Talk:Item number

In fact "Item Number" is standard parlance in Indian filming industry (mostly in Bollywood, but also in Kannada, Tamil and Telugu cinema) to refer to that kind of fanservicey/plot-irrelevant musical numbers. The term apparently comes from the use of the word "item" within Mulbay slang to refer to atractive women. Even wikipedia goes into an in-depth explanation and uses the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Item_number Granted, isn't an standard "western" parlance, but isn't as esoteric as other tropes names Maybe if we eliminate the "The" and put the "number" without caps so the Wikipedia link can work properly?

Sounds like a good idea to me.

I added the category basically because I looked at the trope name from the perspective of the kind of person who complains about "esoteric names". If in those circumstances it makes me say, "what does that mean?" to myself, I figure it's appropriate to add the category.

And just because I've added the category, doesn't mean it's written in stone. A debate on whether it's correct or not is always appropriate.

Let me add, though, that being "standard parlance" in India doesn't make it self-explanatory to someone who knows nothing about Bollywood. A lot of "standard parlance" terms -- including ones we use as trope names -- are deliberately vague or impenetrable to persons outside the industry because they require context that outsiders do not possess. For example, "McGuffin" is far from self-explanatory, even if you know a fair amount about Alfred Hitchcock.

In this specific case, a "non-esoteric" equivalent would probably be "Fanservice Musical Number", which should be reasonably understandable to the more easily confused.