Enacting (real) fiction : Materializing childhoods in a theme park

• Even though fiction and fantasy are fundamental to how childhoods today are understood, thisis a topic that is seldom explored either theoretically or academically. We address the questionof how the relationship between material real and fictive real can be understood in new ways incontemporary society. We suggest that fiction can be understood in other ways than the hithertodichotomized approaches to it, and our aim is to focus on the hybridity that is created throughthe interconnecting word and, as in fiction and childhood and material real and fictive real. Thisarticle explores how fiction can be understood as hybrid and interrelated rather than a pure andseparate phenomenon, and in particular how materiality as something real and fiction as realmingle. This article introduces ways to talk about the fictive real as realunreality and highlightsthe drawbacks that might stem from these concepts since in several ways they re-enact childhoodinnocence and nostalgia, as well as negative differences between childhood and adulthood, wheredifferent childhoods share a subordinate position in society.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Kulturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Cultural Studies (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Tvärvetenskapliga studier inom samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Material real

fictive real

realunreality

contemporary childhoods

theme park

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)