Dil Se.. (1998)
Director: Mani Ratnam; Writer: Mani Ratnam, Sujatha Rangarajan, Tigmanshu Dhulia; Producer: Shekhar Kapur, Mani Ratnam, Fenon J. Rodriguez, Ram Gopal Varma; Cinematographer: Santosh Sivan; Editor: Suresh Urs; Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Manisha Koirala, Preity Zinta, Raghuvir Yadav, Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Piyush Mishra, Krishnakant, Aditya Srivastava, Ken Philip, Sanjay Mishra, Mita Vasisht, Arundhati Rao, Malaika Arora, Gautam Bora, Manjit Bawa, Zohra Sehgal, B.M. Shah, Gajraj Rao, Raja Sharma, Laxmi Rattan, Priya Parulekar, Sheeba Chaddha, Wasiq Khan, Samir Chanda, Chintu B. Mohapatra, Vanitha, Shubdeep, Ishitha, R.K. Nair, Kishan Bhatia, Sunil Agarwal, Avtar Sahani, Rajiv Gupta, Anupam Shyam, Hemant Mishra, Jessica, Lavanya, Babubhai, Alka, Shaad Ali, Pia Benegal, Jaswir Kaur, Jiah Khan
Duration: 03:47:10; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Hue: 275.094; Saturation: 0.057; Lightness: 0.206; Volume: 0.128; Cuts per Minute: 12.537; Words per Minute: 27.095
Summary: Amar Varma, a producer for Indian news radio, meets an enigmatic woman at a railroad station and then again at a hill station. He falls in love with her, but the woman, who calls herself Meghna, rejects and leaves him although she seems to be interested. Later, Varma agrees to marry his family's choice, Preeti. But suddenly Meghna is back, and what is the secret that she holds?
Seventeen years later in Dolly ki Doli ( 2015), Malaika continues to perform item numbers. Her song Fashion khatam mujhpe
, reinstates Hindi cinema’s engagement with the item number, especially Arora’s career that has evolved with it through the years. There is a certain agency given to the performer, which is rare in her case, the song Fashion khatam mujhpe foregrounds her as the reigning queen where the ‘item girl’ is not second class category but becomes this new singular category of a different kind of stardom . She claims as if she herself is the trendsetter of this genre with Fashion… irrespective of the plethora of the item numbers and item girls in films. There is a constant negotiation of legitimacy within the stardom discourse.
Her interview claims her new role as the producer cum item girl in the film complicates the discourse of item numbers .
The song is a proto item number. Although it follows a number of conventional elements of the industry recognized item numbers; the female dancer who is not the heroine of the film performs only in this special number, the female voice and the dance form is folk and Othered, the key elements in the consolidated industry generated term item numbers are missing from this song. The frontal gaze of the dancer straight into the camera and the consequent singular focus of spectators' attention on the "item" allowing the dancer certain agency in the situation is diverted in this song by the long shots of the landscape, the spaces opened up by the moving train and the occupation of the frames by the dominating hero Shahrukh Khan. Compare the number with Dard-e-Disco from Om Shanti Om and Munni Baadnaam Hui from Dabangg.
Yana Gupta, a well known "item girl" references her status in an ad for PETA
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