The weird and wonderful adventures of cosplay

(Akihabara News 2007)

Before attending the Supernova exhibition in Brisbane on 6 April 2008, I was unfamiliar with the term 'cosplay'. To an outsider, this lifestyle first appeared to be strange and amusing at the same time. Cosplay is different to furry fandom. The term is short for "costume play" and is a Japanese subculture centered on dressing as characters from manga, anime, tokusatsu, television shows, video games, fantasy movies, Japanese pop music bands, Visual Kei, fantasy music stories and novels. In some circles like those present at the exhibition, cosplay has been expanded to mean wearing a costume.

Cosplay is seen at public events such as video game shows and pop culture exhibitions like Supernova. The whole pop culture experience brought back memories of my time spent in Tokyo's Akihabara district, with a large number of toy stores devoted to toys and figurines and several cafes devoted to anime fans. "Cosplay teeters somewhere between a healthy, semi-sanctioned way of acting out fantasies and the kind of red flag that's thrown up when you see a kid with a fascination for his parent's knickers," (McCormick in Lipke 2007, 18).

Photographer Elena Dorfman spent a year visiting 160 or more cosplay conventions including Anime Overdose and Yaoi-Con. "This is a new version of Trekkies, but way more sophisticated. It's an internal and external exploration of who they are, and what they'd like to be," (Dorfman in Lipke 2007, 18). This new generation of non-conformists are enamored with Japanese anime and video games in an inordinate effort to dress up as their favourite characters and act out parts of their lives in fantasy mode (Lipke 2007, 18).

The cosplay costumes are extremely elaborate and require the designer to spend months handcrafting their creation (Santoso, 1998). The costumes must adhere to the specific designs of the characters' outfit and the intricate details are very critical (Wikipedia 2008). Other cosplay performers will purchase their costumes from artists or designers in order to participate in costume contents at cosplay events (Santoso 1998). Cosplay can also mean the use of costumes for sexual purposes (Wikipedia 2008). It requires sexual play while dressed up and is also known as sexual role playing or fetishism (Wikipedia 2008).

The trend of cosplay has arrived in Australia and it is mirroring USA in which costumes may be chosen from sources other than just anime or manga (Wikipedia 2008). Any sources including comics, computer games, science fiction, fantasy movies, TV shows and novels provide inspiration for costumes. Cosplay is generally only seen in capital cities, however small social groups often host their own local events in regional areas (Wikipedia 2008).

The majority of participants at cosplay gatherings come on stage as their online avatars (Balakrishnan 2007). Why do people decide to cosplay in distinct online identities? It was found that women avatars created by men were very highly sexualised. Women on the other hand created their avatars to directly oppose the stereotypical female avatars by throwing in short hair and glasses to not present femininity (Balakrishnan 2007). This is a direct online extension of the historical battle of the sexes (Balakrishnan 2007). Web 2.0 assist people to reach online games, dating sites, social networks, blogs and virtual worlds.

In Japan, cosplay has attracted negative sexual connotations over the years and many Japanese people feel that cosplay is reprehensible (Wikipedia 2008). In contrast, Americans and Australians who cosplay often refer to themselves as "geeks" or "otaku" and use this to embody themselves in a sociological group (Wikipedia 2008). An otaku in Japan means standing on the bottom rungs of the nation's social ladder (Wikipedia 2008).

At the conclusion of the exhibition I came away with the opinion that while this lifestyle appears weird and amusing, as with any lifestyle or sexual choice it must be respected and not subject to mockery or ridicule.

References

Akihabara News. 2008. Latest news. http://www.akihabaranews.com/ (accessed 2 May 2008).

Balakrishnan, R. 2007. Proximity peeps into e-branding age. Knight Ridder Tribune Business News. June 21.

Lipke, D. 2007. Compass fresh perspectives on style. DNR. 37 (17): 18.

Santoso, W. 1998. What is cosplay?http://www.nyx.net/~wsantoso/cosptext.html (accessed 30 April 2008).

Wikipedia. 2008. Cosplay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay (accessed 22 April 2008).

Web 2.0 vs. Web 1.0

(Digital Inspiration 2008)

Do you remember Web 1.0? Not long ago, web 1.0 was all about reading, companies, client-severs, HTML, home pages, taxonomies, portals, wires, ownership control, IPOs, Netscape, web forms, screen scraping, dial-up connections and hardware costs (Cong and Du 2007, 7; O’Reilly 2006; Treese 2006, 15). Web 2.0 contrasts its predecessor nowadays by being all about writing, communities, peer-to-peer relationships, social networking, blogs, XML, RSS, tags, wireless, sharing, trade sales, Google, web application, APIs, broadband and bandwidth costs (Cong and Du 2007, 8; Treese 2006, 15; O’Reilly 2006).

A key aspect of Web 2.0 is that it guides in an era of shared knowledge with no distinction between amateur, professional, consumer or expert (Cong and Du 2007, 8). The second generation of Internet primarily focuses on exploring online information and collaborative technologies such as blogs, wikis and social networking (Cong and Du 2007, 7; O’Reilly 2006). It is the evolution of the Internet into a place for communities of people to share experiences, ideas, music, video and pictures (Cong and Du 2007, 8). "The World Wide Web is being used as a platform to collaborate and share information in many new ways. Web applications are becoming a forum to discuss problems, contribute ideas, and provide solutions. These web services have become useful and popular because they enable people to connect to each other; and the benefits of this network effect grow even more powerful when more people use them," (Cong and Du 2007, 8; O’Reilly 2006). The production of ideas these days takes place in a collaborative, participatory environment which breaks down the boundaries between producers and consumers (Bruns 2007).

Web 1.0 is fairly one-sided in the collation of information online and offline, whereas web 2.0 is all about collaborating and produsage (Bruns 2007; Creamer 2008, 1). In today’s world of web 2.0, the thought of creating content is seemingly effortless to most online users. It has dramatically changed the way that people all around the world are connecting with each other. We are now sharing ideas and using our creativity for a greater good. Bruns supports this theory and argues, “user-led content creation in this new model harnesses the collected, collective intelligence of all participants, and manages— though in some cases better than in others—to direct their contributions to where they are best able to make a positive impact,” (Bruns 2007, 1).

The impact of produsage is intense for media producers because audiences often exert their new powers over them to achieve specific needs, wants and desires. A downside to creating content online is the uncertain nature of copyright and IP rights between media producers and their collaborative audience.

Collaboration and produsage is a feature of web 2.0 and will continue to be a prominent feature of web 3.0 in the future. Due to the increasing popularity and number of online communities, will offline communities completely disappear in the future? In my opinion, online communities will never fully acquire the personal, emotional and physical intimacies which are features of offline communities, however, several online communities are trying to close the gap.

References

Bruns, A. 2007. Chapter 1: Introduction: Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. http://produsage.org/files/Produsage%20-%20Introduction.pdf (accessed 14 April 2008).

Creamer, M. 2008. It's web 3.0, and someone else's content is king. Advertising Age, 79 (15): 1-2.

Cong, Y. and Du, H. 2007. Welcome to the World of Web 2.0. The CPA Journal 77 (5): 6-9.

Digital Inspiration. 2008. The difference between web 1.0 and web 2.0 http://www.labnol.org/internet/favorites/the-difference-between-web-10-and-web-20/665/ (accessed 5 April 2008).

O’Reilly, T. 2006. Web 2.0 compact definition: Trying again. http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/web_20_compact.html (accessed 12 April 2008).