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I’m not a cosplayer, but I am someone who owns over 1,500 board games. That’s not including all of the D&D and other RPG books I own.
I’m also a non-profit program director, a Ph.D. student in Political Science, an MBA, a happily married man, and the father of two wonderful twin girls.
As a member of GenX, I learned to love child-like things while rejecting the childishness of the Boomers. All of the things I own are things I can share with my family and friends. I fully embrace the wonder and beauty of popular culture – from Aristophanes to Michael Bay – without a drop of cynicism. For those who mock celebrants of popular culture and recreation, I can only say that we work to live and that we should never live to work.
I believe that the joy that hobbies, games, and recreation give to people is one of the virtues of the state.
I wish I had come up with that.
Just a few more examples of the “cos play” impulse before the name: New Orleans Mardi Gras krewes and Philadelphia mummers societies, Society for Creative Anachronism, sci-fi cons, perhaps even soccer hooligans. All have costuming and a deeply involving social structure.
Don’t forget all the Civil War and Revolutionary War reenactors out there, preferring to escape into a bloody war fantasy instead of dealing with the crushing realities of the 21st century economy.
And the Monty Python sketch about the dare-not-speak-its-name people who gathered to dress up as mice, squeak, and <shamed to admit it> eat cheese.
I don’t know what goes on at “cos-play” events, but with the possible exception of dressing up at sci-fi cons, all of the other activities above have goals or products to which the costuming is complementary but incidental: a performance or exhibition, practicing arts and crafts, terrorizing opposing teams’ fans.
And I have to take exception to “escape into … fantasy instead of dealing with the crushing realities of the 21st century economy“. The SCA, historical re-enactors, etc. flourished long before the Obama Recession.
You may want to get your sarcasm detector recalibrated if you’re going to read posts from Misthiocracy.
When I do it it’s called “irony”, not “sarcasm”.
;-)
Since we can’t see your face on the internet, I guess we’ll let you call that ironic. :D
It’s not so much of a stretch to call cosplay a type of performance or craft. Some (though not all) people choose to stay in character, but pretty much all of them are either trying to show off either their artistic ability or their creativity.
I don’t “recalibrate” to people’s sarcasm; they calibrate to mine.
Actually, it is a stretch. Life as a “performance” isn’t in the same league as an objective performance such as doing marching maneuvers while playing in a band, or making mead and practicing martial arts. Maybe somewhere, somewhen the conceit of “the singer is the song” is a coherent thought, but regardless, it is not the same as “the singer sings a song”.
Cosplay is not a “lifestyle.” Apart from a vanishingly small minority of nutjobs, the majority of cosplayers dress up maybe a handful of weekends a year. Some of the really dedicated ones might do it once a month, but even those are rare.
FYI: This is Gene Roddenberry’s and Majel Barrett’s wedding photo:
I’m just sayin’…