{Editor's intro: Ajay Gehlawat is doing graduate studies in Film at New York Unversity. -- c.j.wallia]

The Indian film industry is the largest in the world. More than 700 features are made in almost a dozen languages every year. They are watched in about 10,000 theatres by an average of 12.5 million people every day and are exported to over a hundred countries.

Hindi films are relatively simple in plot, relying on a basic melodramatic formula applied over and over again, and rather lengthy in duration, usually lasting over three hours. In addition, due to a rather conservative national censor bureau, none of these films would ever garner any more than a "PG-13" rating in this country. Why, then, the attraction? This paper aims to show how the various song-and-dance numbers included in each film, relying heavily on the use of playback sound, are at the crux of these films' allure and, consequently, the national psyche. As one who travels through India can testify, film music is as omnipresent in the subcontinent as any god. For a secular democracy with nearly a billion people, sixteen languages with script variations of their own, this is no minor feat.

Indian cinema, like any cultural expression, is a montage of diverse influences. Myth, ritual and ideology interact to produce a realism, to adopt Bruno Bettelheim's observation on fairy tales, "unreal in the rational sense, but...certainly not untrue."

Aristotle's dictum that there can be no desire without fantasy contains even more truth in reverse. Fantasy, as embodied in the Hindi film, is the mise en scene of desire, its dramatization in a visual and aural form. If the nation's cinema has an unidentified patron saint somewhere, as critic Bikram Singh has noted, it must be Melies and certainly not the Lumiere Brothers.

The key aspect of fantasy, then, is the Hindi film song, or gana. As in opera, music and song in Hindi film seem not so much to break up plot development as to define and propel it; they are, along with the plot, the film's raison d' etre. Vanraj Bhatia, a musician familiar with both the Western classical tradition as well as the Hindi film industry, emphasizes that the Hindi film is first and foremost operatic. The most dramatic moments in such films "are often those where all action stops and the song takes over, expressing every shade of emotional reverberation, and doing it far more effectively than the spoken word or the studied gesture."

Yet in Hindi films it is rarely ever the actors who break out into song; rather, at the auspicious moment, the technique of playback is infused. This practice goes back to the 1930s when "music doubling," i.e. using professional singers to perform the actual music in synchronization with the (already) filmed actor going through the motions of singing, came into vogue. The system in India, however, employed a reverse process: prerecording the song before the film shooting. A gradual change in singing style accompanied the change over to playback recording: voices became more expressive and melodious, less nasal, less strident and less inclined toward florid vocal embellishment unless specifically required for a particular song.

Playback singing was officially recognized in the second decade of sound cinema. The major recording company, Gramophone Company Ltd., made exclusive contracts with playback singers that entitled them to receive royalties on record sales. Film actor-singers, in contrast, received no such contracts since the Gramophone Company did not consider these artists 'singers' in the true sense of the word. As the proportion of film songs recorded by playback singers increased, these artists evolved a vocal technique unique to their profession. As Alison Arnold notes,

Playback singers learned to adapt their voices to suit the many and varied screen characters for whom they had to sing. This technique involved not only changing vocal styles, musical styles and the pronunciation of the lyrics to match Hindu and Muslim, North Indian and South Indian, upper class and lower class screen characters, but also varying vocal range to suit old and young characters. Females might be called to sing for young boys, young girls or old women.

Additionally, playback singers had to be proficient in a variety of song types employed by the film music directors to suit the needs of the film, the film song situation and the screen characters. Song types varied from the devotional bhajan to the latest Western pop style, from the romantic love duo to the heroic marital chorus. Playback singers had to be proficient in all. Some formed relationships with specific screen actors or actresses and would sing playback for many if not all of their film songs. Such continuity allowed for a more personal connection between playback singer and actor to evolve, thus allowing the singer to refine his singing to more closely mirror the actor's emotions.
It is a proven fact that the mass Indian audience will not accept a songless film. Till today the success of a popular film is largely connected to the popularity of its music, played over radios and record players for months before the film itself is released.

