Lesser known Bollywood clichés of yore
I am bored of my posts. Verbosity, forced philosophical innuendos, too much reading into things and the same dour themes. Hell, I needed a break. So I went back in time and read those dog-eared cinema diaries from my childhood. Back in those days, I had no choice but to sit with my family and watch those films of the 70s/80s and the early 90s. It’s only now that I am this pseudo-intellectual avant-garde cinema snob. Anyway, in this post I thought I’d write about the clichés of yore that are not much talked about, that we all probably grew up watching. We all know about the flowers that cover up the kisses, the kaali mata ka mandir-howling-ghantis or the rich heroine and poor hero clichés. So I thought I’ll write about the clichés that have not been talked about much. However, I can’t promise complete novelty here nor can I promise LMAO stuff that would make Chaplin turn in his grave and fart in appreciation. Okay, here goes:
Damsel in distress jumps diagonally: When our heroine has to cry because the hero cheated on her, she would run wearing a flaring white “nightie”. She would climb up the circuitous stairs. After this short effortless run she jumps diagonally on the bed and buries her head in the pillow, her hair is let lose in this scene. Then she would cry by stroking the pillow with her head. The pace of stroking the pillow is directly proportional to her misery (stop reading between the lines).
The Kodak finale: A parivarik saaf suthri film ends with all the leads of the movie standing in a line just about covering the camera eye. The salt-and-pepper hair maaji, her husband with a black stick and rimmed glasses, the heroine with red wrists after the rope was undone, the hero all bruised fighting out the baddies, the villainous relative who becomes a good guy and the house servants, all of them stand together in a line. At this, the standard comedian would crack a joke to which everyone laughs in perfect synchronization and immediately the credits roll. Sometimes it says” This is not the end, it’s the beginning” (Tip: Raja Babu; Shakti Kapur does the honors here at the end)
Hawas, tapish aur sulagte jism: When a hero and heroine are making out this would most likely be in slow mo with some soothing music so that it doesn’t seem vulgar ( Tip: Dor; Both the couples are making out in separate locations and it is shown in slow mo).
Next is a special category in kinds of makeouts; rape scene. Now when our dear villain is making out with our damsel in a rape scene, it would most likely be raining, villain pouring down a whisky bottle and in all likelihood the damsel will act naïve. The damsel wears a special rape dress for this momentous occasion. Usually white in color, this special dress is such that the left sleeve, the right sleeve, the back is detachable and the villain detaches them in that order. Watch how the camera pans around not to show the actual rape. So you’d see a stuffed tiger head on the wall that is zoomed in and zoomed out (you get the metaphor here, don’t you), thunder and lightning, a squeaky fan going round and round, windows shattering. Watch carefully our damsel here shows the amazing act of irony; she needs to fight back but yet willfully submit to the villain’s force. So she would sway her head left-to-right in harmony with a nahhiiinn but will never kick him in his balls which should be lot easier. In the end, when it’s all over, the damsel will definitely have spread out red sindoor ( even if she did not have a proper one in the start) and she’d walk around like a zombie.
Another kind of make-out is when the lead protagonist is indulging into territories he/she should not have. Like when the hero is accidentally sleeping with the heroine’s friend. There will definitely be a sax playing in the background; highlighting the oncoming guilt trip and also balancing the act of keeping the protagonist’s image clean ( It was all circumstantial, that’s the message).
Wait, how can I forget the make-outs in the semi-porno flicks with names like Adh-nangi-nagan-ka-inteqaam. In every make-out session the lady will be a buxom aunty and she would never let the poor lean guy smooch. 70% of the time you will see lip biting and scratching one feet to another; that should make for a good mosquito repellant viral ( Tip: watch any south Indian masala flick and you’ll know what I mean).
It’s all in the name: Rich people are mostly likely to have last names like; Singhania, Malhotra, Bajaj, Kapadia, etc. Working class people are most likely to have names like: Deenu kaka, Ramu Kaka, Shanti bai, Ramu, Gangu Bai, Phoolwanti, Saku Bai. Don’t get me started on Rahul and Raj.
Professional and cultural stereotypes:
Doctor: Patients are never expected to go to hospitals, doctors do home delivery (well literally). They usually wear a black suit, stethoscope around their necks and a black suitcase that god only knows what’s in there. The host carries the suitcase and the patient is never told what happened to him/her even if it is common cold. Every doctor has some standard lines in every movie: “ Injection de diya hai, subah tak hosh aa jayega”, “Ab inhe dawan nahin, dua ki zaroorat hai” , “ Ab who khatre se bahar hai”, “Mubarakho aap baap ban gaye”
The Law: The cop is always sporting the line “Kanoon ko apne haath mein mat lo”, “chup chap apne aap ko kaanoon ke hawale kar do warna…”, “Kanoon ke haath bahut lambien hote hain” . Stereotype supercop award definitely goes to Iftekhar. He has played a police wala 18 times in his career. Yes I actually googled up this trivia. By the way, Iftekhar has also played the judge in many movies. The judge has one motherhood line “Tamaam sabooton aur gawahon ko madde nazar rakhte huye, mujhrim ko taaze rate hind, dafa 302 ke tahat sazae maut di jaati hai…” . As soon as the judge announces this, some of the stock scenes show up; like the poor pigeons outside the court will fly out and then freeze, waves are shown to smash the shore and then freeze, the affected person will have his image halved or the best is, the insaaf ka tarazu is shown and it evens out.
