How item numbers became a lurid staple of Indian cinema

What was once a tool to lure sex-deprived masses into movie theatres is now a giant cash cow keeping production houses afloat. But is there more to Indian cinema’s sultry item numbers?

Indian cinema’s item numbers have undergone their own metamorphosis over the years, from Yeh Mera Dil, Pyaar Ka Deewana to Sheila Ki Jawani. At the core, however, they are largely the same. Item numbers aim to cater to the voyeuristic gaze of the sexually repressed male audiences of a country where sex is only talked about via tongue-in-cheek innuendos set to catchy tunes. The questions worth asking here are: How did we get here? Are they a symptom of a deeper cultural conundrum? Are the moral and monetary reverberations of item numbers fruitful? 

The question of the male gaze

The notion of women being put on titillating display—tasteful or otherwise—isn’t new or unique to Indian cinema. Cultural essayist John Berger, in his docuseries Ways of Seeing, chronicles nude oil paintings from the Renaissance period of European art. “She (woman) turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight,” he says. The phenomenon has since been popularised as the ‘male gaze’ and its ultimate manifestation in Indian cinema is the notorious item numbers in question. 

Ahona Chanda, head of content at Humans of Cinema, explains, “Item numbers, as we know them, started as a way of catering to the male gaze of our audiences. It isn’t limited to item songs, of course, but it is the most obvious manifestation”. Further commenting on the craft behind them, she says, “The salacious cinematography of item songs turns entertainment into an ‘act of watching.’ Sensuality is implied by the way that the camera captures the female body and the way it almost instructs the viewer to look at the female body as an object of desire.” An example of this is the song Tip Tip Barsa Paani, from the 1994 film Mohra, starring a chiffon saree-clad, Raveena Tandon and Akshay Kumar. Almost 30 years later, many might struggle to remember the narrative arc of the film, but close-ups of Tandon’s drenched waist have been immortalised in popular Indian culture through several nostalgic references and boys-to-men jokes (think of Rishi Kapoor’s dying wish in the 2016 film Kapoor and Sons).

“These songs seem to have such a hold over us because they belong to the golden period of Indian item songs. People sometimes went to the theatre only to see their favourite actresses do an item number,” adds Chanda. This was, in many ways, successful for filmmakers who intended to cash in on the repressed desires of Indian cinema-goers.

Influencing factors 

As for the economics of it all, Muskan Dhar, a gender and film studies scholar from Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, New Delhi, comments on the role played by multiplexes in making item numbers a sure-shot formula for commercial success. “Multiplexes changed a lot for Indian, and especially Hindi cinema. What was once the poor man’s medium now became a staple of the middle class who could afford it,” she says. “The core audience of films became the middle class that predominantly had people from certain privileged socio-economic groups or, dare I say, castes.” Filmmakers now had a focused demographic and their beliefs to cater to, which heavily influenced the way women were portrayed on screen. 

The rise of item songs emerged from the women of cinema being divided into two groups—the good woman and the bad woman, or the bride and the whore. “The moral distinction between the good and the bad woman has always been very clear in Indian cinema, to the point where the opposite of a heroine was a vamp. A vamp isn’t just any bad woman but a bad woman who uses sex to get her way, which says a lot about how we view women and sex,” says Dhar. This big-screen distinction was reflected in everyday sociocultural norms as well, with the dissimilitude of the ghare-baire being reinforced with higher severity on the middle-class woman. 

It led to patriarchal notions of being a ‘traditional family girl,’ which, ironically, didn’t apply to the very actresses that starred in item numbers. To them, item songs are a way of proving their versatility as a performer and, above all, capturing the attention of national audiences. “Our cinema specifically has this strong connection with song-and-dance sequences. Actresses continue to gain popularity solely because of these dance sequences,” says Chanda. 

According to her, item numbers don’t just help actresses make more money but also act as career-propping launchpads. “Think of Bipasha Basu in Omkara. She had less screen time than other actors but was crucial to that film. Item songs like Beedi Jalayile and Namak Ishq Ka have become very important to our idea of the film, which inevitably makes Basu’s presence feel larger.” 

As Chanda puts it, the answer to why big-ticket actresses continue to star in item numbers lies in the cultural dispositions that our audiences have developed over the years. “We can claim to be a ‘cultured audience’ and call this ‘the age of the actor’, but a majority of cinemagoers don’t think so. The masses in India have always cared about the performers more than just actors and item songs are an excellent way for big-ticket stars to prove that they’re still great performers.” she says. “This is especially true for actresses who seem to fall out of favour with audiences way quicker as newer ones come in.”

While the economics of item numbers have changed over time, the principle behind them still stands. “It’s still about money and attention, but things are different now that we are in the Internet age. Item numbers are now made to get a film more airtime on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, which often translates to box-office or OTT success,” explains Chanda, “There is money to be made in Indian cinema if you can just market your film well and item numbers continue to be an excellent marketing tool. They’re fun, catch,y and perfect for our Internet-trained attention spans, which is why so many films still rely on them.”

Dhar further builds on this point by saying, “The fact of the matter is that item numbers were, and are, made to cash in on our inherent patriarchal beliefs. It’s an easy way of generating revenue by exploiting and pandering to the cracks in our belief systems.” 

While we struggle to find the line between owning one’s sexuality and being sexualised in the 21st century, our inherent biases towards item numbers and their commerciality continue to cast a metaphorical parda over the moral issues associated with them.

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