A typical Hindi film will have five or six songs -- that is, every thirty minutes or so. This plotting of the songs illuminates the rather episodic nature of these films, the interspersed ganas serving as a series of catharses. Anil Saari's descriptions of an Indian village's viewing habits illuminates such structure:

After each sequence that involved them (i.e. the villagers), they would take a break from focusing their attention on the film. In this context, the occasional stretching of an argumentative or thematic point and the occasional in sertion of a less dramatic situation in the thematic develop ment marked for the villagers a kind of 'interval' between one dramatically involving sequence to another; it became the break during which they could refresh their minds after an episodic catharsis -- sexual or dramatic.

It is the song, then, which serves as the culminating point of a theme -- all the dialogue in between is simply filler.
The oftentimes overtly sexual nature of these song and dance sequences becomes relevant here. An extremely conservative nation in regards to sexuality, the subcontinent has banned even kissing from its cinema. Thus the placing of social messages within the framework of the film becomes a curious mixture of "speakable" and "unspeakable" elements. Take, for instance, a playback sequence in the film Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978), in which Hindi actress Zeenat Aman, wearing only a light cloth over her rather voluptuous breasts, "prays" to a phallus-shaped stone idol of the god Shiva. Such a positioning of the elements -- a conflation of religious fanaticism and eroticism -- allows the Indian moviegoer to simultaneously experience sexuality and not feel he has sinned himself. The song, not only heard but "seen" in its place at the climactic moment of drama, has become a must for the popular audience. As soon as the preliminaries of lovemaking lead up to the inevitable kiss and the sexual coupling disallowed by the censor, the song provides a release from the tension in a kind of "musical ejaculation." Again Saari's "Critic's Notes," this time regarding the viewing of a gana sequence similar to the one described above but with another Hindi actress, Mumtaz:

The men -- young and old -- were totally fascinated by Mumtaz's voluptuous personality. Even the old men would sit still intently and stare at all the eroticism and semi-eroticism. In the case of two old men -- definitely over 50 -- it seemed that the song and dance sequence culminated in an orgiastic exhaustion. One of the two men even got up and went out for a while, almost as if the end of the sequence marked the end of one exciting visual and sensory trip --- a catharsis.

The irony here is not so much that it is a playback singer and not the voluptuous woman on-screen singing but that the audience knows it. The history of Indian performance art is relevant here as, initially, in folk theatre, the roles of women were played by men, known as hejadas. As with playback, this role-playing was well-known yet did not prevent the audience from enjoying the show. Yet to act like a hejada outside the context of the show would result in social isolation (among other things). Similarly, to "worship" like Zeenat Aman in real life would not be allowed, to put it lightly. The important thing to note here is the rigidity of Indian sexual mores and the filmviewing population's simultaneous upholding and transgressing of them.

Jean Baudrillard's distinction between seduction and production is never more apparent than in these films ("Seduction is that which is everywhere and always opposed to production; seduction withdraws something from the visible order and so runs counter to production." ). Sexuality, as produced through the film gana, is unreal, fetishized, symbolic. Take, for instance, the "rain-song" sequence included in many films: again, a voluptuous woman, scantily clad, dancing soaking-wet in the rain, her sari clinging to her body, while she lip-synchs to the playback. Through the insinuating lyrics, her appearance and the mise en scene, a montage of sexuality is produced; seduction is only present via negativa -- that is, through the lack of the real (e.g., kisses, nudity, voices). Hence a simulation of sex (i.e., the hyperreal) supplants the real, and this latter's definition itself becomes: that which is always already reproduced.

The time length of the Hindi film songs is itself an indicator of their hyperreality. Condensing hour-long rags to three-and-a-half minutes is not only a temporal reduction but a qualitative one as well: the music's seductive quality dissipates in the paradoxical push to produce sexuality. As Arnold notes:

Until the 1960s Hindi film song lyrics conveyed meaning and emotion to the audience, and sometimes also played a significant role in the development of the film narrative. While most film songs expounded the singular theme of love in its various aspects, lyricists managed to express this limited subject matter in descriptive, poetic language, elegant style and with meaningful lyrics, qualities that all but disappeared in the 1970s.

The 1978 film,Trishul, for instance, includes a three minute song, "Gabooji Gabooji Gum Gum," 'sung' by an actor and actress, the complete lyrics of which are:

Together: Gabooji Gabooji Gum Gum! Kishuke Kishuke Kum Kum! Gabooji Gabooji Gum Gum!

