Here’s about 1:15 of a song called “Dil Dance Maare” from the new Hindi film, Tashan. The two male leads are the currently ubiquitous Askhay Kumar, and Saif Ali Khan. The female lead is Kareena Kapoor:
The lyrics are a little… well… I don’t really know how to describe them:
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura [When I see a ‘white white’ face, my heart starts beating fast]
Jaan se maare reeee eehhheeee
Aare
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura
Jaan se maare re
Ohhhooo
White white face dheke
Aahh…
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura
Jaan se maare re
Oh very… oh very…
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re
Very happy in my heart, dil dance maare re
Dil dance maare dance maare
Dil yeh dance maare
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re
It’s not entirely an arbitrary expression of a self-hating colonial mentality (or, as Fela Kuti said, “colo-mentality”); in the context of the film, the characters apparently come across an American film crew while traveling around India, and join the production — hence the blond wigs and so on. (My wife was watching the DVD in the other room, and she called me in when this song came on: you have to see this.)
Still, am I the only one to find the song/video at once deeply embarrassing and oddly catchy? I’ve been finding myself singing it for comic effect for family and friends this week.
You want cringeworthier? Watch RajniKanth in Sivaji do some dance where he acts like a white guy AND a black guy in dreads.
(?)You want cringeworthier? Watch RajniKanth in Sivaji do some dance where he acts like a white guy AND a black guy in dreads.
link? can people post more stuff like this, this is really bizarre…. (i don’t watch bollywood, so this is exoticization is all exotic to me).
Classy all the way.
Wow, watching that Rajnikant video makes me want to see the film “Sivaji,” if I can get ahold of a subtitled version…
The chorus is Dil Dance Maare all throughout, even the places you have Jaan se maare
disgusting – bollywood has become more bizarre. Is it just me, or has bollywood gotten “whiter” as the times have passed – say compared to our parents generation some 35 years ago? When I have seen old bollywood movies, that actors seemed darker and more about Indians in India. What is going on. Between Shah Rukh Khan and his fair and lovely commercial and now crap like this.
And no, I don’t like the song.
Does anyone else find the mingling of Hindi and English super tacky? I don’t know Hindi, but it sounds like a beautiful language to me. Such a pity to corrupt it with English words.
Does anyone else find the mingling of Hindi and English super tacky? I don’t know Hindi, but it sounds like a beautiful language to me. Such a pity to corrupt it with English words.
Yes, I don’t like the mixing in bollywood songs. Like the song “pretty women” in one of SRK’s movies – don’t like the mixing of the two languages and yeah, I don’t know Hindi either but sounds so nice on its own in bollywood melodies
5 · Prashant said
I thought it was “dil chance maare” and then “dil dance maare”
Too many Govinda songs?
5 · Prashant said
I thought it was “dil chance maare” and then “dil dance maare”
Too many Govinda songs?
Ai ya. It took me half the video to figure out that the blonde was not Caucasian, but instead Kareena Kapoor.
Sigh. Mom keeps asking me why I don’t go watch Bollywood films. It’s hard to sift between the ones I find ridiculous (ie this) and ones I like (ie Company or Mere Baap Pele Aap, although the latter was a bit silly at times).
What? You’re not “happy in your heart” when you see a white white face?
1 · Pravin said
You conveniently left out the part where the girl says “I dont like dark guys”. Obviously that wouldnt help you with arguing, I suppose!
But when MIA uses some folk songs and beats from around the world, it is hip and cool? because they are , different? maybe to get a break from the usual?
And then there is a post-facto rationalization where she says she only did that because she wanted an excuse to get rid of him. The real reason why she didn’t want to marry him was… wait for it, wait for it… MISMATCHED HOROSCOPES! Such modern types we all are, yaar.
Subtitles are superfluous for the sooperstaar experience. A good classic Rajnikant film from (relatively) recent times is Baasha or Annamalai, btw.
Not to over-analyze or over-interpret the comingling of languages in the song, but to put that which Amardeep explained in further context….the other character in this film (who’s not in the video) is mafia don Anil Kapoor, and the big joke about him in Tashan is that he wants to speak English “like George Bush” (which is the pretext why Bebo’s character goes and cons Saif into becoming Anil’s tutor), and through the whole film, Anil’s character speaks this stew of heavily accented Hinglish (with many old filmi references).
