Hungama ho gaya? (An uproar has happened?): the erotic threat of female intoxication in Hindi film songs

Abstract

ABSTRACT A recurring staple of the popular Hindi film is when actresses dance as if they were drunk. Underlying such performances are notions of nasha (intoxication) and sharam, or shame. This article explores the recurring tendency of Indian women to either feign or otherwise embody states of intoxication in popular Hindi film songs from the late 1960s up to the present era, as well as the underlying motivations for such intoxicated performances. In the process, this article will also consider the erotic threat posed by such figures and the historical and contemporary methods used to contain such threats, both within and by the Bollywood film. This article also examines how such moments of intoxication have evolved with the advent of liberalization in India in the 1990s and how such changes have, in turn, reshaped contemporary narratives and representations of women who perform in an intoxicated manner. In relation to these themes, this article also considers tropes surrounding the public woman and the dancing woman as well as what such representations imply for questions of female agency and sexuality within an Indian frame.