3. To what extent can narratology, translation and adaptation studies aid us in understanding cosplay?
Cosplay is an art form that is a popular way for fans of a certain series to express their love for it by dressing up and performing as characters from popular media. The discussion surrounding the art form continues to evolve and change over time as cosplay is increasingly popular and fan engagement also evolves. When approaching cosplay, there are several methods of analysis that can be applied to cosplay as a way of understanding it, these being narratology, translation, and adaptation studies.
Narratology is the study of narrative texts and the structure of narrative; the approach is effectively applicable to any narrative regardless of the medium. The term can be applied to literature, film, video games, and other mediums, however, it is difficult to apply narratology to cosplay. This is because most cosplay comes from existing texts that have long-running narratives, it results in the inability to translate an entire text’s narrative on to the cosplay. As such, the question surrounding narrative within cosplay is how much of it survives the transition to the medium of cosplay, Mountfort (2018, p. 31) asks “whether the terminology of narratology, the study of narrative texts, is of any relevance.” Attempting to apply narratology to cosplay, the narrative text would be the original text that a cosplayer derives their cosplay from, and the actor is the character that a cosplayer also decides. Although narratology cannot be directly applied to cosplay as a way of understanding the entire narrative of a text that a cosplay originates from; it can assist us in understanding the unique way narrative is told in cosplay. A cosplay might not be able to convey the entire history of the original text’s world, but it could potentially showcase a singular event that relates to the character of choice.
Translation studies can also aid us in understanding cosplay as the medium revolves greatly around referencing source texts and the accuracy of that referencing. The common belief surrounding translation used to be that they should be as painfully faithful to the original text as possible, where every single word and sentence is very literal. Translations now, however, take more creative liberties and they must be taken when translating from one language to another. Such is the case when translating Japanese as words can have multiple meanings. Translators must choose the appropriate meaning behind a word by attempting to discern what the original author intended. It results in translations that are never truly accurate but are better because of the changes made. This is how translation studies can help us better understand cosplay as translation studies according to Mountfort (2018, p. 32) “have moved away from the expectation of isomorphism (one-to-one correspondence) between a source text and the target text that characterized their pre-theoretical phase.” Cosplay is comparable to the way translations have changed because cosplay is not required to be a replica of a character’s design. Not being entirely faithful can result in a better cosplay because it must accommodate for how physics in the real-world work if an aspect of a character is impossible to recreate.
Like translation studies, adaptation studies also help us better understand cosplay because as Mountfort (2018, p. 33) mentions “A similar shift has occurred in adaptation studies, which has had to deal with the added dimension of translation across media.” Adaptation studies are incredibly aware of the changes that must be made when transitioning to a different medium. A good adaptation is one that should make changes appropriate for the medium regardless of accuracy to the original text. Cosplay then presents a complicated issue as complete faithfulness to the original text is in some cases impossible given the designs of characters from series that are popular to cosplay. However, adaptation studies show that a good adaptation is not necessarily accurate to the original text and this also applies to cosplay. A good cosplay may change an aspect of a character in a different way that ultimately makes the cosplay work better.
Reference
P, Mountfort. (2018). Planet Cosplay. Bristol, UK; Intellect Books.
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