The East-West, Hindi-English divide are also represented in the Akshay & Saif characters. Akshay is a devout aarti-performing, Hindi-speaking Kanpur guy (also the birthplace of the film’s director, Vijay Krishna Acharya), whereas Saif is the Westernized Bombay guy who works at a call centre by day and tutors English classes by night, in between chasing women (Akshay’s character, Bachchan, is of the “ick, girls give you cooties” school of thought). When the film opens, the two guys are in a red car swerving down a road in Ladakh fighting over which music to listen to; Akshay keeps tuning in some old-time filmi music station, then Saif flips the dial to rock.
My girlfriends and I were appalled when we first saw the video in the weeks before the film’s release.
To Amardeep’s question, I couldn’t get it out of head and had it in heavy rotation on my iPod for a few weeks after seeing the film, though lately I’ve gravitated to Hard Kaur’s Talli and two Jaane Tu songs….
I haven’t seen the movie, but I thought it was supposed to be intentionally flashy and over the top, so I find the pidgin used in the song quite inventive. I also generally found Tashan’s soundtrack catchy.
There’s more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJhSogkI284
Anyone remember the
cream ? Please see the new Ponds White Beauty cream.
I don’t like the way they mix English with INdian languages in their songs for the most part, only because they seem to do it in a very amateurish manner. It messes up the flow while the English itself sounds kind of like “deaf speak”.
However, sometimes, I guess it is warranted as in this old Telugu movie where the Kamalhassan character has to sing in english as he doesn’t know Telugu.
Second what Filmiholic said. The running joke in the film is that some of the characters are aspiring to be white as in they would like to speak like George Bush hence the butchering of Hindi and English. I see maybe one bollywood flick every two years so I can’t comment about the state of the movies but The villain was in Tashan was hilarious. I was somewhat bored with the standard fight sequences and songs in the movie, but every time the villain was on screen in his mangled Hinglish it was quite funny and in a way a pretty interesting parody of certain Indian perceptions of the west.
About the Ponds White Beauty cream.
I would just like to point out that the product is also advertised outside of South Asia as well with Oriental actors playing the same roles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8vCOpzyIyM
Amardeep:
Wasn’t that covered on SM already?
The white-bodypart vs black-bodypart paradigm has been around in different guises for years. There was a Hindi song from the mid-1990s whose lyrics went “gore gore mukhde, dil kale kale”.
Or the Tamil song from the movie Shakthi whose lyrics went:
unga tholu mattum veLLai vandhadichadhellam koLLAi kruppaga irundhaalum enga uLLam ella veLLAIveLLai
Which, loosely translated, means “Your skin alone is white but you looted us. We may be dark but our insides are white”.
Of course, I cannot read too much into that song. The rest of its lyrics went:
gumma gumma nee kulichu paaru summa idhu elizabeth rani vandhu kuLichu pona kamma gumma gumma idhu reel illai amma andha rani mudhugu thechadhu en paatiyoda amma
(If you don’t understand enough Tamil to follow that, count it as a blessing).
I eagerly await the day when I hear lyrics like “Your pancreas may be red, but your adrenal glands are green. On the other hand, my thyroid is always purple”.
7 · Meena said
Hindi has been influenced at birth by Farsi and at growth by Urdu. Hindi brahminised from Sanskrit. Why not get corrupted at its old age by English?
Is it just me, or has bollywood gotten “whiter” as the times have passed – say compared to our parents generation some 35 years ago?
Yup, It has. Mixed – Race parents. Katrina Kaif (1/2 British), Dino Morea (1/2 Itailan), Celina Jaitley (1/2 Afghan), Tulip Joshi (1/2 Lebanesse – Armenian)
the song is meant to be sarcastic. you americans don’t get sarcasm and on top of that you arty lefty desis take things way too seriously and earnestly. (i’m writing from london and i’m desi too).
Oriental in the contemporary American definition.
Anyway I should’ve said (non South)Asian/Pacific Islanders playing the same roles.
