Welcome to my new series of posts on Bollywood for beginners! This is intended as an introduction to Bollywood for people who have never really seen popular Indian cinema before.
Character Archetype: The Vamp
While heroines are like mayflies, living for brief bursts of glory and maa is in the background standing stoically in her white sari, vamps demand the audience's attention with their brazen attitudes, revealing outfits, and what can politely be called the oomph factor. The vamp is the funhouse mirror image of the heroine and is not much used in Bollywood anymore although she is alive and well down South (just click on the link above for a look at one of my favorite vamps). Before the heroine become so sexualized, the vamp, traditionally, was the woman who used sex to tempt the hero away from the righteous path laid out for him. Vamps, ironically, have a much longer lifespan than their good twins the heroine because while virginity is lost early, sensuality knows no age limits! (Helen, considered the best of the best, vamped her way through three generations of heroes before turning to character roles. She performed one of her most famous songs, "Yeh Mera Dil," when she was about 40 years old.)
As you may have guessed, in the early years of Bollywood, the Madonna/Whore dichotomy was very much on display in women’s roles. Vamps were in all ways were the opposite of the wholesome heroines and one important marker of that in the early years of Bollywood was that vamps were not Indian. Not only were the actresses who played vamps fair-skinned and “exotic” looking (like half-French, half-Burmese Helen or Jewish Nadira) but heroines had homespun names like Sana, Pooja, and Asha, vamps were often given names like Miss Ruby or Miss Kitty – exotic and decadent Western names. This allowed filmmakers to add razzle-dazzle without sexualizing the Indian woman, who, for better or worse, was one of the symbols of the Indian Independence movement (see the 1958 film Mother India for the most famous example). So, heroines wore traditional outfits like saris and salwaar-kameez and kept fully covered from collar bone to ankle; vamps wore spangly tights and miniskirts or elaborate, brightly colored evening dresses and accessorized with peacock feathers, glitter, and blond wigs. Heroines pined stoically (sometimes through song) for the heroes to realize their true feelings while vamps actively seduced. A heroine might do something bad for the sake of her family – like infiltrate a gang of thieves – but vamps do bad things for selfish romance or for personal profit.
Vamps are creatures of fantasy – for men to drool over and for women to vicariously live through – but in the end, the vamp’s selfish and non-Indian ways always result in her downfall. As cultural mores have loosened, the vamp has remained a favorite character in popular imagination. The weeping, demure heroines may have won the men in those old and earnest films but it’s Helen the H-Bomb who has become the national icon. And quite a few films would have been totally forgotten without the cabaret set pieces called “item numbers” performed by the vamps or the vamps’ close relative, the item girl, who appeared in films solely to dance in skimpy and outrageous costumes.
And let me give a brief word on item numbers, which I’ll discuss in fuller detail in a later post when I get to the different song styles. One of the many things that can confuse beginning Bollywood viewers is this idea of the item girl who saunters in for one song and then leaves. The easiest way to understand it is to think of these songs like the guest spots that bands sometimes do on TV shows, for example, Jesse from Full House calling up the Beach Boys to come in a play a song. Item numbers are like that – songs that zazz up a movie without having anything at all do to with the main story or characters. The Beach Boys never stick around to see how DJ and Stephanie resolve a fight and item girls are similarly unconcerned with the plot of the film.
While the vamp is not much used these days, she does make an occasional appearance as the bitchy and high maintenance third point of a romantic triangle or even more rarely as a femme fatale. But the high-quality vamping petered out during the
Miss Ruby and Miss Kitty may have lost to the homespun Pooja yet again but somehow this time I don’t think they would mind.
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7 comments:
Quite a good one on Vamps, actually the line between Vamps and Heroines started blurring somewhat from the 70's, thanks to Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi, with their bold attire and sometimes bold roles too.
Zeenat in her career had played a junkie( Hare Rama Hare Krishna), a career oriented woman wanting to abort her baby( Ajnabee),a revenge seeking Charlies Angel sort( Don), a hooker( Manoranjan). Though later on she got typecast in the rich spoilt female, who needs to be tamed by the hero.