Catholics: Women are wearing a skirt, usually widows and every sentence ends with “man”. Men are alcoholics and have names like Peter, John, Tony etc. Catholics are shown quite god fearing so much so that they keep uttering god in every statement followed by a “man” of course. Sab rasta god ki taraf jaata hai man.
Goldie Hawn once said “There are only three ages for women in Hollywood – Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy”. Now we have a Bollywood version too: There are only three ages for women in Bollywood: Maaji, Mamta aur Mallika. “Maaji” is a woman in her late 60s; she will either be a shrew or a very naïve old woman. If she is a widow then she gets more screen time so her husband is usually killed in a plane crash or by the goons ( the hero is obliviously taking revenge) There will be a mid 30s-40s Mamta who will be a wife or a mother to two kids. She is a homemaker too like our Maaji but the problem is that she is usually given a small screen time. Either she is shown back in those days when she was a gal or she ages fast to become Maaji. And then there is Mallika, the hot siren, the heroine, the temptress, the babe. Mallika would be wearing cool clothes in college, won’t talk to random boys but would spew venom at the hero and eventually fall for him. Mallika is dumb; beautiful, rape-prone and has no opinion of hers. Just when we were enjoying these women stereotypes Anurag came and ruined it. He killed the concept of Maaji, Mamta aur Mallika with his liberated women in his movies :-(
The fight chase props: It’s either a water filled pot, fruit cart or a vegetable cart that invariably comes in the way of a fight chase. The villain’s sidekicks will be thrown on the fruit cart in slow mo. When the fruits and the villains have fallen off the cart, the hero gets on top of it to continue his chase. In a car chase, there will be a mother who is carrying her baby and crossing the road. In case the car hits the mother the baby will take a parabolic flight and so will our hero, just in time to catch the baby. It may also involve a blind man or a man on wheel chair. Hordes of people either running or on bicycles form the speed breakers in a chase. Even the gang shooting in the middle of all this won’t deter them from crowding the road.
Losers Inc. they all die: Hero Heroine finally coming together at the climax involves many sacrifices. One of them involves the second heroine who sacrifices her love for our hero. So she will have no purpose in life after discovering hero and lead heroine are in love, she is madly in love with the hero. So when the hero is being shot at, she will take the bullet in her chest and following her dying (unending) speech she will put the hero and heroine’ s hands together. Men are in a more bad shape here. Usually if the hero’s best friend is not seeing anyone, he must die after taking the bullet for the hero. The price you pay for being single I tell you. Another kind of sacrifice is by the scheming saas, the rich capitalistic dad, or the vamp. Now throughout the film they will be against our hero/heroine but at the end when they turn good people (this usually happens with one line utterance of “Tumne meri aankhein khol di”) they will take the bullet. All the losers who die in these scenarios get a 3 word climax for them too, an obituary of sorts. It goes something like this. Let’s say Sita, the other woman, died in the hero’s arms. The hero would show his grief in the exact 3 steps: Sita! (Gently as though he is trying to confirm her death), again Sittaa!! (this time there is minor shock) and then with an orgasm like cry he would go Sssssiiiiiitttttaaaaa!!!.
So it would go something like; sita, sittaa, sssssiiiiiiiiittttaaa!
PS: Oz, I tried to pay homage to your torture series in the small little way that I could.
Tags: 80s movies, Anurag Kashyap, bollywood cliches, bollywood stereotypes, oz, The Torture Series
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
dunno ’bout Chaplin.. but I’m laughing and farting alright :D :D
Amazing post man! We have such a rich culture of cliches, that en entire movie can be sewn from them!
Neeraj, that was hilarious :-)) … makes me want to see all those corny movies all over again :-D
hahaha. awesome!
Excellent Post Neeraj. Very well observed and expressed.
1. Damsel diagonal – not only when his love betrays her. Even when daddy-jee refuses the union of souls similar scene is played.
2. Family portrait – the Kodak moment – the hero who fought bravely to save the day heals completely at the time of photograph. The villainous relative, remains with broken arm in a swing.
Awesome job, man. Will post more laters!!
