The Body and Its Multimedia Sensations: Forging Starry Identities Through Item Numbers

The item number is the driving force behind the transformation of cine-dancing in relation to the star and as a corollary, positioning the star body within the discourse of post-network status of film publicity, marketing culture, branding, and value creation across media templates. I engage with the item number as the explosive interface that mutates the sensation of stardom. The performative charge of item numbers provoke dynamic interface processes that forge a sensational image of the star body through “inherently rhizomatic and hyper-visible sites” beyond cinema in music television, radio, print, live stage, new media as well as other ancillary industries like merchandize endorsements and product branding (Nayar in Seeing stars: Spectacle, society and celebrity culture. Sage, New Delhi, 2009). Extra-filmic stardom proliferates across networked media where every public appearance, statement, “tweet” and sound bite made by the star (or a controversial/leaked/morphed orphan video that floats on Web space) generates a ripple of sensations (Cashmore in Celebrity/Culture. Routledge, NY, 2006). The chapter will locate the new erotics of the star body after globalisation and in a post-network society, a body that “deterritorializes geographical and cultural borders” and conjures the erotic spectacle of the “global celebrity” (Redmond in A Companion to Celebrity. Wiley Blackwell, UK, 2016). This chapter will offer insights on the role of dance in the shifting notions of a star’s screen position. If at one point the item girl was an ‘outsider’ to the narrative, today lead heroines perform these dance spectacles. I do a comparative study of major (Malaika Arora, Aishwarya Rai, and Kareena Kapoor) and minor stars (Sambhavna Seth, Rakhee Sawant, Veena Malik, and Sherlyn Chopra), their performance of item numbers and the discourse generated in the popular press about them. The last two decades have shown how fringe actors acquired short lived stardom owing to their performance of certain item numbers (Rakhi Sawant and Isha Koppikkar). At the other end of the spectrum we have seen how big stars like Madhuri Dixit can add value to aid the publicity and marketing of films (Madhuri Dixit’s number “Ghagra” in Karan Johar’s blockbuster hit film Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani 2013).). The chapter aims to make an intervention in the existing academic discourse on cinematic ‘trash’ and ‘sleaze’ by underlining the obvious but understated edge of technology mediating the sensation of ‘sleaze’ and bringing it in close connection with mainstream stardom in the case of the item number. Sleaze here is an aesthetic mode of the cine-erotic that is widely recognized from Hollywood’s genre of exploitation films (with lesser-known starlets, low budget productions, lurid mise-en-scene, and deliberate investment in trash). While I am immensely indebted to previous studies of stardom especially Neepa Majumdar’s logic of the “split discourse of female stardom in India” which stages a debate about the class position of the performer and the respectability of the medium, I move away from purely socio-cultural connotations of stardom. I acknowledge new media studies and propose a study of the item number as an interface for stardom. I make use of gossip journalism and magazine covers to trace the sensation of the erotic in star bodies. Narratives of cosmetization of the star body (botox, silicone implants, size-zero figure and six-pack abs) further the logic of the fractal nature of the affective body which can mutate in contact with technology. The glamour associated with big male stars and their dance numbers that work as promotionals for big budget films will be discussed in this chapter. The numbers themselves operate as star texts creating value for the film. Male dancing in item numbers, as I show through my case studies, performatively create star narratives: Shahrukh Khan’s global stardom created by his dancing on live stages across continents is cited in his item numbers; Salman Khan performatively addresses his Muslim (often based in the Middle East and Europe) and working-class fans through his item numbers which act as standalone pieces and Ranveer Singh’s item numbers (across media templates of film, video, live show and endorsements) assert his taporiness—a crucial marker of his star narrative. In each of these cases, the item number ascertains the “global citizenship of the Bollywood star” (Nayar 2016). Some of these male dance numbers have not been considered as item numbers. However, they fit my taxonomy of item numbers as hybrid ensembles that not only reframes the logics of sensation around the body of the performing star but also operates as standalone star texts outside the narrative of the films and even the ecology of the song’s lyrics and picturization.