Parveen again had a live in relationship with Amitabh in Deewar, was the other woman in Yeh Nazdeekian.
But again the lines quickly got blurred out. Zeenat's junkie character in Hare Rama Hare Krishna commits suicide, when she discovers she has been found out by her own brother and in Ajnabee she has to reconcile with her estranged partner Rajesh Khanna. Same with Parveen in Deewar she is the one who gets bumped off, while the normally staid Neetu Singh survives.
-- Ratnakar
Again Zeenat and Parveen were still regarded as outsiders, their Westernized accent did not help much, it was the more wholesome Hema and Rakhee who ruled the scene.
I still feel the changes are a bit too cosmetic. On the outside, it looks Westernized,mini skirts, plunging necklines and all. But scratch the surface, and the conservatism remains the same. Even now the leading heroines are the more wholesome Katrina Kaif, Deepika Padukone kind. Ok they may wear the itsy bitsy mini dresses, but essentially they are the good girls, next door.
Bipasha Basu on the other hand is still seen as the seductress, the bad one. In a way the vamp who leads the hero down the wrong path.
@scorpius Thank you for the comments! Very insightful! I made the edit. :)
It is interesting that the sexualization of the heroines has been so cosmetic - they wear miniskirts but have conservative attitudes.
Bipasha is unique in a lot of ways - she has long term boyfriend John Abraham with no hints of marriage. And she does crazy art films like Pankh. She's A-list but isn't a 'good girl.'
Thanks BTW its Ratnakar :).
One more example of the vamp-heroine dichotomy is Aishwarya Rai-Sushmita Sen.
Both Beauty Queens, both making it into the movie industry at the same time.
But again Aishwarya Rai has this wholesome Indian image. So whenever some one makes a movie that requires a typical Indian woman character, she is the first choice. Never mind the fact that as an actress her range is strictly limited. She did play the bad girl too in Dhoom 2, and Khakee. But vast majority of the movies she has been the sweet Indian girl next door, you take home to meet Mama.
Sushmita starred in a couple of rather forgettable movies, and hit it big time with Biwi No 1. But then her role was the "vamp" the glam model, the "other" woman, who breaks the home. Never mind the fact that it was Salman Khan who was the first to keep pursuing her. In fact as an actress I find Sushmita much better than Aish, more free, more natural. And she again has no qualms playing a single mom investigating a murder mystery( Samay) or a single mom lawyer fighting for Ajay Devgan in the Bolly version of I am Sam( Main Aisa Hi Hoon). But somehow she has not been able to get the big banners and roles as much as Aish does. And sadly of late has been reduced to acting in some real rubbish movies.
It also has to do with their personal lives i think.Aish notwithstanding her earlier failed relationships with Salman and Vivek Oberoi, is now the Bahu of the Bachan family. While Sushmita still continues to be a single mom, never mind that she has adopted an orphan kid and raising as her own.
As i stated before the changes are just pretty much cosmetic IMO.
-- Ratnakar
But Aishwarya played a single mom in Kuch Na Kaho, and she was a prostitute in Umrao Jaan. I don't think she is a great actress but she is most certainly lovely to watch on screen - much much much lovelier than Sushmita who is a decent actor but doesn't have much on screen charisma (or star shine, or something like that).
I've been reading you BW for beginners from the beginning now, and it's very interesting, though I 1) am not a BW beginner and 2) it's more about the "classic" bollywood.
@ratnarkar :) You know, I wonder if the cosmetic changes are actually more harmful to women's self image than the heroine who was covered up. It's like in Hollywood films, where they have to put on a skin show but can't ever be seen taking pleasure in sex or anything sexual - unlike the traditional vamp.
@eliza I like Sushmita, too, but you're right that she is missing a bit of the sparkle that Aishwarya has.
@Limette Thank you for reading! I would disagree that I'm writing mostly about older films. Scratch the surface of something like Jaane Tu and you find all the same old archetypes. :)
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