Hey Munni!: Dabangg, item songs, and the reinforcement of gender stereotypes

Before we get to the soundtrack that’s been sweeping the award ceremonies, let’s talk, for a minute, about how overwhelmingly masculine Dabangg the movie is and about how we are witnessing some seriously conservative gender values as Salman Khan pays homage to the archetypal Southie hero by employing brute violence and ordering around his heroine, a lifeless Sonakshi Sinha who eventually falls in love with Khan because…well, who knows why, maybe it’s the way he plans her future without her consent while smugly patting himself on the back for allowing her a few paltry lines of resistance before she caves. Of course, no sexy item numbers for this heroine, let’s leave that to item girl Malaika Arora, who Munni Badnaams her way through raucous revelry before Salman Khan shuts that party down. Buzzkill, ya’ll. It’s obvious I’m not a huge fan of this film as a whole (it has its moments), though not just because of its weak female characters (hey, this movie is a spoof, it is irony, and we are laughing with them and at ourselves, ha ha yes, Indian action films are funny, aren’t they? and to tamper with the formula too much would ignore the historical representation of female characters in the very rich Indian film industry altogether; you don’t have to like The Rules, but you should at least understand them. After all, this is the type of cinema where Khan is going to fly up a staircase Crouching Tiger-style and magically flip his sunglasses into his back collar).

The music so effortlessly highlights these gender disparities, outlining the way the audience is supposed to look at and connect with the characters. Opening track “Hud Hud Dabangg” is the rough-and-tumble track that sets the scene: a crowd of male dancers accompanied by an ominously thrumming guitar chord, the low grunts and deep vocals of Sukhwinder Singh offsetting the silhouette of Salman Khan strutting in slow motion through the admiring crowd, just man enough to bust a move as long as those moves involve showing off his strength via punching and adjusting his belt suggestively. This is what the movie is all about: one male hero who will avenge his wrongs through physical strength, carefully selecting a nemesis who is tough enough to make it look difficult but not impossible, and who will win the girl through witty, sometimes insulting punchlines. It’s all there, down to the song where he stalks her and we’re supposed to sigh and think about how romantic it is as he gazes in rapture at her innocence.

The qawwali “Tere Mast Mast Do Nain” captures this montage featuring the iconic image of neon hearts reflected in Khan’s aviators. In this picturization, he swaddles the crown of her head as she silently pays homage to the gods and steals coy glances. Further on, “Chori Kiya Re Jiya” accompanies what is a painfully optimistic celebration of monogamy, setting the film’s central romantic sub-textual ideal as one boy/one girl/one entire life (though it is totally acceptable for the man to ogle and flirt with other women in full view of his spouse, naturally). We perceive the character of Roja not only through these significant actions, but through the soft tones of traditional Hindi love songs.

Contrast this with “Munni Badnaam,” item number of the year, as Arora descends to spice things up in the second act where it would be unacceptable for the heroine to do so. Both the song and item number are lighter, somewhat hedonistic affairs that, in keeping with the film’s po-mo atmosphere, name-drop both female and male movie stars in reference to their popularity as sex symbols (“A figure like Shilpa [Shetty]‘s / Bebo [Kareena Kapoor]‘s attitude”) or masculine ideals (Amitabh Bachchan is simply referenced as “the tall guy”). It’s all fun and games for the large participating audience as long as we acknowledge this celebration is for the film’s antagonists and Robin Hood Pandey does not approve. This scene parallels the earlier all-male dance party of the protagonist with “Humka Peeni Hai” when as the female lead, Sonakshi Sinha as Rajo, dares to bust a move, all the men but Khan must avert their eyes. These two opposing celebrations reiterate the madonna/whore complex of female characters from more vintage Hindi films, practically demanding the question: are you a Munni or a Rajo?

I don’t mean to point out the film’s inability to translate the magic of the soundtrack as an indictment to the flaws of the music itself: as far as Bollywood film soundtracks go, this one has a fair amount of interesting things happening with a host of traditional playback singers neatly tying the loose dance strings of “Munni Badnaam,” easily the most catchy item song of 2010 (“Sheila Ki Jawani” aside), but an oddity nestled between “Tere Mast Mast Do Nain” and “Chori Kiya Re Jiya.” But the soundtrack is far from “Best Album of the Year” status and nowhere near a completely satisfying musical experience simply on its own; the hysteria surrounding Dabangg seems to be the album’s highest selling-point, where it otherwise would languish among other half-formed Sajid-Wajid projects such as Veer or Jaane Kahan Se Aayi Hai that never seem to propel the music directing duo into the ranks of Vishal-Shekhar or Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy territory. “Munni Badnaam” was composed by guest director Lalit Pandit, so the credit to Sajid-Wajid is dubious anyway: take away the film’s pairing of virtue and femininity with the softer tracks and its opposites, and “Munni” becomes all the more rebellious outside of context, the real winner in a deep pool of stale roles for both men and women, roles which the film’s spoof-narrative never quite successfully criticizes.

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