Woman: Oh my love, may we both stay together for all eternity

Man: Your face is lovely like a flower, your body as slender as a tree

Woman: Every beat of my heart belongs to you

Man: Come into my arms and let love have its way

Woman: Oh my love, may we both stay together for all eternity

Together: Gabooji Gabooji Gum Gum!

Until now the duo have been lip-synching by a pool, in which (while here tonal perspective remains unvarying) the actress first swims backwards (away from the camera) and then forwards (towards the camera), whereupon the actor lifts her, dripping wet in a sexy swimsuit, out of the pool and twirls her around in his arms. As they repeat the "Gabooji Gabooji" refrain, they both fall into the pool and the scene changes (as do their outfits); they are now in a rainy forest, in rain-soaked clothes.

Woman: Hidden desires are aroused...

Man: ...In this fiery atmosphere

Woman: Amidst the confusion of two hearts...

Man: ...The rain keeps pattering away

Woman: Come along into my arms, and let love have its way

Man: Oh my love, may we both stay together for all eternity

While singing in the forest the duo dance suggestively to the music, the actress's long wet hair whipping across her breasts as she bids the actor to "come into her arms." Yet as they approach each other, and are about to kiss, their heads move away at the last second. Such "realism" is similar in essence to the climactic moment in porn ('the money shot') in which the penis is invariably outside the body, this "ultimate confessional moment of 'truth'" hence requiring viewers to believe that "the sexual performers within the film want to shift from a tactile to a visual pleasure at the crucial moment of the male's orgasm."

Such songs have no essential role in the structural formation of the film ("Gabooji Gabooji" is probably the biggest part the 'singers' have throughout) and yet, increasingly, paradoxically, become its most important aspects. This discrepancy is inherently linked to the culture which remains puritanical yet simultaneously portrays sexuality in exaggeration. As Judith Butler notes:

If what is depicted is a set of compensatory ideals, hyperbolic
gender norms, then pornography charts a domain of unrealizable positions that hold sway over the social reality of gender positions, but do not, strictly speaking, constitute that reality; indeed, it is their failure to constitute it that gives the pornographic image the phantasmatic power that it has.

Traditional iconography is converted into kitsch as the Hindi gana, overloaded with signification, becomes hyperreal; "the more the nouveaux riches rock and roll or twist and shake..., the deeper becomes the schizophrenia between modernity and tradition in the Indian cinema."

The star system surrounding Hindi cinema is another overdetermining factor. An interesting case is that of Amitabh Bachan, the most popular Hindi film star of the 1970s and 80s and, consequently, the only one to record his own playback. In the 1980 film, Silsila (Affair), Bachan, though in love with actress Rekha's character, must marry the intended wife of his brother (the actress Jaya Baduri) after his brother suddenly dies (this being the Hindu tradition). Before making the film, Baduri and Bachan were married, even though it was widely rumored that he and Rekha were lovers. During one of the songs in the film -- at a Holi celebration -- Bachan first drinks lassi and then, before both his filmic (and real-life) wife and the filmic husband of Rekha, proceeds to sing (in his own voice) a song that gives new meaning to double entendre. In essence he tells his rumored off-screen lover, let's get it on.

Hence the fact that Bachan is actually singing is subsumed by the star system which simultaneously publicizes that: a) he and Baduri are married, b) he and Rekha are/ were lovers and c) he is actually singing. Again, as with the religious symbolism in Satyam Shivam Sundaram veiling its eroticism, the facade of Holi permits the viewer to enjoy the spectacle without feeling he has transgressed himself. The reality of Bachan's voice is disallowed from severing the hyperrealism of the film - in fact it only reaffirms it. Even when severed from its visual correlative (i.e., played on the radio), Bachan's instantly recognizable voice reifies the fantasy, as anyone who can recognize his voice will also know the attendant gossip.

