Rija Faisal

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

‘Cosplay’ refers to the act of dressing up in a costume in order to recreate the appearance of a character from a work of fiction. Popular forms of cosplay involve dressing oneself in the outfits of characters from video games, comic books, popular anime series, animated and/or live action films, etc. Cosplay can also include dressing in non-character specific costumes, such as a maid or in a school uniform.

Cosplay is considered to be a form of performance art. Through the use of costumes and accessories, gestures, behaviour, and attitude, an individual ‘cosplaying’ a character attempts to morph his/her persona into that of the character he/she is dressed as. The idea is to inhibit the role of the character whom one is dressed as as skillfully as can be done.  

Cosplay in the twenty-first-century is a form of mass cultural engagement. Mountfort et al. (2018). It can be found both online as well as offline, and especially in large events such as manga and anime conventions, comic con, and within its own fan-based cosplay communities.      

A distinguishing feature of cosplay which separates it from other forms of costuming performances ( such as circus and carnival performances, or theatre performances), is that cosplay depends largely on texts from popular forms of media. A source or a reference text is required, and this is where the main inspiration for a cosplay is derived from.

Another feature which distinguishes cosplay from theatre and/or screen performances is the length of performance itself. A cosplayer does not recreate/act out the entire script/plot of their chosen text. Rather, they only perform what can be called ‘chunks’ or ‘portions’ of the original source text, ones which the cosplayer himself/herself filters out as being significant to the actual performance.  

On the subject of citation, cosplay can be regarded as a form of citation as cosplayers commonly reference their chosen text, and perform a multitude of citational acts. Mountfort et al. (2018). In a cosplay performance, it is the cosplayer’s own costumed body which then acts as the text or as a ‘site’ referencing a text – in the case of cosplay, this would be the specific media source which is chosen by the cosplayer to be performed.

Props (such as weapons) alongside the costume also act as citation links, as they help in linking the cosplay back to its source text.     

Citation in cosplay can also be seen being as similar to referencing. In a cosplay performance, a familiarity with the original narrative of the cosplay is important, as this is what allows the cosplay audience to recall the source of the original narrative. The cosplay audience play a crucial part. Without them, a cosplay performance simply would not be successful or be as powerful if say, it were performed for an audience that was unfamiliar with the original narrative. These three elements- the text, the cosplayer and the cosplay audience – together make up the citational qualities of cosplay.      

References

Mountfort, P. Pierson, Smith, A. Geczy, A. (2018) Planet Cosplay Intellect Books.

1. Reyes (2014), describes Body Horror as being a “fictional representation of the body exceeding itself or falling apart, either opening up or being altered past the point where it would be recognised by normative understandings of human corporeality.”
How do The Colour out of Space and Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth make use of this definition to explore themes of the unknown?

Xavier Aldana Reyes introduction descriptor characterization of Body Horror is a exemplarily quintessential to question the nature of subgenre of horror body horror and the exploration of the unknown.

Within determinable narrative dialogue The Shadow over Innsmouth the creatures exhibiting examples of body horror the are the Deep Ones of note.

Body horror, and the fear of the unknown is a predominant theme, and the fear of Shoggoths (archetypally Lovecraftian amphibian monsters) and the Deep Ones.

The open caricature to investigate body horror here is in precepts to understand body horror, whether it be “biological horror” (Cruz, 2012) into the sea of the unknown. 

With several notions under its over-troped expanded umbrella we find body horror’s variations –

“hybrids, metamorphoses, mutations, aberrant sex, and zombification.” (Cruz, 2012)

Throughout the narration of Lovecraft’s short story there is a sense of foreboding for the fear of the known culminating in the encounter with “The Horde” where an example body Horror is presented.. we find the mutation/metamorphosising in particular represented through the main character’s fishlike description.

The discovery of physically describing the horror in definite form of “the Horde” (Lovecraft, 1936)  in chapter IV:
I am not even yet willing to say whether what followed was a hideous actuality or a nightmare hallucination (Lovecraft, 1936)

Further advanced as “Anthropoid” (Lovecraft, 1936)  Lovecraft continues to describe.
Or further to describe the horror of metamorphosed creatures:

“And yet I saw them in a limitless stream. Flopping, chopping croaking bleating – urgine inhumanly through a spectral moonlight in a grotesque, malignant  saraband of fantastical nightmare.” (Lovecraft, 1936)

This spectatorship of Body horror is a common means to evocate discussion within fiction.
Argued by Sue Tait who contents the spectatorship of the fetishization of body horror is through pain and  likened to pornography in horror: 

Pain is fetishized in the ‘‘drive to make visible what is essentially unimaginable’ (Tait, 2008)

For example, he described as having referred to carrying “a persistent strangeness, ” (Lovecraft, 1936) within the “Newburyport Historical Society”, giving a description of monsters.

