Miss Use
A Survey of Raunchy Bhojpuri Music Album Covers
The trend of the modern city girl
In this series, albums address the perception that the immigrant Bhojpuri urban male no longer pines for the girl back home; he does not desire songs in rustic female voices; he is now completely enamoured by the city culture and the city girls.
 |
|
|
#37. HAI HAI RE FASHION |
#38. TIGHT BA |
|
|
MINI SKIRT
# 37: This album portrays the village bumpkin’s wonderment at the fashion sense of the city girl. This encounter of the “innocent” village lad with the “smart “ city chick is a recurring theme that can be observed on many album covers: # 01, 06 and 61. The gender objectification of this sort is designed to portray the woman as villainous and the man as an innocent victim. The male consumer of the album is thus absolved of the guilty pleasures of fantasizing about sensuous women as he consumes the video album. |
|
# 38: ‘Tight Ba’ refers to the tight clothes of the modern woman.
# 39: ‘Mini Skirt’ is a direct reference to the short skirt worn by city girls.
Notice that the reference to clothing, which is a common theme in Bhojpuri albums, has changed from traditional garments like the oft mentioned ‘choli’, chunariya’, ‘lehenga’, ‘odhani’, etc. , to ‘modern fashion’, ‘tight clothes’, ‘mini skirt’, ‘two-piece dress’ (# 03) etc. |
|
|
|
|
|
#40. MOOD BANA LE – REMIX |
#41. THUMKA – REMIX |
|
The two Bhojpuri remix albums firmly indicate the intermingling of the rural folk culture with an urban nightclub culture. This shows the transformation of this regional folk category into an urban sub-cultural category.
Notice the capital ‘A’ within a circle on image # 40 (above the ‘J’ of DJ). It indicates that this album has been certified as suitable for adult consumption only. Censor certificates for all audio-video publications began to be strictly enforced about two years ago (around 2005). Most album covers now carry a small image of the censor certificate on the cover (see pink box on top of image # 40) and this certificate also appears as a video image, when the album is played, before the main program begins. |
|
|
Live-performance albums, dance video albums and narrative music video albums
The videos accompanying the songs in VCD albums are mostly simple recordings of raunchy dances filmed in a garden or a simple studio set. The VCD format also gave rise to a genre of filmed dance competition albums, thus somewhat returning to the ‘nautanki’ stage format and bringing back the performance part of the musical. However, these live performance (actual or constructed) recordings have lagged behind the dance video format; perhaps because the lip-synched dance videos are easier to produce and cheaper to record than live performances. In time, the simple dance videos acquired a music video flavour - as it borrowed ideas from the mainstream media - with the visuals now attempting to illustrate a narrative theme. Sometimes an entire music album would have a narrative running through the song sequence, intermittently linked through dialogue situations. The covers of such albums now came to resemble film posters with crowded visages of characters and situations from the videos. Even the album titles sounded more like film titles.
|
|
|
#42. RAS MEIN BHARAL JAWANI |
#43. LAHANGWA SATAL RAHE
|
|
|
#44. PYAR KE CHATNI CHAAT LE
#34,35: These raunchy albums focus on the dance rather than the music, since in the audio-visual VCD format the performance part of the musical can also be a selling point.
#36: This dance album portrays itself almost like a sexual thriller, reflecting the influence of B-movie posters. |
Notice the poetic phraseology of the VCD titles as compared to the crude titles of the ‘nubile’ and ‘luscious’ series.
|
|
|
Now instead of the just the sexualized representation of women, increasingly, romantic couples began making an appearance on the album cover. And besides the female vocalist, duets and male voices too began to get popular in the raunchy category. These singer-performers also began featuring in the music videos and their photograph was also inset on the cover amongst the compendium of photo stills of the actors/ performers/ models. This phenomenon indicates the rise of star singer – famous not only by name but also by face.
|
|
|
|
#45. AAG LAGAA DE PANI MEIN |
#46. JHUMKA
|
|
|
#47. MAR DE SATA KE - LOHA GARAM BA
These raunchy music albums promote themselves almost like video films. The album cover design resembles the layout of movie posters with romancing couples and background action suggesting a narrative. The photograph of the singers is also inset on the covers amongst the stills of the actors/ models. |
|
|
In comparison to the audiocassette images, the VCD images are much tamer. The ribald suggestiveness and oblique references to highly taboo stuff has given way to acceptable mainstream portrayal of sexy women. The visualization of the songs in the videos could never match the raunchiness of the song-texts and literally depict the lyrics. Thus the video grabs that make up these covers could never depict the same level of sexual innuendo as an illustration or a conceptual photograph. As this media became more “photo-visual,” it lost most of its initial raw raunchiness.
5. The variously objectified Bhojpuri sex symbol
The representation of the female sex symbol occupies center stage in the pantheon of Bhojpuri album covers. Many of these albums bear titles that objectify this female persona. By tracking these album covers over the last decade-and-a-half, one can chart out the trajectory of this variously objectified sex symbol: from ‘Odhaniya-wali’ to ‘Two-Piece-wali’, ‘Paan-wali’ to ‘Mobile-wali’ and ‘Chappan Churi’ to ‘Miss Use’. It should be noted that the woman herself has had no say in these objectified constructions. These labels are the construction of male fantasy and a commercial-minded music industry.
Contrasting portrayals: ‘Odhaniya-wali’ to ‘Two-Piece-wali :- See: # 02, 03
Radical Portrayals: ‘Paan-wali’ to ‘Mobile-wali
|
|
|
#48. PAAN-WALI |
#49. CYCLE-WALI |
|
|
|
#50. SHAHAR KE TITLI (Back Cover) |
#51. MOBILE-WALI DHOBINIYA |
|
|
#52. MOBILE-WALI
# 48: A woman as a ‘paan’ vendor, as the cover illustration depicts, is highly unlikely in reality. This could be a fantasy construction of the ‘nautanki’ troupe. Or perhaps the title refers to the ‘tawaif’ who served ‘paan’ to her clients in the ‘kotha’. In either case the portrayal has radical connotations because the first transgresses conventions and the second exists outside orthodox social structures. |
|
# 49: The bicycle woman has long been the image of the emancipated female. It shows her outside the confines of the house that has traditionally defined the boundaries of her existence.
# 50: In an advanced version of the bicycle woman, the woman here is portrayed riding a scooter of Japanese design.
# 51: Like the bicycle and then the scooter, the mobile phone is now regarded as the new symbol of progressiveness. In a radical portrayal, the washerwoman, generally associated with loud and rustic manners, has been depicted here as a savvy mobile phone toting woman.
# 52: The mobile-wali conjured up here is a crude construction of an emancipated urban woman who dresses revealingly and drinks alcohol freely. The tagline reads: “Haathon mein mobile inke, hothon pe smile” (“A mobile in her hands and a smile on her lips”) and proclaims this woman as a wily seductress. The male protagonist is supposed to be simultaneously shocked and spellbound by this woman.
The mobile phone has become a constant motif on many Bhojpuri albums. Besides a symbol of modernity, it can also be seen as an emblem for ‘mobility’, ‘remoteness’ and ‘distant contact’, associations that resound with the conditions of an immigrant diaspora. |
|
|
|
|
