Week 8 Question

Referring to Mountfort et al. (2018), in what ways is cosplay analogous to citation?

The term cosplay refers to the popularized, and revered contemporary phenomenon of ‘costume play.’ With roots based in both American and Japanese culture, it involves the act of dressing up as a character separate from the individual, in respect to performing as the character from a popular media franchise (e.g. comics, animated/live action films, television, games, etc.). Mountfort et al. (2018), explain that cosplay in the present day is a form of mass cultural engagement, seen both off and online, and especially in events like manga/anime conventions, as well as within their own cosplay communities. It is mostly considered a type of performance art, as the individual attempts to shift their identity to the character they are ‘cosplaying’ through the use of costumes, accessories, even gestures and attitudes in a way to adopt the persona of the character. It can be considered that the individual inhabits the role of this character both physically and mentally.

Moreover, a distinguishing feature of cosplay from previous costuming practices such as those in carnivals, masquerades and theatrical performances, is that cosplay largely depends on source texts from new popular media, both in the east and west. As newer forms of media (e.g. comics) did not exist before the twentieth century, cosplay can be acknowledged as a result of modernity or postmodernity.

On the topic of citation, cosplay usually requires a source or reference text (known as a parent text), this is where the main inspiration for a cosplay begins, and mostly depends on a source of narrative text for its purpose, and for performing its citational act. This implies that through the use of cosplay, the cosplayer can actively produce or manipulate the canonical text. Cosplay can be citational as the image of the character is often detached from the original narrative of the text, converting the two-dimensional fantasies of a character to a three-dimensional living character, performed in real time. With that, cosplayers take these characters into their own narratives which is acted out using their own bodies. Some argue that cosplay is a kind of ‘static live performance adaptation’ of the iconic qualities of popular narratives found in some medieval European histories (like Shakespearean plays). This also involves the knowledge of the audience, as they are also aware of what is being cited (e.g. knowledge of who these characters are).

In some ways, cosplay’s citationality has similarities with referencing, as the familiarity of a cosplay audience with the original narratives when subjected to a cosplay performance, can prompt them to recall the original source narrative. The audience is just as important in the citational act as without them, the performance of cosplay cannot be carried out to its full extent. The three elements, the cosplayer, the text, and the audience all make up the experience of cosplay and adhere to its citational qualities.

References

Mountfort, P., Peirson-Smith, A., & Geczy, A. ( 2018). Planet Cosplay. Intellect Books.