Media, Culture, Technology

Tag: Fans

Thoughts on Force Friday

A little over a month ago, a huge bomb went off in the Star Wars community, as merchandise for the newest film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, hit stores a whopping three month in advance, an event lovingly called “Force Friday.” Shelves were flooded with action figures, board games, apparel, and even notebooks, all for a film that hadn’t even been released yet. Stranger still, is that Force Friday was a huge success. Crowds of people showed up, waiting in lines and saving spots, all to buy merchandise for characters, vehicles, and worlds they don’t even know much about. In fact, much of what was released hadn’t even been seen until that day. Being both a fascinated scholar and a huge nerd, I realized I’d have to investigate.

Much like Black Friday, stores opened at midnight with freshly stocked shelves and a hoard of shoppers lined up at the doors. Being located in Carlisle, far from urban shopping epicenters, I believed that going after class during the day would be adequate for both finding people to interview as a scholar and stuff to buy as a fan. On both counts I was wrong. I arrived at the local Target at the end of the day to find nearly empty shelves and almost no Star Wars shoppers. I had clearly underestimated the ravenous and dedicated nature of my people.

Still I did manage to get some opinions on the matter, both through my own experience and through conversations with other fans. Force Friday was an incredibly impressive feat to pull off in a marketing sense, and I honestly can’t think of many other franchises that could’ve executed a campaign of this magnitude without a hitch. Not to mention the majority of advertising was done via the Internet, with little to no television ads for it. Most of the shoppers I interviewed had learned about the event via YouTube.

As for Force Friday’s overall effect on the franchise as a whole; my feelings are a little more mixed. On the one hand, this event was incredibly inclusive, catering to both long time fans and newer, more casual ones. It also generated a lot of hype, and I know that I personally was excited to see all the new stuff for the film and to get my hands on some Legos once I got to Wal-Mart and found a set in my price range. It’s fun to speculate on what the role of these characters and items will be in the story. However on the other, I can’t help but worry a bit about how easy it is for marketers to sell Star Wars merchandise without fans even seeing the movie. In a way, it insures the film will be a success even if it winds up being awful. If all they made were trailers for example, then they would still be turning a profit even if no movies were ever released.

Kyloe Ren

Even with the best intentions however, assuming that Disney is really trying to make the best film they can, there’s still an issue I see developing. When speaking with fans, I had a chance to geek out and ask them what they thought the movie was going to be like. I heard some awesome theories as we exchanged ideas, and I can honestly say I hope some of our guesses were right. There lies the best and worst thing about Force Friday, however: making attachments and building up hope. The reason I feel fans are so ready to buy these early releases is that we are handed tons of material, but little to no rules on how to engage with it. For the months leading up to the film we get to tell this story ourselves, and we get to decide who characters like “Kylo Ren” (picture above) are, how events like “the battle of Jakku” will go, and even how the new ships operate and fly about. All the while, we’re making connections to facts and characters that might not be true, and our expectations are being set the impossible standards of our near infinite imaginations. We aren’t getting connected to a story, but instead to the things related to it, which means even at its best, people might wind up being somewhat let down when the movie doesn’t accomplish everything they had a chance to imagine.

I’m not saying The Force Awakens is going to be a let down, and in all honesty, I am excited to see it. I also think building hype is both a valuable asset to filmmakers and a fun experience for fans. My concern is something that stretches a little farther out than Force Friday, or even the Star Wars franchise as a whole. A lot of these franchises, like Star Wars, Marvel, etc., start off with a lot of heart, and people have gotten incredibly attached to them as icons of pop culture. While I still think these titles have a lot of that potential left, my fear is that we as fans are so hungry for more, with our constant need to generate buzz, to look up cast lists, to watch and rewatch trailers, and to just constantly demand more, that we’re draining these things. Disney already has six Star Wars films planned out, and fans have already started speculating and writing articles about all of them. Marketers can be blamed for some of this, but we’re the ones who’ve developed a fan culture allowing marketers to do what they do. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and our impatience may be leading us closer and closer to the day when a new Star Wars movie becomes something that makes us sick to our stomachs.

Cosplay vs. Nerd Elitism

If you’ve been to any comic, manga, or video game convention within the past twenty years, chances are you’ve encountered some convention-goers masquerading as fictional characters in colorful, creative costumes. What you’re seeing are not amateur actors, untimely trick-or-treaters, or delusional folks going through cartoon-based identity crises. These are passionate fans, dedicated to representing their favorite TV, movie, game and comic book characters. These are cosplayers.

Cosplay, coming from the Japanese term, kosupure (コスプレ), is a portmanteau of the words ‘costume’ and ‘play.’ It’s a growing hobby in which fans create and wear costumes in order to show them off at conventions, enter contests, meet fellow fans, and further embrace their interests in the characters they’re portraying. Though originally the majority of cosplay was devoted to anime characters, the hobby has expanded to include characters from a variety of genres including science fiction thrillers, blockbuster action movies, and even occasionally characters that are entirely made up by the cosplayers themselves. Some are incredibly complex, such as the woman with sword and pink hair pictured on the left below, while some, like that handsome devil on the right, are a tad simpler.

