Cosplay as a Subversive Act

As is my usual lately, I've been thinking a lot about cosplay. My research into it has been fairly consistent, but that means that it's a slow growth which comes from a lot of reading incredibly different and somewhat unrelated material and then spending another chunk of time figuring out exactly how it all works together. And meanwhile, I'm busy working out logistics of more fieldwork and more interviews to make sure that what I think I'm seeing pairs up with how people are actually experiencing their cosplay.

One of the more interesting aspects of cosplay that I am beginning to uncover is just how subversive of a performance the act of cosplay actually is. Cosplay's subversion lies in the alterations of the narrative, enacted by individuals who have agency over narrative, performance, and storytelling. So I wanted to spend some time today getting into just how I see cosplay's subversion happening, and how this works in the larger context of anthropology and the world outside cosplay.

Cosplay and Story

The best place to start is potentially the place of story. Obviously, cosplay begins with story. It starts the minute a cosplayer watches a movie, a television show, plays a video game, and connects innately with a character. The connection can occur for a variety of reasons, some which are incredibly personal and individualised, and others that can be for practical reasons. One cosplayer has commented that they typically gravitate toward cosplaying characters who have characteristics they want to embody. Other cosplayers enjoy particular styles of characters. One I chatted to said she prefers cosplaying characters who are very young girls, particularly Lolita style mostly because she sees her own body shape as fitting that style of character, though she also finds them quite cute.

Whether it’s because of their practical style or their personal connection to the character’s personality, the cosplay is chosen from a standing narrative. The character fits within this narrative and fills a particular role. The character has a particular personality, and a way of holding themselves which needs to be as present in the performance of the cosplay as the character’s outfit.

In one of my conversations, a cosplayer actively complained to me about when cosplayers don’t perform their character properly. Her primary example of this was when she attended a con and saw a group of people all cosplaying as Sasuke from Naruto. She complained about seeing them “jumping around” and acting “silly” in a way that she saw very unfitting to Sasuke’s character. For her, the processes of cosplay were seen as an inherently long and difficult process. In fact, the processes were precisely what set cosplay apart from the simple act of “dressing up”. If you’re going to go through that much effort to put together a cosplay, according to her, then you may as well do the extra effort of acting like the character as well.

Sasuke Cosplay

By cosplayer Kuma

Other cosplayers echoed similar sentiments. When discussing the aspect of having different body shapes than the character’s body, one cosplayer said that it wasn’t about things like quality of costume or how exact the physical representation; the importance was on the characterisation. How well did the cosplayer demonstrate the character within their body?

The idea of telling a story non-verbally is not very unique or new. Any dancer will tell you the importance of storytelling without words - the way they move their body around air, or other bodies, is done with the utmost practice and purpose. Each movement is done to tell the story they have plotted out and intend to. When chatting with Nerdlesque performers, the importance on the "story" being told was heavily present. Each act was communicated to me as a story - a narrative they were crafting with exacting purpose, and this purpose was effectively communicated even to a non-practiced viewer like myself.

Stories are always told in a variety of ways. Even traditional narratives were told with more than just words. Performers (and I use this word as opposed to "actors" for a reason) may don a mask and dance or move about in other ways to tell the story of the character whose mask they've adorned.

Cosplay, in more than one way, is a mask performers wear. They adorn themselves like the character, and like the performers of old mythic tales, they must also take their performance seriously and act the part to the best of their abilities. Cosplayers, like other performers of narrative, have agency over their story. The story is not told passively through them, but actively. They choose to tell the stories in the ways they feel most compelled to through the presence of the narrative in their own limbs. And because the story is always given to performers with this level of agency, the story is also capable of being subverted in order to fit meanings or interpretations the performers wish to communicate.

Story as Subversion

As many of you who have been kicking around this blog for a while will know, I'm quite the fan of mythology and folklore. Everything I do - even cosplay - is going to relate to mythology and folklore at some point, and from my experience I never have to struggle that much to do it.

One important thing to keep in mind about mythology and folklore as we move is that folklore and myth can always be subversive. Sometimes this is very obvious and loud. More often than not, it's quiet and hidden, but always working away. This is because stories are from people - so much so that I believe that people are stories. We are defined by them, explained by them, connect through them. Every conversation I have with a friend is told through stories. Every cherished memory I share with my husband is a story I hold close to my heart. I could go on about this for ages, and maybe one day I will, but for now we can settle on the fact that to be human is to tell stories. And because we are social beings, and the stories we tell are, likewise, an intricate part of our social and cultural landscapes, the stories we tell are also social beings. As social beings themselves, they are just as influenced by our ideological foundations as everything else very “us”.

The downside of that is that our stories can cement social narratives of oppression. Patriarchy and racism can become embedded in our narratives. I talked a little about this in a video essay on the Myth of Maternity - the social myth often told in many patriarchal western countries that women are inherently maternal figures.

But stories can also change. And here we see how subversion can come into play. People do not just cohere to oppressive social systems - they also reject them. And when we start to reject certain power structures, we begin to see which narratives continue these structures and which don't. And we can change the narratives that reaffirm these structures in order to shift the narratives to fit a different ideology. I've spent a lot of time on this blog talking about Seth Kunin's jonglerie - where individuals juggle their multiple identities and connections to differing ideologies and through this emphasize or de-emphasize different parts of a myth to fit their various shifting ideologies and identities. Even though I talk about jonglerie a lot, I do it because it's an example beyond just myself of someone in the academic study of mythology seeing how storyteller agency can change a narrative. But understanding narratives as subversive goes beyond the singular example of Kunin's jonglerie.