One thing I did find refreshing in this dance number was that the firangis in the background were attractively clothed (that is, color-coordinated and well-fitting) and attractive themselves. So often, the non-Indians in the club or party scenes, they look out of place and their clothes are either sloppy, out of style and ill-fitting, or (especially on the women) they’re almost skimpy enough to make Lil Kim blush. (Interestingly, in this film, thanks to the heroine’s much-touted Size Zero figure, she’s the one in the bikini and Daisy Dukes.)
On the subject of white skin, if you see the full version of this song, after about 1 minute or so in, when Saif has shed his silver blazer, take a look at the ever-increasing sunburn on his arms and chest. (Courtesy of the altitude, strong sun and scant cloud cover, I guess.) As they make their way through the video, he looks increasingly, painfully lobster-y.
This sounds like Kavignar Vaali at his lyrical finest.
Oriental in the contemporary American definition.
in the USA most people are conditioned now to presume that ‘oriental’ refers to objects; so for people you should say ‘east asian.’
I dunno, but I see a new wedding floor dance song for masala couples everywhere! …Well, except for masala couples that are desi-black or desi-latino/hispanic or desi-asian. You get the point.
I think Bollywood songs are getting from bad to worse. This affliction is partly from MTV channels which remixes old songs like this – Kajra Mohabbat Wala
32 · Bridget Jones said
Btw here is the original one – Kajra Mohobbat Wala
Anjum: I hope you are right, to think otherwise would be pretty depressing. I am kind of right wing as far as the SM political spectrum goes and am on the record as hating all fine arts grads but you can see how we might jump to conclusions when Bollywood actors peddle fairness creams, when entertainment companies run by starlets bar African-American cheerleaders from the cricket field, and when some other starlet coos braindead stuff like “my makeup person can even make Africans look good”.
Yup, It has. Mixed – Race parents. Katrina Kaif (1/2 British), Dino Morea (1/2 Itailan), Celina Jaitley (1/2 Afghan), Tulip Joshi (1/2 Lebanesse – Armenian)
So in the past there weren’t so many mixed stars? Does anyone know?
But when MIA uses some folk songs and beats from around the world, it is hip and cool? because they are , different? maybe to get a break from the usual?
Hmm…what do you mean by this? When MIA sings in Tamil and English in 10 dollar, it sounds good to me. I think it just sounds cheesy in bollywood movies and I’ve heard some east asian songs and sounds terrible.
Seems to me I am the only one who liked the song – I like it slightly less after watching the video now, but that is not the point. What seems to have escaped everyone’s attention is that most of the bollywood music today, with a few notable exceptions, is purely crap.
Until recently, Poetry was language at its best – the standards have more than dipped and often enough what passes for lyrics not only lacks completely in meaning(fullness), but in some cases the overzealous but ignorant lyricist actually manages to get it so wrong that the meaning becomes a comic mystery – I am reminded of ‘furqat-e-gham dikhla jaa” where gham-e-furqat is juxtaposed.
This song mixes the two languages on purpose – the context already explained in the above comments, and yet every line retains meaningfulness and for this the lyricist deserves praise. It is a very intelligent piece of work.
Gives new meaning to idiotic. These people have way too much time and money.
It is always amusing when the all-about-individualism-righties believe in collectivism only in tarring lefties as oppressive elites. I guess Marxism lives on. Maybe that is what Fukuyama meant by the end of history.
I avoid that embarrassment by refusing to identify with Bollywood. It’s not my culture, it’s just a highly cheapened, sentimentalized, commercialized, watered-down version of various Indian, Western, and eccentric inspirations. Which is not to say I never watch…I do sometimes…and occasionally they come out with a gem…I like some of the songs…but overall I don’t let a bunch of people in Mumbai decide what my identity is all about. I will admit that the movies do say something about India though.
oh come, stop your cringing. where’s your sense of humor. The lyrics deal with the serious issue of race and colorism: whitee faces, darkee faces, reddee sunburns. Who can dance? It’s all there people. Lyrics and delivery are not exactly Tagore or Winston Churchill, but if George Bush speak is the inspiration, it’ll do just fine.
