Cosplay is an act of dressed up and performed as characters of all types of popular media texts, “roots in the mid to late twentieth century cross-pollination between American and Japanese popular culture” (Mountfort et al., 2018). These popular media texts include comics (manga for japanese) animation, games, live action films, televisions, even music videos etc. The aim for cosplayer is to portray a character’s looks, a step further by adding the character’s personality and behaviour, (Mckay, 2019). It is a global phenomenon within the 21st century media convergence, reflecting the contemporary fandom’s unmatched modes of the mass or pop culture engagement for both online and offline. Although it is a global thing it is still commonly believed to begin in Japan, mostly because of how the term ‘cosplay’ was coined in Japan around the 1983 (Mountfort et al., 2018).
As cosplay are about dressed up and performed as characters from a popular media text, it can be seen as commonly a way of citation. Citation is a practices form of reference, when mentioning and referring, to a source of information.
According toMountfort et al. (2018), cosplay analogous to citation, in ways that they are referencing to their chosen source texts by involving performing unlimited ‘citational acts’, including how they act or behavior and the way their dress. The act is “theatricalism, including pose and gesture” (Mountfort et al., 2018), their costume and props are also a part of referencing characters they chosen. Cosplay are different to dramatic theatre and screen performance, and it can be differentiated from how cosplay are not about realising the whole original script in going through a sustained performance. But are more about a “smaller or ‘parcellized’ portions of an original” script and story (Mountfort et al., 2018). The people who cosplay cite and refer to their source of information through between texture and performance, but are more of performance-orientated symbolic metaphor. It is common that they use terms such as “modelling, textual performance, translation, transportation, actualization, identification, intertextual or transmedial process and, indeed, ‘embodied citational acts.’” (Mountfort et al., 2018).
Cosplay citation is actually essential in the cosplayers’ decisions and subsequent appropriation of the original source material. As soon as a cosplayer decided to dress up with intention of a specific character, it means that the citation of that particular media texts has taken place. (Mountfort et al., 2018).
References:
Mckay, R. (2019, December 6). Cosplay 101: Everything You Need To Know About It. Who. https://www.who.com.au/what-is-cosplay
Mountfort, P., Peirson-Smith, A., & Geczy, A. (2018). Planet cosplay: Costume play, identity and global fandom. Intellect.
Pop Genres 2020 