Frames per Second: Bollywood's stars, disposable bodies and price of fame

Aryan Khan's directorial debut, 'The Ba***ds of Bollywood', is a celebration of the Hindi film industry's clannish rituals

In a crucial scene in the Hindi film ‘Guddi’ (1971), directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, actors Dharmendra and Pran, acting as themselves, perform in a film shoot. In the film within the film, Dharmendra is the patriotic hero and Pran is the villain. After exchanging heated dialogues, the two end up in fisticuffs. However, Pran is replaced by a body double to perform the daredevil stunt of jumping from a balcony, swinging on a chandelier and breaking into a glass window. As the stuntman performs the actions, his palm is split open by a shard of glass. Watching the shoot, the titular character, Guddi (Jaya Bhaduri), a teenager just out of high school and infatuated with Dharmendra, is quite shocked. But Navin (Samit Bhanja), a young man who likes Guddi and is irritated with her starry-eyed infatuation, remarks: “Don’t worry, they will cut this accident out of the film.”

 

 

‘The Ba***ds of Bollywood’, the seven-part Netflix series directed by debutant Aryan Khan that premiered on September 18, starts with an almost identical scene. An action film is being shot inside a studio. A stuntman runs across the roof of a building and jumps towards the adjacent building’s roof. He does not make it: As he falls from the height, he hits a protruding balcony and his body lands on the ground with unpleasant sounds of bones fracturing. Initially, the director, cinematographer and other members of the unit call for a doctor, but as soon as the stuntman’s body is taken away on a stretcher, the conversation turns to how to complete the shoot. This provides an opportunity for the film’s protagonist, debutant actor Aasmaan Singh (Lakshya Lalwani), who volunteers to perform the stunt, completing his film ‘Revolver’. A huge box office success, the film propels him to heights of stardom. We never learn what happened to the poor stuntman.

 

Stuntmen — and stuntwomen — have a long history in the Hindi film industry, though scant attention has been paid to their work. Film historian Debashree Mukherjee writes in her book ‘Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City’ (2020) that the popular genre of the “stunt film” emerged in the 1920s and ’30s in response to particular socio-political conditions. “The late colonial public imagination was preoccupied with somatic battles between energy and weakness, vitality and depletion,” writes Mukherjee, “…the dominant drive of the period was towards a physical and psychic dynamism that could demonstrate the native body’s capability for modern living, leadership and self-governance.” To put it simply, as the independence of India from nearly two centuries of British colonial rule became imminent, the public discourse laboured to show that Indians were capable, physically and psychologically, of ruling themselves. Stunt films demonstrating the physical vitality of Indians was an important part of this discourse.

 

The genre produced genuine stars, such as Australian actress and stuntwoman Mary Ann Evans, better known by her stage name Fearless Nadia, who starred in the 1935 blockbuster ‘Hunterwali’, and several others stunt films. (Fearless Nadia also inspired Kangana Ranaut’s character Miss Julia in the 2017 Hindi film ‘Rangoon’, directed by Vishal Bharadwaj.) In the early years, 1920s and ’30s, action stars like Fearless Nadia, Pramila, Indurani and Padma, “performed their own stunts,” writes Mukherjee, “as there was no concept of professional stunt doubles as yet.” However, as the star system emerged in the late-1930s, “extras” were often called upon to perform the more dangerous actions. Film scholar Valentina Vitali, in her book ‘Hindi Action Cinema: Industries, Narratives, Bodies’ (2008), quotes from the unpublished diary of JBH Wadia, who produced ‘Hunterwali’ through his studio Wadia Movietone: Wadia writes that he employed “efficient and bold extras on the staff” who performed stunts; they were called “The Fighting Squad of Wadia Movietone”.

 

This chic nomenclature, however, concealed stark inequality in the labour practices of the Hindi film industry. Recalling several accidents that injured or claimed the lives of “extras” and stuntmen and stuntwomen, Mukherjee writes: “Extras can be replaced, and the film industry’s need for disposable bodies is readily met by a surfeit of daily wage workers. What is critical to grasp is that the use of extras (or stunt doubles, for that matter) does not eliminate the risk of accident, only reduces its cost. An injured extra is preferable to an injured star.” This brings us back to the opening scene of ‘The Ba***ds of Bollywood’: The accident and disposal of the body of the extra is not a coincidence of the narrative but its crux. The extra has to vacate the space for the emergence of the star.

 

At the beginning of the series, Aasmaan, the son of a New Delhi-based businessman Rajat Singh (Vijayant Kohli) and his wife Neeta (Mona Singh), is the quintessential outsider who comes to Mumbai to try his luck in films. There are several predecessors to his character, in films like ‘Chala Murari Hero Banne’ (1977), ‘Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon!’ (2003) and ‘Luck By Chance’ (2009). He is also unhesitatingly critical of the culture of nepotism in the film industry, which sets up his love-hate relationship with Karishma (Sahher Bambba), another young actor and the daughter of Bollywood’s reigning star, Ajay Talvar (Bobby Deol). As Aasmaan and Karishma are signed on by producer-director Karan Johar, playing himself, their initial animosity starts turning into mutual attraction. In what seems to be a typical Bollywood romantic melodrama twist, Ajay is opposed to this match.

 

However, in the climactic action sequence in the seventh episode of the series, the real reason for Ajay’s opposition to his daughter’s marriage with Aasmaan is revealed. As Aasmaan is about to strike Ajay with a sledgehammer, his mother Neeta cries out: “He is your father!” An erstwhile “extra” background dancer in Hindi film industry, Neeta had performed with Ajay in one of his earlier films. They evidently engaged in an extramarital affair, leading to Aasmaan’s birth. Her nick-of-time revelation prevents an Oedipal tragedy. Unlike Oedipus, Aasmaan is prevented from committing patricide and incest (with his sister Karishma). At the same moment, he is also revealed as “the hidden prince”.

 

The “hidden prince” motif is, of course, as old as literature itself. In Sophocles’s ‘Oedipus Rex’, Oedipus’s ignorance of his status as the prince of Thebes leads to his tragic actions — the murder of his father, Laius, and cohabitation with his mother, Jocasta. In the Mahabharata, Karna is also a “hidden prince”, the son of princess (and later queen) Kunti and the sun god. However, his ignorance leads him to mortal enmity with his half-brothers, the Pandavas. Kunti’s revelation of his identity, however, is also a reaffirmation of Karna’s caste status. He is not the son of an oppressed-caste chariot driver, as he had always known; he is from the martial Kshatriya caste, and thus a great warrior. In such a revelation, individual skill, talent and effort are replaced by a pervasive caste ideology.

 

In ‘The Ba***ds of Bollywood’, the revelation of Aasmaan’s paternal identity performs a similar task. He is no longer an outsider, but the heir of the reigning monarch, Ajay. By turning Aasmaan’s outsider status on its head, the film celebrates the clannish rituals of Bollywood. Aasmaan is not a star because of only his skills as an actor or his ability to perform daredevil stunts; it is also a result of his paternity. The threat of an outsider entering the privileged space of Bollywood is thus exorcised; the entitlements of the insiders are preserved. 

 

Uttaran Das Gupta is an independent writer and journalist.