Michael Kinsella, a scholar in the study of legends and legend-telling, also focuses his definition of legend and legend-telling as inherently able to be subversive. For Kinsella, legends are “context-dependent” and inherently “performative”; the function of legends are to identify and channel all the anxieties and ideologies of communities and folk groups.

As societies and folk groups change their basic ideologies and understandings, their stories change as well in order to accommodate these alterations in identification.

Horror drag example from performer Sharon Needles - a good example of some of the differences and subversions possible in drag and performance more generally.

Subverting Gender in Cosplay

There are many different ways that cosplay can be subversive in their performance. The agency creators and performers have over their cosplays also means that they leverage some level of agency over the narrative itself. By transforming the narrative in their performances, the shifting interpretation being levied on the original narrative, or the criticism or reflection being asked of the original narrative, is also carried forward and impacting individual audience members as well as the performer themselves. Most of these social critiques or differing interpretations are concerned around discussions of, or representations of, gender.

Perhaps the most well-known way cosplay questions gender is in genderbending cosplays. In genderbending cosplays, cosplayers take a character who identifies as one particular gender in the original work, but then the cosplayer portrays the character as a different gender. The most common is taking male characters and portraying them as female, but the opposite also happens with female characters being made male. There are other gender transformations possible, however, including people taking binary identified characters (either male or female) and making them androgynous (some define this as making the character non-binary, but I choose the word androgynous here in order to avoid the common mistake of connecting non-binary identities to androgyny).

Gender itself is a typical social performance. Judith Butler uses the word "performativity" to describe how gender can be performed. Essentially what Butler is saying is that there is no inherent meaning to being a "girl" or being labelled as "girl" without the constant repetitive acts "girlness" that society enacts. Basically, the only way that being a "girl" carries meaning is when societies and individuals dress, act, and perform being a "girl".

To reconnect Butler to our previous conversation about story and subversion, we can see that these performative acts of “girlness” we can call “the myth of girlness” – a story of what it means to be a girl that is told and retold by society. And this performance of femininity changes and alters as our social understanding of “girlness” changes as well.

I mention all this because Butler’s idea of “performativity” is also at the heart of cosplay. When my cosplay performant complained about people not acting the part in cosplay, she was referring to their performativity. It is not enough to dress like a character, but you must reiterate all the other elements of their story in order to show what it means to be that identity.

Male Cruella-de-Ville by Connor Gray

This also combines with the social performance of gender when it comes to genderbending cosplays. Butler’s work spent time delving into drag. When performing female impersonation, drag performers are enacting these social narratives of “girlness”. By doing that, it forces the wider society to realise and recognize the narratives of “girlness” it communicates regularly. Drag by its nature is subversive – it demonstrates a subversion understanding of what it means to be “girl” and what it means to be “boy” by forcing different gender representations and understandings within their performance.

When performing a genderbending cosplay, cosplayers are not just relying on the performativity of their character, but also on the performativity of gender. Even though a defining characteristic of the original character – their gender – has been altered, the audience needs to still understand that the performance is of the original character. But combined with that, the cosplayer also has to perform gender. They have to tell the story of the chosen gender – or the chosen confusion of combined gender in the case of androgyny.

Genderbending cosplays can be chosen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes its because the cosplayer self-identifies as one particular gender, while the character is identified as a different one. The cosplayer will then choose to change the gender of the character to fit their own self-definition. Another reason may be for representation. This is more typical in male-to-female genderbends, where a character is originally male but is performed as female by the cosplayer. For these instances, the performer chooses to change a character due to a lack of options given by the original content of suitable female characters.

For whatever reason the cosplayer chooses to perform a genderbend, the genderbend subverts audience expectation on two fronts. The first is the expectation of the original character. By presenting the original character as true to form with the simple alteration of gender, it subverts our social understanding of gender being a definitive hierarchical definition of self. The performative narratives surrounding gender help to solidify typical social norms which work by suppressing and oppressing gender binaries and differences.

On the one hand, performing a character exactly the same with just gendered differences demonstrates just how little gendered differences can affect the importance of a character. A character’s strength or importance can remain unchanged even with the shift of gender. On the other hand, any performance of a gendered character is going to come accompanied by the performance of the gender itself. For genderbending, that performance is in the presentation of the character’s altered gender – performing the original character as inherently “girl” or “boy”. Like drag, this performance causes the audience to consider gender’s social performance.

Inosuke genderbend cosplay by Jessica Nigri

The performance of genderbended cosplay is one form of how cosplay can be inherently subversive. The performance of gender can alter our understanding of character and of gender. One act of agency on our understanding of gender an alter our interpretations of gender and character simultaneously.

I think, alongside genderbending cosplays, there are other forms of cosplay that are inherently subversive. Sexy cosplays, for example, are another form of cosplay that subverts expectation of narrative, character, and what it means to be sexy. But I think there’s something even more interesting going on here. I think that on some level, even the most basic act of cosplay – not shifting its appearance at all – can still be subversive in some respects because the act of storytelling itself can be subversive. And cosplay is, above all else, an inherently storytelling-based performance.