Entangled in the imagination: New middle-class apprehensions in an Indian theme park

Abstract

By analysing a visit to Ramoji Film City, a theme park in Hyderabad, by a group of youths, this essay examines how transterritorial flows of imagery are socially contextualized by India's new middle classes. A theme park is a spatial arrangement thatincorporatesimaginary worlds and makes them available to experiencein a contextless ‘here-and-now’. As such, the theme parkis a stage where the fragileidentity of India's new middle classes is put on trial. Despite the appeal of the theme park for potential middle-class visitors, the visitors I followed appeared largely uninspired by the imagery of the far away and past in Film City, and they found it difficult to incorporate their visit to the theme park as a meaningful social practice. The case of Ramoji Film City shows how the social situatedness of the subject determines the significance of the imagination in the transnational world.