Evolution of the Item Number

Evolution of the Item Number: From Vampville to Crass City

How the times have changed.

It wasn't too long ago in Bollywood when "item numbers" meant a leggy model with an hourglass figure would liven up the proceedings in a gangster flick, where the female lead was the picture of demureness. Now, item numbers are not just toeing the risque line but have crossed over into crass city. What's more, it's not a rent-a-model-for-a-song routine anymore; mainstream "heroines" themselves don the garb of the seductress when they're not playing hard-to-get with the leading men. They don't play hard-to-get anymore, come to think of it.

Take the case of the latest, touted to be the greatest, item number of the year, Sheila and her jawani. Farah Khan delivers a stupendously raunchy number where tinsel town's Barbie, Katrina Kaif, channels her inner Helen, Shakira, Raveena Tandon, Madhuri Dixit, among others (from what I've seen of the video that's making the rounds). Or her predecessor this year, Malaika Arora Khan, an old hand at the temptress game, someone who's not been lured by leading lady roles but takes the sheen away from her nevertheless, in every film she performs an item number in. The gestures and the gyrations all scream vulgarity, not time-tested, finely-honed seduction techniques.

In the glory years of Indian cinema, the vamp wouldn't need to shed clothes to entice the hapless hero away from the clutches of the clingy heroine. Nadira, Bollywood's Bette Davis, would arch an expertly carved eyebrow and Raj Kapoor or Raaj Kumar would crumble at her feet in a puddle of inconsequence. Or Helen, the quintessential cabaret queen, would adorn herself with sequins and feathers and paint her eyelids all the way out of town, and all she had to do was to smile with a twinkle in her eye to have Shammi Kapoor go into uncontrollable raptures of ecstasy.

Not anymore. Eye language and coquetry find no takers in today's Bollywood, under-clad hourglass figures and their suggestive gyrations do. Mainstream productions from Bollywood have always catered to baser instincts, but it's a crying shame that the well-defined vamp figure has had to make way for the vapid nymphet who has nothing to offer by way of her vampness other than herky-jerky thrusts at the camera.

If this is how the leading lady's/vamp's role evolves in Bollywood, there's not much to say for its future, is there? If an item song is the measure of a film's success, directors can hang up their boots and call it a day. And we, the audience, will be none the poorer.

By  Zameer.D
Sat, Dec 18, 2010