of both everyday and spectacular cinesexuality. number visuals. Listening to such item songs cuts across classes and While Cavell (1980) suggests that cine-stars are to be gazed at, regions in the city (cf Morcom 2001). Music selections and solo the little girl enacting an item number derived pleasure from listening/viewing options, too, were increasingly facilitated by the i mitating the star’s performance. The performance was simulta- new technologies. But at marriages the item number came into its neously, “girling the girl’ or imprinting the cine-heteronormative own as carnivalesque heterosexual enactment and entertainment. (Butler 1993). The latest item numbers are especially popular as the engagement with the new per se is a part of modernity’s self, 4.2 Item Numbers as Spectacular Familial Performances as Baudelaire (Benjamin 1973) reminds us, even as the perennial A recasting of the cine-item number occurred when it was e nacted powers of dance and song as entertainment are harnessed for at extraordinary events in heteronormative familial milieus that life’s heterosexual rites of passage. accorded a distinct space to sexualised songs and dances. It was during the carnivalesque events of domestic life, such as pre- 4.3 Whither Item Numbers? And Cinesexuality? wedding song celebrations (sangeet) and now, wedding anniver- “A theory of cinema”, Deleuze astutely observes, “is not ‘about’ saries, that the cinematic item number came to be recontextualised. cinema, but about the concepts that cinema gives rise to which

Economic & Political Weekly EPW june 5, 2010 vol xlv no 23 73 SPECIAL ARTICLE are themselves related to other concepts corresponding to other they refashion the meaning of item numbers as valuable rather practices…” (Deleuze 1989: 280). Here I have tried to show how than abject performances in particular contexts. cinesexuality, in the shape of the item number, has emerged as Against attempts at a totalising masculinist appropriation of a discourse and practice in Bollywood and the urban social life of woman’s body/sexuality, item numbers performed for merriment India. Item numbers present us with a continuing dialogue and/or profi t, implicitly afford a critique of the univocal mean- between historical and evolving, cultural and heterosexual ings of sexual propriety. I have attempted to bring out how item practices. By concurrently reiterating and redefi ning received numbers that transgress expressions of middle class moralities expressions of heterosexual propriety then, the cinesexual are now being resignifi ed by item girls (and item boys), a section item number comes to constitute a new archive of the sexual (cf of the youth that aspires to careers in onscreen visual entertain- Ramaswamy 2003). How this cinesexuality is circulated, ment, bar dancers and ordinary women. d omesticated or reinvented in diverse societal spaces reveals It is thus that we can no longer say of item numbers, that it is how cinema is both moulded by but also moulds new practices “she” or “he” who rocks but it is “we” who are alive to the pleasures and norms. of item numbers and/or derive a livelihood from it who rock in our The orbit and analysis of item numbers invite us to distinguish Bollywood-mediatised, cinesexualised lives. The personal histories and acknowledge a wider arena of heterosexuality and heteroat- of item girls and boys on screen then, are relegated to the backstage tractiveness alongside the more limited focus on heteroconjugal- and their spectacular performances connect with the life- histories ity in Bollywood fi lms and social life. Although framed within of ordinary spectators and enactors even as difference continues dominant heteromasculinist and patriarchal regimes, I argue to be inserted between those spectacular cinesexual performances that item numbers nevertheless provide women too with with a capital P and our relatively less spectacular cinesexual o pportunities for heteroattractive entertainment and profi t as performances within the round of urban, middle class lives.

