Wednesday, August 06, 2008

What is Wrong with This?

Being first in Guwahati and then in the US, I have this tendency to lose track of the desi pop scene - music, movies, books, etc. I did not, for instance, know about Bhagat's new book till I saw it's review on a blog. So anyways, I did not know of this till friend greyscalp, a Master of the Universe, told me about it. And boy did I regret knowing about it!!



This video made me cringe, as I hope it makes readers here cringe - let me know I'm not alone. Racy boy-girl romantic songs are OK - liking 'em or not is a matter of taste - but this one is uniquely bad taste in:
  • Making the girl a young 'bai' and thereby of the servant class, a particularly vulnerable position for her
  • Making her the initiator of this affair, thus giving the hero the moral "she started it" high ground
  • Try to keep her off saying he has given her the due baksheesh and bonus. The usage, in particular of "fut fut fut", like she's some bhikari wiping his screen
  • Sexualizing her by dressing her up as a French maid, that looks particularly awful despite the fine figure of whoever was saddled (no pun intended) with the role
  • Having her demand such affection because she's the one who cooks and cleans for him (hear the second stanza)
I don't know how many women of the housekeeper/Mami/bai class are objects of any house-owner's desire. Those that are, however, are likely to be young, even underage and highly vulnerable (sexually and economically). Dirty enough to fantasize about one, but hey, we all have fantasies that we would prefer others not to know of. To make a video on the lines of this fantasy however is just a new low - the Indian equivalent of calling all women 'b*****s' and 'h*s', like the really bad rappers do here. Not a coincidence, I suppose, that this Ishq Bector is a rapper from Canada. Following the likes of such great Canadian hip-hop artists as ..... oh right, there aren't any, he decided to leave Canada and eke out a living lowering Indian standards.

The only thing I found more distasteful than I. Bector's dirty little fantasy was this video:



Now there's a s**t for the taking, a wannabe who throws herself at you. Why bother with poor, hardworking bai's, Mr. Bector?