What does the terms détournement mean and how is it applicable to cosplay?
Détournement in French means ‘rerouting’ or ‘hijacking’ but can be defined as a variation on a previous work that in some way contradicts or critiques the meaning of the original work. When someone dons their cosplay of their chosen character, they are, without the consent of whoever or whatever owns the original material, given the power to represent that character in any way they desire towards an audience, usually people at conventions. Through this cosplayers can ‘hijack’ the character’s presentation for a number of different results.
The most common and obvious application of Détournement in cosplay is for comedic purposes, when a cosplayer hijacks the representation of a fictional character, and are surrounded by conventiongoers and cosplayers that have an inside understanding of that fictional character, it creates a rare opportunity for humour. Due to popularity and the simplicity of design, the most common cosplays at your average convention are going to be Spiderman and Deadpool. In the in text-cannon, the two characters share a comical dynamic of the funny guy and the straitman, but in the context of cosplay the non-cannon dynamic which is created by cosplayers can be changed in the way in which both characters are in on the chaos, as well other forms of the relationship in a way that extends that comedic dynamic past the limitations of the in text-cannon.
The next application of Détournement in cosplay is as a means to critique. The manner in which a cosplayer can accurately represent the character they are hijacking are based around their own limitations. Cosplayers have differences in height, weight, physique, and gender that can potentially limit their ability to replicate their chosen character (Mountfort, 2018). This is an inadvertent critique on the often unrealistic appearances that many fictional characters present.
The final application of Détournement is one that is limited mostly to video game cosplay. In a huge majority of existing video games there exists an unspoken conflict between the canonical game and player cannon. What I mean by this is the canonical way in which a character would interact with their world, versus how a player uses that same character to interact with the world in a non-canonical way. Michael De Santa from Grand Theft Auto 5’s main goal is to retire peacefully, yet the player is enabled through mechanics to make Michael go on an unwarranted destructive rampage. The conflict between game-cannon and player-cannon, is an issue that many games, especially one that attempt to be immersive and story driven suffer from, but in the non-cannon world of cosplay, the tides turn completely. Now that the player has hijacked the character and brought that character to a new world through cosplay, player-cannon is now free to take over.
Mountfort, P, Peirson-Smith, A, & Geczy, A. (2018). Planet cosplay: Costume play, identity and global fandom. Intellect Books.
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