The Ethics of Cosplay
Jun. 10th, 2011 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ambrmerlinusI am giving serious consideration to cosplaying Tavros from the webcomic Homestuck, for a variety of reasons. One, Tavros is freakin' adorable. Two, he is incredibly insecure, much like myself.*
There are a few logistical problems (mainly, how am I going to make those horns? and get them to stick on my head?), but those can be overcome with time, hard work, and ingenuity. What is really bothering me are the ethical problems.
Tavros is a wheelchair user.
I am not a wheelchair user.
And I really, REALLY don't want to hurt or upset anyone with my cosplay.
Logistically, it is no problem. I have the wheelchair. It is sitting in my living room as we speak. I can reach out and touch it right now.** But still: ethics.
There are several ways I could circumvent this issue. I could portray Tavros from the pre-wheelchair-using point in his canon, but that's such a small slice of the story and it honestly feels like a cop-out. (As in, the only time he is shown in the webcomic as a non-wheelchair-user is when they are explaining how he became a wheelchair user in the first place. Very quick flashback, not really the character as he is best known.)
I could also be Tavros in his post-wheelchair-using incarnation. (He gets robotic legs. The process is a little messy and the ethics of it are questionable but he seems happy with them?) While I could conceivably make robotic legs with the magic of the aforementioned time+work+ingenuity equation, again, most of the webcomic deals with wheelchair-using Tavros, not pre-wheelchair-using or robo-legs Tavros.
Alternatively, one could argue that since cosplay is done for fun and not profit, I am not hurting anyone by pretending to be a character who uses a wheelchair. (Unlike, say, the Glee casting department, who went with a non-wheelchair-using actor for a wheelchair-using character and my God does it show in the choreography.) But this feels like misdirection to me, as in, "Okay I might be doing something objectionable but at least I'm not doing something worse like those guys!"
I am telling you all this in the hopes of sparking some conversation, getting some feedback from a variety of sources outside my own head, and perhaps talking to people who have confronted this issue in the past and may have some advice.
So... thoughts?
---
*This is basically the formula for my portrayal of fictional characters.
Step 1: Be incredibly insecure.
Step 2: Pretend to be fictional character who is also incredibly insecure.
Step 3: Get (undeserved) praise for being in-character.
Step 4: Feel less insecure for a bit.
It's fun! And probably unhealthy! But still fun!
**Why do I have a wheelchair on hand if I am not a wheelchair user? Short version: My roommate is the president of my school's theater company. The company puts on a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show every year, and they own a wheelchair for that purpose. I borrowed the wheelchair to do some amateur accessibility testing on my campus... annnd I have yet to return it. They don't need it until September, I'm sure it will be fine.
There are a few logistical problems (mainly, how am I going to make those horns? and get them to stick on my head?), but those can be overcome with time, hard work, and ingenuity. What is really bothering me are the ethical problems.
Tavros is a wheelchair user.
I am not a wheelchair user.
And I really, REALLY don't want to hurt or upset anyone with my cosplay.
Logistically, it is no problem. I have the wheelchair. It is sitting in my living room as we speak. I can reach out and touch it right now.** But still: ethics.
There are several ways I could circumvent this issue. I could portray Tavros from the pre-wheelchair-using point in his canon, but that's such a small slice of the story and it honestly feels like a cop-out. (As in, the only time he is shown in the webcomic as a non-wheelchair-user is when they are explaining how he became a wheelchair user in the first place. Very quick flashback, not really the character as he is best known.)
I could also be Tavros in his post-wheelchair-using incarnation. (He gets robotic legs. The process is a little messy and the ethics of it are questionable but he seems happy with them?) While I could conceivably make robotic legs with the magic of the aforementioned time+work+ingenuity equation, again, most of the webcomic deals with wheelchair-using Tavros, not pre-wheelchair-using or robo-legs Tavros.
Alternatively, one could argue that since cosplay is done for fun and not profit, I am not hurting anyone by pretending to be a character who uses a wheelchair. (Unlike, say, the Glee casting department, who went with a non-wheelchair-using actor for a wheelchair-using character and my God does it show in the choreography.) But this feels like misdirection to me, as in, "Okay I might be doing something objectionable but at least I'm not doing something worse like those guys!"