Notes India together.org/manushi/issue149/bardan ce. Gunning, T (1990): “The Cinema of Attractions: Early htm. Accessed on 9 May 2009. And also see The Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde” in 1 We Are All Cinesexuals Now” is the theme of Hindu, “Bar Dancers Take to the Streets”, 4 May T homas Elsaesser (ed.), Early Cinema: Space Ma cCormack’s (2008) book titled Cinesexuality. 2005 online edition. Frame Narrative, British Film Institute, London, 2 See, for instance, www.bollywhat-forum.com/ 17 “Moral Victories” by Flavia Agnes (2005), http:// pp 56-62. .htm. i ndex (accessed on 7 February 2008) and www. infochangeindia.org/200602235618/accessed on – (2007): “Bollywood’s Hegemony”, Online Edition, cylive.com/content/.../_quot_Item_Number_ 9 May 2009. 12 August. quot_Defi ned (accessed on 7 February 2008). 18 “Hypocritical Morality: Mumbai’s Ban on Bar Indian Express (2009): www.indianexpress.com/story- 3 I use the term “Onscreen” to denote the repetition Dancer” by Flavia Agnes (2005) http://www. Old.php?storyId=13507. Accessed on 2 July. of any cinematic item number that utilises new i ndia together.org/manushi/issue149/bardan ce. Krzywinska, Tanya (2006): Sex and the Cinema visual media such as DVDs, cable TV, computers, htm. Accessed on 9 May 2009. ( London: Wallfl ower Press). mobiles, etc. Liechty, Mark (2005): “Carnal Economies: The Com- 4 See, for instance, Shresthova (2003). modifi cation of Food and Sex”, Cultural Anthro- 5 In English slang, too, a sexually attractive woman References pology, 20(1): 1-38. may be referred to as a “Dish”. MacCormack, Patricia (2008): Cinesexuality (UK: 6 Anirban Choudhury “Item Numbers: Then and Barthes, Roland (1972)(1973): Mythologies (London: Ashgate). Now”, .http://music.ndtv.com/music_story ac- Vintage). – (2005-06): “A Cinema of Desire: Cinesexuality cessed on 23 March 2009. Benjamin, Walter (1973): Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric and Guattari’s A – Signifying Cinema” in Women: 7 See, The Hindu, “Where’s Mona Darling?”, Online Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (1935-39). Trans- A Cultural Review, 16(3): 340-55. Edition, 19 July 2002. http://www.hindu.com/the- lated by Harry Zohn and Quentin Hoare (London: Manuel, Peter (1988): “Popular Music in India: 1901-86”, hindu/fr/.../2002071900170100.htm. Accessed on New Left Books). Popular Music, 7,2, 157-76. 2 July 2009; “The Villain and the Bomb” Online edi- Bourdieu, Pierre (1984): Distinction: A Social Critique of Morcom, Anna (2001): “An Understanding b etween tion, 30 August 2004, http://www.hindu.com/mp/ the Judgment of Taste (London: Routledge). Bollywood and Hollywood? The Meaning of 2004/08/30/stories/2004083002610100.htm. Butler, J (1993): Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Hollywood-Style Music in Hindi Films”, The Bri- Accessed on 2 March 2007; “The Acting Circus”. Limits of “Sex” (London:Routledge). tish Journal of Ethnomusicology, 10, (1): 63-84. 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(2003): Beyond Appear- 13 http://top-bollywood-actress-blogspot.com, Access tations of Women in Indian Cinema”, Social ed on 4 July 2009. ances? Visual Practices and Ideologies in Modern S cientist, 28, (3/4): 71-82. India (Delhi: Sage). 14 I am grateful to my colleague Deepak Mehta for Deleuze, Gilles (1989): The Time-Image (tr) Hugh this suggestion. Rich, Adrienne (1980): “Compulsory Heterosexuality Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: and Lesbian Existence”, Signs: Journal of Women 15 http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/ University of Minnesota Press). in Culture and Society, 5(4): 631-60. 2004/11/25/stories/2004112501180100.htm Acces – (1995): Negotiations, 1972-1990 (tr) Martin Schaefer, Eric (1997): “The Obscene Seen: Spectacle sed on 2 March/2009. Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press). and Transgression in Postwar Burlesque Films”, 16 “Moral Victories” by Flavia Agnes (2005), http:// Foucault, Michel (1979): Foucault, The History of Sexu- Cinema Journal, 36(2): 41-66. infochangeindia.org/200602235618/accessed on ality, Vol 1, An Introduction (London: Penguin Shresthova, Sangita (2003): “Strictly Bollywood? 9 May 2009. Books). Story”, Camera and Movement in Hindi Film “Hypocritical Morality: Mumbai’s Ban on Bar Goffman, Eric (1959): The Presentation of Self in Every- Dance. Master’s Thesis presented at Massachu- Dancers” by Flavia Agnes (2005), http://www. day Life (New York: Doubleday). setts Institute of Technology, US.

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