Item numbers have long been a selling point in Bollywood films. The songs are upbeat, catchy and suggestive and feature a woman - reductively called the ‘item’ girl - gyrating suggestively for the benefit of a lecherous male audience.
Over the years Bollywood has given several numbers like ‘Chikni Chameli’, ‘Munni Badnaam Hui’, ‘Aa Re Pritam Pyaare’, which have served as nothing but a cheap strategy to draw views. But in the time of #MeToo, isn’t it the responsibility of the filmmakers and the producers to acknowledge such a pervasive, problematic element of cinema and promptly do away with it?
‘Aira Gaira’ from Kalank is the latest item number to hit screens. The song features a performance by Kriti Sanon, with Varun Dhawan and Aditya Roy Kapur, in what is being termed a ‘guest appearance’. In less than a week since its release, it has garnered more than 16 million views.
Kriti Sanon in an interview with mid-day argued that it would be inappropriate to call the song an ‘item number’ since it has been shot aesthetically. “It [item number] is an inappropriate term that should be done away with. ‘Aira Gaira’ been shot aesthetically; there was nothing vulgar in the approach. One should view it as a dance song, and you have to give credit to Abhishek for doing it right," she said.
We can agree with Sanon that the song doesn’t have suggestive lyrics and chooses to show the ‘adas’ and ‘nakhras’ of a young lady over blatantly explicit moves, but does it mean that it isn’t still problematic? ‘Aira Gaira’ doesn’t do much to drive the plot of Kalank forward and is merely another song included to draw more attention to the film and sell it at the box office, the same purpose that informs every other item number.
What’s more is the film’s producer Karan Johar has previously apologised for having included item numbers in his movies and promised to never include them again.
In and interview with SheThePeople in 2017 he said, “The moment you put a woman in the centre and a thousand men looking at her lustingly (sic), it’s setting the wrong example. As a film maker I have made those mistakes and I will never do it again.”
“Things you show on celluloid sometimes set a template. So we as film makers need to be very responsible. Sometimes you don’t realise the things you write or project but you don’t know that they will actually impact society,” he added.
However, now we have ‘Aira Gaira’ and it seems like Karan hasn’t managed to keep his promise. Where’s the responsibility towards his audience now?
Simply having a milder version of what we generally refer to as an item number isn’t much improvement. A song like this could have easily been done away with, and we hope filmmakers and producers in the future do as Karan says and not as he does and put a stop to this trend.
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