Cities of Neoliberal Future: Urban Utopia in Indian Science Fiction Cinema

TitleCities of Neoliberal Future: Urban Utopia in Indian Science Fiction Cinema
Publication TypeBook Chapter
Year of Publication2017
AuthorsVarughese, Shiju Sam, Tereza Kuldova, and Mathew A. Varghese
Book TitlePalgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology
Pagination97-115
PublisherSpringer International Publishing
CityCham
ISBN Number978-3-319-47623-0
AbstractIndian science fiction cinema, in this chapter, becomes a tool for understanding the cultural negotiation of futuristic urban spaces in the neoliberal era. An analysis of Love Story 2050, a utopian time travel film portraying the futuristic Mumbai of 2050, reveals the hidden desires and anxieties of imagining the urban technoscientific spaces as well as a crisis of collective life in the post-liberalization period. Political culture of neoliberal India embodies a desire to inhabit utopian cities of the future, but this desire coproduces cultural anxieties about the loss of the nation’s ‘Hindu essence’. Continuous alterations between the desire for and fear of the utopian city reflect an irresolvable crisis inherent to the ongoing political endeavor of blending neoliberal developmentalism with Hindutva ideology in the making of the global city.
URLhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47623-0_6
Short TitleCities of Neoliberal Future