Leigh and Theo in COstume 2

You’d think such a niche hobby would fit wonderfully into the sort of “nerd culture” associated with conventions and pop culture. And yet here’s what Pat Broderick, a popular comic book artist who has worked on such characters as Batman and Captain Marvel, had to say about cosplay via Facebook: “Today’s heads up. If you’re a cosplay personality, please don’t send me a friend request. If you’re a convention promoter and you’re building your show around cosplay events and mega multiple media guests don’t invite me. You bring nothing of value to the shows, and if you’re a promoter pushing cosplay as your main attraction you’re not helping the industry or comics market. Thank you.”

There seems to be a pushback against the hobby, even from some professionals in the comic industry such as Broderick. Broderick goes on to denounce cosplay as “selfies in costume” and as a blatant form of “narcissism” that has  been gaining a disturbing amount of support from fans and others in the industry. Complaints such as these put cosplay on the front of a growing conflict between casual and “hardcore” nerds.

A sort of elitism has grown around this conflict, leading to a form of “gatekeeping”–that is,  the process by which one group keeps another group out of its culture (Ravishly). Some self-proclaimed “real nerds,” such as blogger Tara “Tiger” Brown, seem eager to draw a distinction between themselves and those they view as “fake,” whom Brown, for instance, calls “Fake Geek Girls.” Tara Brown and those similar to her seem to believe that being a geek is something that must be earned, but that nowadays, people, especially women, want to “pretend” so that people will give them attention. A lot of nerds may feel as though they’ve been persecuted for their hobbies, and thus, feel more protective of those hobbies, taking any bullying they received as badges of honor and viewing those that bring popularity to the hobby as a threat to what makes that hobby unique.

So why is cosplay so tied to this conflict? Well for starters (and returning to the gender issues of the conflict), cosplay is one of the few female-dominated areas of nerd culture. It’s a much easier entry point into the subculture for women who may feel more intimidated going into a comic or game store and being surrounded by mostly men. But the backlash against cosplay also goes beyond gender. Cosplay is an easy way for anyone–male, female, or other–to get involved with geek culture in a casual sense. Video games require skills and money to spend on the tech, comics draw on decades of knowledge and convoluted continuities, but dressing up is easy to get started with if you have a little creativity and can find (or make) a costume. Elitists naturally find themselves against this easy point of entry for casual fans, and assume that cosplayers don’t care enough about the subjects they portray.

To assume cosplayers don’t have the same level of passion as “real fans” or that they’re just in it for the pictures is a gross generalization, however. For this article, I’ve interviewed a few cosplayers to learn about their experiences and wound up finding a wide variety of motivations. Here’s what some of them had to say when asked to talk about what draws them into the hobby and to respond to Broderick’s claims that cosplay adds nothing to the industry and that it’s a form of narcissism:

“Sure it’s nice to take pictures of your own costume and others because they look cool or you’re proud of your work and want to remember it or show it to people who didn’t get to see, but it’s also about the experience while you’re there. . . . It’s also a way to express one’s enthusiasm for a certain work by putting in all the time and effort to get a costume together, so I would think to some artists it would be flattering to have people so excited about wanting to represent a character that they created. . . . For me, I just love the atmosphere of cons. I go to a few panels, but for the most part I like walking around and interacting with all the like-minded people. A convention for a lot of people is a gathering of ‘comrades’ (if you will), and a big meet-up of people who enjoy the same things. Having cosplay is just another way for people to come together over the things they all love.” —Mackenzie Stricklin (on the left) cosplaying as Misty from Pokemon

Mackenzie as Misty

“For me personally, it’s that I get to be someone I’m not usually. When I cosplay, I get to place myself within the context of a world and a character, which I deeply admire, and it’s also a lot of fun during the creative process too. Part of my enjoyment is being able to construct a costume for myself and be able to watch it come together and look fantastic when I’m done.” —Leigh Parrott cosplaying as Black Rose from .Hack

black rose

“Creating a costume feels like an achievement when it’s done, and something fun to do in my free time while it’s being made. Usually the only people who get what I am are my friends, so when someone I don’t know recognizes it, it makes me feel happy, like I’m not an outsider. That’s why I want to go to more conventions. At Katsucon the Crunchyroll booth had a camera feed livestreaming on their website where the people at the con could see what comments the viewers were making, and when I stepped in front of it as Kurisu, a whole bunch of comments on it started coming through and I felt so proud and recognized. It’s a feeling I don’t have too often, so it’s really nice.”–Megan Hansen cosplaying as Kurisu Makise from Steins;Gate

Megan as science

At the end of the day, most cosplayers like to dress up for the same reasons comic fans read comics, gamers play games, and TV and movie fans tune in to watch shows and films: because it’s fun and they get to be a part of something greater than themselves. To respond to Broderick and other naysayers, what cosplay brings to “the industry” is both a new way to enjoy pop culture and a hoard of fresh new fans who may have previously missed out on the nerd subculture. There’s no reason to exclude fans of any kind, and artists, writers, and their followers aren’t doing any worse from a little extra attention. At the risk of sounding too preachy, perhaps what fans and creators who consider themselves more hardcore than others need to wrap their heads around is that they do not, and cannot exclusively own the right to enjoy any form of genre or media.

© 2024 Postscript


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