me aap se dosti karna chahti hoon mujhe please jald se
jald jvab do mujhe aap se bohat baten karni h

App ki Best Friand

KARISHMA K.C.

A cursory glance at various representations of the maid shows the different ways we imagine the bai but the most striking one, which also is the oft-repeated one, is the one of the exploitable. This is a very boring point since there is nothing new about it) but the example points to the way capital can find ways to fetishise ordinary objects around us and circulate them for consumption. In this case, we buy the music and watch the television channels that play the music videos and feature his interviews. The question really is why does it appeal to us? In this case, we have an NRI who is imagining India through the musical practices of hip-hop, which brings with it a certain construction of women in both lyrics as well as music videos Of course, we have to ask the difficult question. If this is a returning-NRI who claims to be one with the roots of Indian popular culture we could ask what is the extent to which he is gazing at the native culture through a patronising and imerialising white culture? Does this music video eroticise the native woman?

For example, his own virility is heightened and raised by the virile native girl’s desire for him. Step back into the past and you find abundant images of the eroticisation of the native body In Ishq Becto’s video, the bai is given agency and is not an object to be merely looked at. She desires Ishq Bector and is hysterical about the same, though in a more subdued form. On the other hand, she is elevated to a new kind of exploitation by transferring her body into a more desirable and gaze friendly attire. So the ordinary bai, engaged in a class struggle also becomes a sexual commodity.

So, is Ishq Bector the returning imperialising gaze? A different kind of representation of the bai can be found in Indian films. Here we see the female from the gaze of the subject thereby leading to interpellation of our own symbolic relations with the subject (the threatening male) and the object (the threatened female). This construction of the bai is from a sensibility that views women as vulnerable and the male gaze as threatening, here we have crude (but not inauthentic) representations of the male (a villain) whose sexual drives leads him to gaze (illicitly) at the female body. Here the subject (the villain) is able to gaze because the baiis weak and vulnerable and cannot challenge the act.

In the case of Aye Hip Hopper, it raises a further problematic because it also allows us to imagine the bai outside of the class struggle. Here the female articulates her desire and requests the male subject to return her affections in kind! She asks him to mop the floor of her love house! Of course, such a construction is not without problematic resolutions.

check out this article with videos at this site:
http://subalternstudies.com/?p=313