Abstract
Urmimala Sarkar Munsi’s chapter discusses the complex permutations of Indian dance in the neoliberal Indian economy of accumulation. In global Bollywood and Indian television reality shows, Sarkar Munsi argues, beauty and labour are bought and sold as commodities. Unlike the life-long commitment demanded by classical Indian dance, performers for these new media acquire skills that are transient and have only short-term utility. While Sarkar Munsi contrasts the ‘hidden body’ of the woman dancer in the sanitized realm of Indian classical dance to the ‘hyper-commoditized’ body of the woman dancer from Bollywood, she also observes that in both contexts the sexualized female subject is responsible for creating an aesthetic/market product while being controlled by the normative values of a hegemonic patriarchal society.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Works Cited
Azmi, Shabana. 2016. Shabana Azmi Hits Out at Bollywood “Item Numbers”, Objectification of Women. The American Bazaar, April 8. http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2016/04/08/shabana-azmi-hits-bollywood-item-numbers-objectification-women/. Accessed 22 June 2016.
Basu, Priyanka. 2010. The Beauty Myth and Beyond: Looking at the Bollywood Item Number. In Traversing Tradition: Celebrating Dance in India, eds. Urmimala Sarkar Munsi and Stephanie Burridge. New Delhi: Routledge.
Chakravorty, Pallabi. 2012. Remixed Practice: Bollywood Dance and the Global Indian. In Dance Matters: Performing India on Local and Global Stages, eds. Pallabi Chakravorty and Nilanjana Gupta. New Delhi: Routledge.
Chatterjee, Partha. 2008. Critique of the Popular Culture. Public Culture 20(2): 321–344.
George, Nirmala. 2014. Bollywood Promotes the Leading Ladies – But Won’t Pay the Wages. Independent, November 29. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bollywood-promotes-the-leading-ladies-but-wont-pay-the-wages-9891689.html. Accessed 12 Feb 2016.
Harvey, David. 2004. The ‘New’ Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession. Socialist Register 40: 63–87.
Morcom, Anna. 2014. Courtesans, Bar Girls and Dancing Boys: Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance. Delhi: Hachette India.
Nair, Bindu. 2002. Female bodies and the male gaze: Laura Mulvey and hindi cinema. In Films and Feminism: Essays in Indian Cinema, eds. Jasbir Jain and Sudha Rai, 52–58. Delhi: Rawat Publishers.
New Horizons. 2012. Media & Entertainment Industry in India. India: Ernst & Young Pvt Ltd. http://www.indiainbusiness.nic.in/newdesign/upload/news/New_Horizons_Final.pdf. Accessed 22 June 2016.
Nijhawan, Amita. 2009. Excusing the Female Dancer: Tradition and Transgression in Bollywood Dancing. South Asian Popular Culture 7(2): 99–112.
Sarkar Munsi, Urmimala. 2014. Hybrid Norms? Masculine VS Feminine in Indian Dance. In Dancing Mosaic: Issues on Dance Hybridity, ed. Nor Mohd Anis Md Nor, 229–312. Kuala Lumpur: Cultural Centre University of Malaya and Ministry of Information and Culture, Malaysia.
Shreshtova, Sangita. 2011. Is It All About the Hips?: Around the World with Bollywood Dance. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Munsi, U.S. (2017). Buy One, Get One Free: The Dance Body for the Indian Film and Television Industry. In: Diamond, E., Varney, D., Amich, C. (eds) Performance, Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59810-3_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59810-3_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59809-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59810-3
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)