Naah…. good effort… but sorry found the stereotypes very stereotypical…. Nothing OZ has not given us before….. except maybe -
“Wait, how can I forget the make-outs in the semi-porno flicks with names like Adh-nangi-nagan-ka-inteqaam…….”
Oz how about a bit more on that one huh….?
Nice post.I always wondered why the owners of companies and factories in hindi films are always Singhania.Even though now most of the films dont have these stereotypes I must admit I enjoyed all of them in my growing up years.Cheers to our hindi film industry!!!
Thanks all
.
@Tanul: That is exactly what Tarantino did with Death proof
.
@Tejas: Fantastic ones there. ROFLMAO on the broken arm and the daddy-jee refusal
.
@Sucker: This was planned as a homage to Oz’s torture series… And any resemblances to literature elsewhere is purely inspirational ;-)
Doctors in those movies also have a very special capability. Diagnosing pregnancy by just listening to the heartbeat of an unconscious woman !
Aaarrrghh..in #6, it should be ‘her’ love betrays her. Wow, it would make a queer-some movie with ‘his’ love betraying her!!
Inspiring post man…
superb post can’t stopping laughing. This reminded me of another similar one –
whenever somebody, who must die, is shot or stabbed a doctor is never allowed to be called. The scene usually goes like this –
“tumhe kuch nahi hoga mai abhi doctor bulata hoon”
“nahi ab mera waqt aa gaya hai tum mere pass baitho….”
Wow Neeraj, we had forgotten all these characters. Thanks for taking us down memory lane.
There used to be Dads dressed in Shiny dressing gowns standing on top of a flight stairs and Army dads wearing a Golf cap and a scarf, he always had a loaded Rifle on his drawing room wall.
Oh, and that dialogue….tum ma banne wali ho….
I love clichés :-)
Here are a few other ones:
Goons always travel in jeeps with hockey sticks, and swords. If they are fighting the main hero they will never bring guns, this fight indeed ensues after a hilarious attempt at rape, Goons find the possibility of raping a woman particularly hilarious. One guy will have lines, usually it’s the guy that tries to rape a girl in any movie, you might see the hero fight him again in the final fight.
When running away from a villain lair, the hero will somersault over a couple of stories.
The hero may change his hair style for this jump, have a skin color slightly darker or have a slightly chunky body type. Optional back flip ON to the wall.
When the hero is pissed at God, God will communicate by the shaking of temple bells and re-instate the belief that there is a God listening.
Heroes never rape a girl they only create the impression they will this is probably to make the heroine fall in love or make her realize that poor people also has a hear that beats.
Subsequently this will work and the heroine will fall in love with hero for NOT raping her.
Hero may not be interested in women (he may have revenge on his mind for rape of his sister or his mother or loosing of the jaidaat), so the girl will need to convince him of her intention through the language of dance. These seduction dances can only be performed in public parks. Hero will reluctantly accept her love but only after the 2nd song.
Superb post, loved it, right there with Oz class! What more can i say?
Those were the days!!!
One more classic, if a hero has a sister and they show her tying him a rakhi, she is definitely going to be raped in the next scene and she will of course die.
On the other hand the attempt to rape the heroine always fails, she is always rescued in the nick of time, hymen intact for the dear hero…
@Neeraj – Awesome post man….
Thanks all for the encouraging comments! It took me really long time to put this together. Oz bhai, waiting for your feedback on this one :-)
HILARIOUS… to say the least….
A good mid of the week treat
I think u had to put less effort if u would have intended to write something sensible… :P
Great Post Neeraj!
@ yunus, “the heroine will fall in love with hero for NOT raping her”. Absolutely love this one..
daamn… !!! What have I done! I had no idea so many still remember the torture series. Neeraj, You are motivating me to start The Torture Series Season 2. Mujhe bhagwan ke liye chod do (Hinglish : Leave me for God’s chitti chitti bang bang)
I sure am Oz. We all really want you to. The Desi train must have pulled but the spirit lives on. Get on with your whip, bring on the torture
.
Okay so I got motivated to come up with some more of the lesser known cliches, here goes:
.
.
Hero- heroine in a love song… we all know about the slow mo run to each other bit but when they get a little more intimate, they roll down a cliff hugging each other. Watch carefully, they have their below the belt portions always away from each other.
.
.
Whenever there is a love triangle; lets say a gal and two guys; there has to be this customary song. The heroine is wearing an evening gown and smiling and giggling foolishly for no reason. The two heroes are wearing tuxedos and the loser hero is playing the piano. The loser will sing a song about how he loved the heroine and cribs about life in general. The other hero doubts the loser’s intentions through the song and discovers the loser and the heroine have a history together.
“Whenever there is a love triangle; lets say a gal and two guys; there has to be this customary song. The heroine is wearing an evening gown and smiling and giggling foolishly for no reason. The two heroes are wearing tuxedos and the loser hero is playing the piano. The loser will sing a song about how he loved the heroine and cribs about life in general. The other hero doubts the loser’s intentions through the song and discovers the loser and the heroine have a history together.”
