Saturday, December 15, 2007
EOY 2007 was held yesterday and after 4 years of attending local cosplay conventions, I don't really have anything to say about them anymore.
I guess I'm bored. I used to see them as big events, something to look forward to during the holidays, but now, I'm not very keen on them anymore. Now, whenever I go for these events, it's to help out at the Anime Club booth - basically it's just an opportunity to spend some time with the club and do something that's not related to studying. Nice cosplay costumes are a bonus, but recently, it seems like there are just too many identical Gothic Lolitas/Random Visual Kei-style goths and punks. And some of these kids dressing up don't even listen to VK music! I guess that's what happens when subcultures and street styles are (to use rather Marxist-inflected language) co-opted by the mass culture industries, commodified and mass re-produced till it becomes as hollow as the latest fad in the fashion magazines. But I'm giving a misleading impression - VK has, for quite a long time, been closely associated with consumerism (just take a visit to La Foret and look at the all the brands there). And most postmodern subcultures are not separable from consumption.
I suppose cosplay is also losing some of its attraction for me because I'm not keeping up with the newest anime (it's pretty obvious lots of anime fans are not watching licensed ODEX DVDs, but that's an open secret) and so I don't recognise many of the characters people are cosplaying. I'm also quite turned off by the excess of 'moe' characters. Thank goodness the Naruto/Bleach/Gundam Seed craze has died down a little. It's alright if you really like D-gray Man or Trinity Blood and want to cosplay the characters, but seeing double or triple Allen Walkers walking around is a turn-off. I guess the Frankfurt school argument about reproduction and the loss of 'aura' applies here as well.
Maybe a day will come when I am so tired of local cosplay conventions that I don't want to attend them anymore. I saw some of my seniors at EOY (and one was actually cosplaying!), so maybe I still have a few more years to go before the boredom really sets in. For now, I'll still go for cosplay events together with the club, and perhaps it'll be more fun if we do a club cosplay together. But if you know the club, you know that's as easy as trying to move Mount Everest.
kaoru said at 6:40 PM
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