Unseeable Bodies, Forbidden Spaces: Dalit Girlhood, Female Gaze and Cinematic Resistance in the Tamil Film Maadathy

This paper is a feminist, anti-caste analysis of the Tamil film Maadathy: An Unfairy Tale (2019) directed by Leena Manimekalai. The focus is on how it narrates “Dalit girlhood” through visual strategies that expose and resist caste and gender oppression. Drawing on Dalit feminist thought, intersectionality, feminist film theory, spatial theory and magical realism, the study examines the spatial and bodily regulation of the protagonist Yosana, whose life is constrained by “caste-based unseeability” and “moral policing”. Using qualitative interpretative film analysis, critical discourse analysis and feminist visual methodologies, the paper unpacks key cinematic motifs like gaze, silence, emotion and spatial segregation to show how Maadathy critiques the social and symbolic erasure of Dalit women. The findings reveal that the film challenges hegemonic visual culture by reclaiming the female gaze, deploying subaltern aesthetics and mobilising magical realism as a mode of resistance. Ultimately, Maadathy emerges as a radical anti-caste, feminist cinema that reframes the politics of “seeing” “knowing” and “remembering” from the margins.