Cosplay and Monstrosity

I want to return to monsters once again, today. But this time, in a slightly different way. Even though I talk about monsters as cultural artefacts, I have focused on monsters that we recognise as monsters: the Slender Man, Momo, even older monsters like the Wendigo. But monsters can also be cultural in other ways.

Monsters are understood as monsters due to the way they are situated in our cultural thought. As we grow up in our society, we are taught what is defined as what, and how its is placed in our understanding. Even though two animals can look actually quite different from each other, they’re both dogs. More complicated categories are ones like which humans are categories to be like “us” and which ones are pushed as “others”. We grow up with these categorical understandings because they are socially based - someone from a different place than us may have different categories.

As Jeffrey Cohen says, the monster is harbinger of categorical crisis. In other words, the monster is that which shows us that these categories our society has given us is not as firm and solid as we like to think. Let’s think about a classic monsters real quick: the vampire. The vampire’s monstrosity is partly due to its bridging of categories which should never cross. Things should not be both alive and dead at the same time. Things which are categories as “alive” and have the characteristics of “alive” should not ever be in the category of “dead”. And yet, the vampire is a bridge between these categories, a figure which exists in both and neither. The vampire is a monster because it demonstrates to us that these categories we have used as a foundation of our worldview and understanding are not as solid as we like to think it to be.

A cosplayer screaming during the cosplay competition at MegaCon Manchester 2022.

Monsters are not always bad. Some monsters are viewed positively, depending on the way the culture understands the categories which are being crossed and whether or not this is something which should happen. Jesus is a great example of this - someone who is considered as both divine and human at the same time, two categories which are normally not crossed. And yet, Jesus is a positive monster, one through which Christians can gain better access to the divine. For that culture or society, this particular type of monster is actually something to look for and connect with.

So with that, I want to talk about a different kind of monster: a cosplay monster. Now wait, here me out. One of the things that I find particularly interesting about cosplay is that it bridges the worlds between fiction and reality. Normally, fiction and reality are two separate categories, ones which never cross. When they do for someone, the society around them view them as in need of some kind of help. But cosplay actually does this.

During the amazing time of a convention, the fiction is alive around us. Not just because of the many plushies being sold and the excited fervour of other fans who surround us, but because of cosplayers. We see our favourite characters, get to take pictures with them, and even sometimes get to see them perform our favourite moves as they go across a stage.

Cosplayers allow us to live in the wonderful liminal space in which both categories - the category of the real and the category of the fiction - are both present at the same time. Cosplayers live in the muddy grey area between the two worlds, and show us that maybe thinking about these categories in this way may not necessarily be the right way to consider it.

So, in essence, cosplayers are a kind of monster. And through this monstrosity, cosplayers are able to change our understandings of fiction, of our own social categories, can has the potential to be subversive.