..HAHAHAHHAHA, Neeraj you are the baap man! Drinks on me, if ever we meet!
Long back I read your Pyaasa and Existentialism post on PFC. I was amazed with the way you looked at the film in a philosophical angle, about absurdism. Now I read this! Man, you got some range. This is awesome. Like someone commented before, the scenes were all playing right in front of my eyes. Long live such passion for cinema.
1. From my personal exp i know that the doctor conducts a pregnancy test to confirm the same. But for our desiwood, an after a roadside meal kinda symptoms qualify for cracking, “ya maa banne waali hai” and the hero is always so surprised as if he never knew this cud be a consequence.
2. Thank bollywood for its love for Hindi Bhasha. Kokh, Bachha, Aspataal, Najayaz, Aurat ki Izzat, mohabbat are some of the words which even those Australia, US based guys would not hesitate using.
3. (Ref: New York) All gals who go to top US univerities wear short revealing dresses even while their male counetrparts are in jackets. (Some of these swaying skirts are actually from Sarojini Market) They are bindaas, hangout with guys, booze, live life kingsize till they fall in love. Suddenly the sindoor mangalsutra factors in and thrashes out the hindustaani in them.
Another one, got inspied by @ Shweta
- You can live abroad as many years as you want.
It will not affect you subcontinental accent, morals, hair style and dress sense.
@ Neeraj,
- At any party, the guest have NO CLUE what hidden messages are in songs the protagonists are singing.
- Plus all guest only get 1 drink at party which they have to grasp with all their mights during the entire evening.
- All Party guests are only allowed to dance when the song is done and the chorus section starts singing.
- The hero’s mother, is everyone’s mother and should be adrressed as maaji by doctors, milkmen,zameendars, thekedaars and bastiwalon.
- In Jail, there is only 1 bad guy that is supposed to in jail and who deserves it, but he can be dealt with very quickly by a public beating in the courtyard by our hero
We need to make a list of cliche’s in front of a judge.
I just saw Deewanapan and I have ton :-)
few more -
– our superstar stand against “n” number of villans and he will kill everyone in his way.
– if villan gets one bullet shot then he will be dead, however viceversa is not true.
– in family movie always a very close relative will be the enemy – with a patent dialog – i was waiting for this moment for a long time.
– in rape scene – hero is always around.
– if there is a temple scene – then movie will have the climax in temple.
– if there are any pets in the movie – then there role is very critical for movie to pass the climax.
– there will be a very rich family – which will become bankrupt after a single loss (for more details Saas bhi kabhi bahao thi – small cinema)
– if any family is fooled because of power of attorney stuff – then history will be repeated in that movie.
– if movie has a sporty end – then hero will win with all the pain in the world (despite of all the pain he will still win)
– in scene where there is a brakefail – in that case actors won’t shutdown the engine as that accident plays major role for movies plot.
– in love triology – girl who is shown first to love a guy – will never get her love.
– hospital has a very small however a very critical role 2 play – “ab sab kuch bhagwaan e hath mein hai” or “sorry he is no more”.
i just love hindi movie – as watching those movie i also think i can be a good director – however because of recession and money crises i can’t enter in this field.
please if any1 is has strong background – please do consider me of assistant director.
if u want 2 know more on hindi movies – do let me know – as time is less and content is 2 much
Thatch, rain, the hero’s shirt and one big mistake: When hero-heroine would have a one night stand, I don’t know how they end up in a house made of thatch roof, rainy night, a fire place and the heroine has to be wearing the hero’s shirt and hinting at nothing underneath… A song has to be there with all the suzlon energy fans blowing at their clothes.
.
Thanks again for the wonderful comments folks.
.
@Yunus, you’re on a roll!!:-)
.
@Rahul, Trust me a lot of us are sailing the same boat as you are :-(
.
@ Lalita: I am glad you liked the pyaasa post. Its here: http://passionforcinema.com/existentialism-the-absurd-and-pyaasa/
I’ve been reading PFC on and off for a year now and of all the brilliant posts, this one is so bang on that I’m compelled to write in. Its hillarious and the Maaji- Mamta- Mallika analogy is brilliant! Thanks for bringing them out, I am now going to catch these type movies on afternoon TV just to enjoy these cliches once more.
Hey GTPT (What is your name btw) Those words were really encouraging. I really cant write with a lot of sense of humor you know. I am more of a serious writer. Wanted to get out of my comfort zone and i then started writing this post. Took me a month of writer’s block to actually write it.
hahahhahaha hilarious.. i found myself nodding at each of those cliches you identified in your post
Wow ! A month well spent for sure. Good luck with all your future posts. Parul
Absolutely brilliant post, hasn’t laughed this hard in a long time.