"Stranger than Fiction: Fan Identity in Cosplay" was written by Nicolle Lamerichs in 2011. She writes from the point of view of a participant observer, which was one of the attractions of this paper for me. Her main argument is that "costuming is a form of fan appropriation that transforms, performs, and actualizes an existing story in close connection to the fan's own identity".
She starts the article by describing her first experience cosplaying at a convention, where she cosplayed as Aerith from Final Fantasy VII in a Final Fantasy group. From the beginning of the article, I can identify with her experiences, particularly when she comments that one of the members of the group was recruited online (which happens all the time as cosplayers who love a particular series will actively advertise for more members of the group - I myself have done this in setting up my Kuroshitsuji cosplay group). She then goes on to discuss the origins of cosplay and its original roots in American Science Fiction conventions.
She goes on to explain that she is analysing cosplay in terms of performance - she uses a definition taken from Henry Bial in The Performance Studies Reader: "The term 'performance' most commonly refers to a tangible, bounded event that involves the presentation of rehearsed artistic actions…We can extend this idea of a performance to other events that involve a performer (someone doing something) and a spectator (someone observing something)" She explains that cosplayers can be practical in sometimes cosplaying a character they are not so attached to because sometimes the costume is able to made easily (which is a practical consideration and one I relate to - I originally wanted to cosplay as a character called Angela from Kuroshitsuji but have put it on the back burner because she wears a very complicated dress and has massive wings. It has been just too impractical to design her costume. I chose to cosplay as Grell mostly because his costume is less complicated and also because I already had a long red coat that was similar to his). She mentions that her first experience of cosplay as Aerith, she was not particularly attached to the character and in subsequent cosplays, she has picked characters that she is more fond of.
She then discusses cosplay and its context within society. She mentions how it is more acceptable to cosplay in Japan then anywhere else in the world, as it has become a part of the popular culture. In Western society, though, cosplay is usually restricted to conventions. She explains what happens at a convention, and talks about the performances at a convention - cosplay parade, competition and the act of walking around the convention and having pictures taken with fans.
In the next part of the paper, she starts to talk about the performativity of dressing up, summing it up in terms of cosplay as "Through the acts of constructing and wearing a costume, the fan constructs his or her identity in relation to fiction and enacts it". She then reviews Judith Butler's theories in perfomativity, mostly acknowledging that Butler's theories but at times criticising that sometimes Butler's view is little narrow, not looking at the more playful aspects of drag and not taking the motivations of the subject into account. She discusses crossplay and the motivations behind this: "Crossplay can be only an occasional practice, enacted because the player likes a certain character of the opposite gender; it can be part of a parody (e.g., Man-Faye; Sailor Bubba); it can be motivated by a player's preference for a certain outfit despite the gender of the character. Some crossplayers enjoy the challenge of behaving like a member of a different gender, while others see themselves as publicly declaring the fluidity of gender. Additionally, crossplayers choose their characters according to more than merely gender." Because I myself crossplay as Grell (although in terms of character, he is a very interesting character to investigate - he himself identifies as female, refers to himself using female pronouns and is actively transgender in a time period where this would be impossible), I can identify with some of these concepts, mostly because I like the character and I have fun acting as him for the day as he is very flamboyant and over the top.
STILL BEING CONTINUED
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