Re: language and B’wood: there’s much less Urdu than before, and not even much understanding of Urdu anymore when it comes to dialogs, and increasingly lyrics (unless you’re talking about the oldsters who are still working). The lingua franca of the set is still largely Hindi, but English is becoming more common among the actors, directors, producers etc. As for the costumes, the haphazard effects is because there’s still not much pre-planning in filmmaking. When it’s time to shoot a dance sequence, it’s a mad rush to get something, anything to throw on the dancers. There are dance costume designers hired to do more co-ordinated costumes for films, but there are only one or two of them. And yes, make-up men do consider it a professional requirement to make their heroes and heroines look “fair” which they feel is the same thing as “beautiful.”
And yes, make-up men do consider it a professional requirement to make their heroes and heroines look “fair” which they feel is the same thing as “beautiful.”
i’ve told this anecdote before, but i’ll tell it again. i was talking to a leftist indian friend of mine about the fact that actors in bollywood look much more like southern europeans than they do the average indian (perhaps not the average chiptvana brahmin, but the average indian, including most people in the diaspora). his response was pretty straightforward, he simply asked that i complain only when american movies start casting ugly or non-attractive people. so the same principle with bollywood, since very light skin is the necessary precondition for good looks of course they’ll all be light skinned. my friend is probably darker skinned than the average indian, so it wasn’t superiority speaking here. additionally, he understood why this bias is offensive, but he just held that movies are entertainment and the reality is that indians think that whiter skinned people are attractive and you can’t force dark skinned people down the throats of the movie going audiences aside from as villains or buffoons. additionally, he suggested that there was prominent dark skinned actress, bipasha basu. i didn’t know what she looked like, so when i looked her up i was shocked that she’s probably around the middle range of south asian skin tones, if not somewhat lighter than average, and that was dark skinned???
Me too. It’s funny how you can be born in the US, speak your parent’s language and be passionate about what’s going on in the desh but reject popular Indian cinema and you are “confused”. I can see how it can be comfort food for the homesick but come on…
On the plus side I think they are great at cinematography, technical aspects of film making. And no doubt there are great directors & screenwriters, they just need to be freed from the shackles of the investors who have a low estimation of the sophistication of the Indian film going public.
Its “chance” maare re.
Gosh Amardeep! your ABD slip is showing.
And its not “dil woh beating fast”, its “dil-wa beating fast” (its a dialect of hindi, where words ‘sasura’ etc come from. I think its bhojpuri)
And to “maaro a chance” means to try to pataoo a girl.
Its “chance” maare re.
Gosh Amardeep! your ABD slip is showing.
Hey, plenty of people on this thread have been hearing it differently; I think some of them must be DBDs. My wife said “chance” too, but I decided just to go ahead and dhappo the lyrics from here. I thought that would be the safest thing, since I myself was unsure how to hear the lyrics.
(As a side note, it’s interesting that such mindless lyrics have been getting so much close attention!)
26 · anjum said
Exactly. Its made in humor, with the dehati hindi and western costumes. And hindi songs have had english lyrics right from the time when Amitabh sang “my name is Anthony Gonzalves…”. Gosh that was such a hit song.
Chill out. No need to diss Bollywood just coz it makes you cringe about your heritage. Your mom’s indian-ness prolly makes you cringe too. remember, “we are like this only”.
Udit Narayan mentioned that in a TV interview when he was on tour in the USa month or so back, that it’s a remake of a Bhojpuri folk song.
I know the whole fair n Lovely/white is right thing is played out on this forum. But, this thread actually made me look for the SRK Fair and Handsome commercial…
I bet you all did not know that the product contains “American double-strength peptides and herbs”.
That’s good science the cosmetics industry can definitely stand behind.
that was kind of scary. no honestly. scary. i’m hoping it was a sick joke and tomorrow i’ll wake up and it will all be gone. what ever happened to “it’s the tiiime to discoooo!!!” ????
and yes, i might be a “lefty, artsy desi” but not only were the lyrics, dancing, costumes, and theme in bad taste…the song was just lame. so yeah, go ahead and call me a lefty artsy girl with no sense of humor…but i know lame music when i hear it. and that, my friends, was lame.