Comedy and Parody in the Songs of the Hindi Cinema

Abstract

In Indian popular culture, parody is a musical-lyrical social practice that involves the transformation of older film songs. Most commonly, the original melody and rhyme scheme are retained while the lyrics are re-written. In the Hindi-language cinema (Bollywood), parody song scenes are representations and elaborations of that social practice, usually in the form of medleys and normally filmed using different actors in new contexts. Parody song scenes are primarily emotional (as opposed to narrative) spaces that focus on the comedy and laughter that may be provoked by the disjunctive re-contextualisation of familiar film songs in ways that subvert/transform their original meanings and that re-align emotional responses. The actors featured in parody scenes are often those known for their comic roles.

Parodies based on film songs became part of social practice in parts of India probably from the latter 1930s onwards. They appeared in the Hindi cinema—as filmed depictions of social practice and later as novel cinematic forms—at least from 1943. They form a relatively rare component of the conventional Hindi cinema that dominated Indian popular culture from the last years of British rule through the last decade of the twentieth century. Parody song scenes have been one of the cinema’s most important and distinctive musical frameworks for the production of comedy.

This chapter analyses the interaction of old and new lyrics and picturisations in four parody scenes that appeared in conventional Hindi films between 1943 and 2013. It also examines the cinematography and performances of the actors featured. The scenes have been selected from a larger repertoire of comic parodies in order to highlight the work of these important comic actors and to offer four unique perspectives on the interaction of old and new lyric, picturisation and comic acting. Each offers a particular vision of the practice of parodic song scene in the Hindi cinema and the use of this practice in the composite production of comedy.