Where Ronald delineates to define that Body Horror in fiction is biological Horror.
“Body horror and its powers of revulsion can be approached in another way that has not yet been adequately explored in this regard and in most other genres of cinema: the biological.” (Cruz, 2012)

To this end Body Horror is discussed as a means to excite and further the genre in exploration of themes of the unknown and by introduction of its type.

Bibliography
Cruz, R. A. (2012). Mutations and Metamorphoses: Body Horror is Biological Horror. Journal of Popular Film and Television .
Lovecraft, H. P. (1936). The Shadow over Innsmouth. 
Tait, S. (2008). Pornographies of Violence? Internet Spectatorship on Body Horror. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 91-111.

Rija Faisal

(Q). Reyes (2014), describes Body Horror as being a “fictional representation of the body exceeding itself or falling apart, either opening up or being altered past the point where it would be recognised by normative understandings of human corporeality.” How do The Colour out of Space and Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth make use of this definition to explore themes of the unknown?

The Shadow Over Innsmouth

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a tale by American writer H.P. Lovecraft. The tale can be viewed as Lovecraft’s own comment on the advancement of technology that was beginning to emerge in his time and of its growing influence on the lives of American people and on their lifestyle, and of the potential dangers such an influence could pose.

After the Industrial Revolution, the early 1900s saw a great boom in technological development and the field of scientific research. Lovecraft uses The Shadow Over Innsmouth to explore the danger humans were exposing themselves to by exploring new and unfamiliar territories, and by seeking unknown knowledge that could potentially end up being more destructive rather than beneficial for the human race.

In The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the unknown elements of this new ‘scientific’ age of humans is represented in the form of a character named Zadok Allen. In the novel, Zadok is a representation of the knowledge the human race could gain by pursuing scientific interests. At the same time, Zadok also represents the terrible consequences that could befall the human race if they were to acquire such knowledge.

This idea of technological advancement being seen as something to fear rather than to pursue is further highlighted in a more subtle way, as well, by the mention of railroad tracks. For the narrator of the tale, the railroad tracks represent an escape route from Innsmouth, but the tracks are rusty and abandoned. This neglected state of the rail tracks implies how a part of technology has been abandoned before in the past, and thus should be left as it is and not be taken up again. And even when the narrator does manage to escape from Innsmouth, his escape does not save him in the end. Even with technology’s help, he is not saved. This is the writer’s way of implying that technology, therefore, could potentially end up being a lot more trouble than its worth.

In Lovecraft’s writing of the tale, we can clearly see that the concept of placing oneself and the situation in the hands of forces that are beyond our control or understanding is not portrayed as a favourable thing to do. In the case of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, this is applied to technology. The writer distrusts the largely unknown world of science and all that science attempts to explain.  

I believe The Shadow Over Innsmouth does make use of the Reyes (2014) description. In his tale, Lovecraft is commenting on the dangerous, but inevitable, path that humans are choosing to tread- the path of technology- which might potentially lead to the downfall of society. In this tale, technology can be viewed, metaphorically, as a sort of alien deity. While Lovecraft acknowledges that technology could hold value for society, he also points out that, just as a deity, technology holds the ability to be far more superior to humans, and it cannot be fashioned to become our servant.

Humans and technology exist in an equilibrium, but what might happen if technology, our own creation, turns on us someday? What would it turn us into?

What would become of the human race then?  

Colour out of Space

The 2019 film “Colour out of Space” is a science fiction body horror film based on the The Colour out of Space, a short story by H.P. Lovecraft. The film deals with a meteor that lands in the house of the Gardner family, after which they find themselves battling an extraterrestrial organism that infects the mind and body.

I believe the Reyes (2014) description of the “body exceeding itself or falling apart, either opening up or being altered past the point where it would be recognized by normative understandings of human corporeality” applies perfectly to this movie, as the entire plot deals with the mutant organism infecting the minds and bodies of humans, leading them to experience bursts of insanity. The human body loses control of itself, and takes on aggressive qualities, transforming the human being into something entirely inhuman, into an alien creature. This fear of becoming something other is the main focus of the film’s plot, and what the story is actually about, the fear of the Gardner family not knowing what the alien creature will do to them, and whether there is any way to stop it or to get free from its hold.

We can view the aftermath of the meteorite landing and the “birth” of the Colour- the purplish hue the sky turns to after the meteorite lands- as seeming to point towards some sort of alien testing. It is shown that the Colour only effects a small, remote region, almost as if this is only the beginning stage and some sort of preliminary sample, and the worst is actually yet to happen. This appears to be done to gain information about humans, judge the Earth itself, and to take a sample for next time, almost as if the worst is yet to come.

