Week: Cosplay part 2
What are some of the problematics around cosphotography in terms various (potentially unwelcome) gazes?
Unwelcome gaze in cosplay mainly comes from the crowd of photograph shootings, and most of these crowds are known as male gaze, and these male gazes will be specifically towards on female cosplayers and making female cosplayers feel distressed. Several factors can be discussed for this type of problematic gaze.
First of all, there are a large number of females participating in the cosplay community. The main reason is that females tend to prefer to express themselves on the platform stage. As according to (Leng, 2014, P. 97-99), it is the nature of women to dress up beautifully, and they prefer to show their own characteristics. As a result, cosplay platform has become a performing stage for females to express their beauty and self-confidence. Just as Mountfort (2018, P.48-53) said, cosplay has become the yearning performance of many females as a culture of “Do It Yourself”, that is to say by playing their favourite fictional characters to benefit the audience or spectators, and then through the responsive feedbacks of audiences to satisfy their desire for beauty. However, this phenomenon could attract many unwelcome gazes from male spectators inevitably.
Second, high population of male audiences. If women are performers, then men are the admirers or enjoyers who are here to appreciate the elegance of female actors, Just like the 5th element of cosplay described by Lamerich, the male audiences are also part of cosplay process in guaranteeing the so-called authenticity” (Mountfort, 2018 P. 58), by taking photos and requiring particular poses of cosplayer, as long as not to breach the limit of the personal boundary, cosplayers are willing to accept or cooperate. However, some photograph audiences might overexcited and likely to request excessive requirements. For example, too much demand for sexual demands(poses) will also cause distress to female cosplayers. Furthermore, the main reason for the high population of male audiences in cosplay exhibition show is that males tend to focus on their favourite hobbies; such as appreciating or enjoying anime, video games, collecting items, etc., so they are particularly sensitive and even excited about females cosplayers to play their favourite visual female characters, this is also one of the phenomena of so-called otaku culture like in Japan (Ikeguchi, 2018, P.251-253).
Thirdly, the scope of female cosplay, specifically on female cosplayers in which if the female character that female cosplayer play is too sexy, such as the character like “Chun-Li” in Street Fight or “Mai Shiranui” in King of Fighter, it is easily to attract a lot of unnecessary or unwanted attentions including sexual harassment and stalker (Leng, 2014, P. 107). However, if the characters they played are categories like ugly, funny, horror, or a female playing a male role, there will be no harassment of being physically assaulted, because usually male is stimulated by the female due to the way of dressing.
Finally, the gaze of laymen or an outsider of cosplay community is another unwelcome gaze, these people are also one of the audiences, but their purpose is not to appreciate the efforts of cosplayers, instead, to offset their performances by some kind of abnormal behaviours. For example, some audiences will use sharpness eyes to make performances decline or to make cosplayers scared and nervous. Another is the unwelcome gaze is much more like discriminative gaze, where these outsider audiences will laugh and joke cosplayers by photo-taking their imperfect or flaw of the cosplayers. For example, these outsider audiences are likely to upload the imperfections of cosplayers, to ridicule in a stereotypical way including their looks, body shape, and even ethnic race which is equivalent to a personal assault that declines their confidence and dedication (Mountfort, 2018, P. 62-65).
Leng, R. H. Y. (2014). Gender, sexuality, and cosplay: A case study of male-to-female crossplay. The Phoenix Papers. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/13481274/Gender-Sexuality-and-Cosplay-by-Rachel-Leng1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Mountfort, P. (2018). Cosphotography and Fan Capital. In P. Mountfort, Peirson-Smitth, Anne, & A. Gaczy, Planet Cosplay (pp. 45-74). Bristol: Intellect Books.
Ikeguchi, B.T. (2018). The Otaku Culture and Its Cultural Ramifications. Tsukuba Gakuin University, Tsukuba City, Japan. http://www.davidpublisher.org/Public/uploads/Contribute/5c3d54466acfc.pdf
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