Soft Pleasures

Malayalam soft-porn cinema of the 1990s cast female leads in the role of madakarani (sex sirens), a label that symbolized both their diegetic role and professional distinction as second-tier laborers. In this essay, I explore the contradictory framings within which the figure of the madakarani came to be identified through the soft-porn films as an embodiment of screen pleasures and the different spectatorial relations built through her presence. I look at how being cast as a madakarani typecast these actresses (despite being lead heroines) and forced them to constantly defend themselves against disciplinary norms. This essay looks at how exchanges between heteropatriarchal norms, journalistic discourses, and precarious labor conditions in the film industry led to a perception of the madakarani as simultaneously threatening and a source of surreptitious pleasure.