Similarly, the most successful playback singer, Lata Mangeshkar, has a voice which is instantly recognizable. As Allison Arnold notes: "Lata's thinner vocal sound with her emphasis on high-pitched melodies proved immensely popular with Indian audiences, as evidenced by the leading role Lata took among playback singers... In the wake of Lata's mounting success, many female playback singers imitated her vocal style." Thus reality becomes a simulacrum of the third order as, to achieve the semblance of "authenticity," not only the actress but the playback singer's voice must simulate Lata's. Such a desire for homogeneity renders obsolete any notion of difference. Lata Mangeshkar's voice must be assumed to supply a natural transition from speech to song for any actress at all, no matter what the timbre of her speaking voice may be. If the other actress's singing is represented by Asha Bhosle's voice, the improvement in verisimilitude is little, for the two sisters, as far as their voices are concerned, could be twins.

All this is part of the stylization of the film form in India, in which the song plays an inalienable part. Even if the record were available to the entire public representing the film audience, it could not take the place of the film; for without the 'picturization' of the song, the enjoyment is incomplete. Without the visual correlative of the music, in which an actor or actress may go through many fantastic and delectable motions, the song is a voice without a body. Aspects of synergy (e.g., Amitabh Bachan's publicity) strive to maintain such a visual correlative even when the song is disembodied by the radio. Two views, then, become apparent in regards to Hindi cinema. One is that these films show very little, if anything, of the truth about India - people are falsified, society is falsified. The other view is that the films present two levels of meaning insofar as the audience is concerned. On the surface level are its obvious and explicit meanings, while at a deeper level are to be found the meanings which reflect the unconscious desires of an entire populace. The use of playback sound, and the way it is received in India, illuminates the essential connectedness of such seemingly disparate views, however. Indian audiences respond en masse to such spectacle because they know it's not real; any attempts at authentic (i.e., neorealist) depictions of life in India (e.g., the cinema of Satyajit Ray) have historically failed at the box office.

Hence what was in the hands of, say, Hollis Frampton, avant-garde (the disjunction of sound and image, a disturbance of the 'ideal acoustic/ linguistic state' ) becomes familiar in Hindi cinema, a matter of convention. The subcontinent's consumerist audience is engaged at the level of imaginary unity - the 'mirror stage' where reality is seamless, where sexual mores and unconscious desires meld into one.

Siegfried Kracauer compares the film screen with Athena's polished shield which she gave to Perseus so that he could behead Medusa by seeing her reflection rather than looking at her directly, which would turn him into stone. The moral which he draws from the myth is that we do not, and cannot, see the actual horrors of our lives because they paralyze us with blinding fear; and that we shall know what they look like only by watching images of them which reproduce their true appearance. He concludes that perhaps Perseus' greatest achievement was not to cut off Medusa's head but to overcome his fears and look at its reflection in the shield. Indian cinema, then, is no athenaeum gift; it is so polished, and its viewers so accustomed to the glare it gives off, that they leave the cinema hall just as they enter it: too blinded to see the Indian Medusa.

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Arnold, Alison E., Hindi Film Git: On the history of commercial Indian popular music, UMI (Ann Arbor) 1991

Baudrillard, Jean, Simulations, Semiotext(e) (NY) -trans. by Philip Beitchman 1983

Baudrillard, Jean, Forget Foucault, Semiotext(e) (NY) -trans. by Nicole Dufresne 1977

Bettelheim, Bruno, The Uses of Enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales, Vintage Books (NY) 1989

Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", UC Press (Berkeley) 1993

Chakravarty, Sumita S., National Identity in Popular Indian Cinema, 1947-1987, University of Texas Press (Austin) 1993

Gupta, Chidananda Das, Talking About Films, Orient Longman Ltd. (New Delhi) 1981

Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, Oxford University Press (NY) 1960

Lenglet, Philippe & Vasudev, Aruna (eds.), Indian Cinema Superbazaar, Vikas Publishing House (New Delhi) 1983

Lent, John A., The Asian Film Industry, University of Texas Press (Austin) 1990

Lutze, Lothar & Pfleiderer, Beatrix (eds.), The Hindi Film: Agent and Re-Agent of Cultural Change, Manohar Publications (New Delhi) 1985

Williams, Linda, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the "Frenzy of the Visible", UC Press (Berkeley) 1989

Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978), Raj Kapoor

Silsila (1981), Yash Chopra

There'll Always Be Stars in the Sky (1993), Jeremy Marre

Trishul (1978), Yash Chopra