We as the viewers know that even if the danger is temporarily over, traces of the extraterrestrial material the meteorite brings with it are still present in the sky, and no one knows what that might lead to. There is fear over the unknown. The uncertainty of not knowing what will happen could itself drive the humans in the film towards madness, and that, I think, fits in with the description of Body Horror very well.

References:

(n.d.). Literature/ The Shadow Over Innsmouth tvtropes.org Retrieved from: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth

Daniel Kurland (JAN 24,2020) Color Out of Space Ending Explained screenrant.com Retrieved from: https://screenrant.com/color-space-movie-ending-explained-lovecraft-alien-threat/

Looking at Napier and Cavallaro (2006), discuss how anime is culturally ‘located’ – in the East or West, or somewhere else?

To delve into an encompassing definition for the organizational nature of anime is not, in procession, comparatively difficult.

Yet, to subtly pinpoint its contextual cultural location of Anime, is a difficult ground to define.

For, we must see in terms of, origins, identity, intellectual analysis, fandom through formal realizing of the and location of its popularity.

In all appearances, it appears that it is managed through origins its creation in japan a significant vehicle, style, and content of modernized  “Japanese culture”.

To recharacterize its origins is considered by being a concept audience  from  “The East“, Indeed, the question remains. Where is its cultural position of Anime? Where is it today?

The direction and subsistence of axis to where such culture is in localisation: where it exists, resides, is interpreted from and further continually manifested.

To this, I argue the cultural location of ideological recognition exists more in the position in the etherealities of a subspace. the location is not to deified cultural tradition or in a geographical sense: in the globalized landscape of its enthused audiences.

Anime as a popular contextual medium by those who (in terms of culture, exported exposition, and said intellectualized ownership) are defined by demographics directly about the set of perceptions held by members of its audience.

The cultural location is found through the definition of its operating fanbase and audience.

Yet yes, an argument exists whereas to – The conclusions the culture is consumed in “The West” reality,  as perused and enjoyed by the most vocal part of an audience is but a social truism.

Indeed, herein is a evoacated notion and a postulated of inherent preconceived privilege.

Anime (as an international cultural phenomenon, and an extension of Manga) was first and foremost has always been a cultural phenomenon grounded within the varying popular subcultures of Japan.

Although  (exampled by the iconic works of Osamu Tezuka notably Astro Boy (Tezuka, 1963) , or to refer or relate its export to the west during Katsuhiro Otomo Akira  (Otomo, 1988)

From these perceptions, from the experienced bizarrity and othering of exposition divined from its origins “The East”( in this case, Japan)  it has been accepted into mainstream culture, Accpeted as apopularized in society is considered socially assimilated by western audiences, in a studied and fascinatingly ornate and homogenized manner.

The fanbase we find represented and appreciate popularly mass-manufactured productual narrative content of capitalism driven delivery to the hungry markets of  “The West” (The U.S. I hold in contention as the most advertised vocal and central audience, and the consumption ) Anime is uniquely both and neither, ‘Western’ and “Eastern/oriental” cultural locality at the same.

The cultural locality of anime is beyond physical definition:  there exists no tradition of ideas when one discusses and analyses the distinction of the accession of a culture of the cultist like fanbase.

A conceptuality where we find no inherent distinction of nationality, gender, ethnicity, yet subscribership of professed fanaticism of fandom towards different renditions of titles and the medium and phenomena of anime in general.

Susan Napier consider one such anime directors the iconic and ineffable Hayao Miyazaki (founder and head figure of the now reverently widely known, famous Studio Ghibli) indeed had some influences from origins of Western literature, specifically European stylizations “A treasure trove of children’s authors”  – (Miyazaki 1995a, p 118) (Cavallaro, 2006)

In which I continue to delineate the argument that Anime, although greatly influenced by narratives from “The West”, has in turn influenced Japanese Anime, in turn, exported back to audiences of The West.

Its cultural locality exists in the appreciated through experiences of a borderless, globalized phenomenon.

The current identity related to origination cannot be defined from the perspectives of locality is not “ownership”.

Through the contextual landscapes in terms of transgeography, we must see mediums as they are and not through generalized topography of tropes.

A cultural phenomenon exists in today’s world to appreciate and respect and not to the market which is most popularly accessed from.

Bibliography

Cavallaro, D. (2006). The Anime Art of Hayao. London: McFarland & Company.

Otomo, K. (Director). (1988). Akira [Motion Picture].

Tezuka, O. (Director). (1963). Astro Boy [Motion Picture].