Penetrating gazes: The poetics of sight and visual display in popular Indian cinema

Following a sequence of visually stunning dance routines accompanied by sounds of sung poetry, the climax for most popular Indian films is the intense exchange of gazes between the lover and beloved. This exchange of penetrating gazes not only expresses sexual desire but, in a move beyond voyeurism, signifies a physical interaction through vision. This intense and even tactile gaze relies on two different notions of vision: that of drishti, activated in Indian religious contexts, and of nazar, so essential for the exposition of love in Persianate poetry. The lyrics of film songs rely for their affectivity on these notions of drishti and nazar. Committed to memory by film viewers, this repertoire of film songs generates a poetics of sight and visual display within the film-going public. By framing and focusing in on eyes and thereby simulating moments of intense visual interaction, Bollywood film directors have poetically nuanced a modern visual genre for contemporary Indian audiences which actively employs notions of vision and visuality that are specific to South Asia. Moreover in cueing ocularity to the aural, Bollywood films constitute a subaltern modernity that disrupts the minimalist silences and ocular-centricity of most 'Western' modernisms, This signals the polyscopic, intersensual and poetic character of modern Indian visual experiences, both portrayed on, and enacted off, the screen.