Was watching the movie "Polladhavan" yesterday. I had already made one attempt to watch this movie, got fed up of the comedy track and thought I would not watch it.
Then the wife and mother in law told me that after that 20 minutes of bad movie making, the thing actually picked up speed and the rest of the movie was "good"!
So, I gave it another chance. They were right. Once you got past the bad comedy routine, the movie did pick up speed.
Just as the movie was reaching the climax and all loose ends were being tied... out of nowhere, a Song!!! A skimpily clad woman with no relevance to the movie dancing around with some skimpierly© clad and skimpiestly© clad extras dancing in the background! Pissed me off to no end. This in Indian movie parlance, is called an "item number"!
Why would the director do something like this?
a. This is now the norm in all big budget Tamizh movies. It is like one of those chimp stories. If you don't know what I am talking about, no worries. I will elaborate as usual! In an experiment (read somewhere by Dr. Narayanöhe), they put 4 chimps in a caged enclosure. They had a bunch of banana's in a corner with an electrified fence around the bananas. All four learnt the hard way that the banana's were off limits. Then one of the chimps was replaced with a new young chimp. The other three would stop the young chimp from trying for the banana, for fear that the chimp might get electrocuted. Slowly they replaced all the chimps with new chimps. In spite of the electricity being turned off a long time ago, the chimps would stop each other from going for the bananas in that corner! So in essence, even if the director of today's Tamizh movie is new and has a fresh perspective, and the audience is mature, they cannot shake off the item number!
b. The director knows that his movie is already too long. Scientific experiments by BOGUS Institute have already shown that the average adult can hold his/her bladder only for 2 hours and 40 minutes and a child for 1 hour and 30 minutes. That said, all the kids get to go to the restroom during the interval break and the adults who never got to go potty during the interval are holding on as the movie drags towards its 3 hour completion time (Yes people! In India, the movies have a 20 minute intermission after two thirds of the movie is done). The directors introduced the item number, so that the men folk would not be able to hold their bladders while still watching the skimpsters shake their stuff on the big screen and would be forced to go to the restroom. When they come back they are able to appreciate the movie ending. If not for the forced restroom break, they would have cursed the director for a long movie! The women of course are never consulted in such matters!
c. The item number is in reality a necessity to sell the film. Audiences would rather see the movie with this soft porn song and dance sequence included than without. Now,that does not say much about the audience. Would they turn out in droves if instead of the item number, they show the hero watching porn and they zoom into his TV screen and show a 3 minute sex sequence instead of the item number? That experiement is yet to be done!
Before writing this post, I did a google search for "item number". I did not want to rant about something that obviously needs some ranting and would have already been covered extensively?! Was really surprised by what I found !
Looks like the answer may be "All of the above"!
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