I am telling you all this in the hopes of sparking some conversation, getting some feedback from a variety of sources outside my own head, and perhaps talking to people who have confronted this issue in the past and may have some advice.
So... thoughts?
---
*This is basically the formula for my portrayal of fictional characters.
Step 1: Be incredibly insecure.
Step 2: Pretend to be fictional character who is also incredibly insecure.
Step 3: Get (undeserved) praise for being in-character.
Step 4: Feel less insecure for a bit.
It's fun! And probably unhealthy! But still fun!
**Why do I have a wheelchair on hand if I am not a wheelchair user? Short version: My roommate is the president of my school's theater company. The company puts on a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show every year, and they own a wheelchair for that purpose. I borrowed the wheelchair to do some amateur accessibility testing on my campus... annnd I have yet to return it. They don't need it until September, I'm sure it will be fine.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-10 06:00 pm (UTC)Portraying a wheelchair-using character without a wheelchair does feel problematic. (Less so if you go with the robot legs version, because, hey, that's canon. But even so.) It's one of those things where it would feel like erasing an important component of a character, and an aspect that's not often portrayed in media positively. (Because really, "look at the poor wheelchair-bound person! I can demonstrate my goodness by being condescendingly sympathetic toward them!" is not a positive portrayal.) So overall, it seems like it's a character that probably should be played in the actual wheelchair.
On the other hand, I can see the potentially appropriative aspect of it. The most negative analogy would be blackface, I guess? But that was pretty specifically a cultural issue where it was played up for mockery, and I don't think there's a lot of "playing people in wheelchairs for the mocking jokes" in US culture. So far as I'm aware. So it doesn't have the same connotations. And while using racial metaphors, there are a hell of a lot of people who cosplay characters who are supposed to be Japanese, and it's not considered offensive (at least in the basic sense for having dressed up as that character at all) to do so when not actually of Japanese heritage.
Along the same lines, cosplaying someone is drastically different from portraying them as an actor, in terms of visibility and opportunities. People were rightfully upset about the casting in The Last Airbender being whitewashed, but I don't think anyone is particularly upset if a white girl (or boy) wants to cosplay Kitara. There can be seventeen people playing Kitara in a given convention, and white kids doing it in no way prevents, say, an Inuit kid from cosplaying the same character there. So it doesn't have the same issues or connotations that "We cast someone who doesn't use a wheelchair in this role, instead of getting an actor who uses one IRL" does.
And it seems to me that not playing the character at all--or doing the robot legs/pre-wheelchair version of them--does more to erase visibility of Nifty Characters Who Are Also In Wheelchairs than playing the character would. Personally, I think it'd be great to see more characters like that actually get cosplayed.
That said, I don't use a wheelchair myself, and I don't know in person (as opposed to exclusively online, which changes my perception somewhat) any good friends who do use wheelchairs. So these are my fairly uninformed opinions.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-10 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-10 07:34 pm (UTC)Tangentially to the main thrust of the post, those horns shouldn't actually be too difficult. :D If your con is post-Halloween, you can probably find some big foam horns and repaint them; if not, there are lots of people online who make them, or you can create a pair out of upholstery foam. :D As to getting them to stay on, the lighter the better obviously.. and if they're light enough, a simple double-band of (given his hair color) black elastic cord should hold it on your head for as long as you want.
I'd be happy to share methods I've used to make similar things, if you like.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-10 08:17 pm (UTC)yay methods!
Date: 2011-06-10 08:36 pm (UTC)How familiar are you with Homestuck? I am trying to be this guy:
(More info at the wiki here)
He's got these big buffalo horns; I think they'd be about a foot long, scaled up. So maybe using paper towel tubes as a base, and going from there?
I'm also not sure about using a headband, since his hairstyle is a mohawk and his horns attach pretty clearly to the side of his head. I could grow out the sides of my mohawk maybe?
Re: yay methods!
Date: 2011-06-10 08:54 pm (UTC)I'm not familiar with it at all, but did do an image search for the character. *s* About a foot sounds right; you could use paper towel tubes for a base but I'd be concerned about them crushing and then being hard to restore. Especially when navigating con crowds, I think that flexible is likely to be better than not, given a choice. (Of course, I'm kind of short, so YMMV!)
Hmm, didn't catch the mohawk before. If you got the horns to be light enough on their own, you might be able to use a good adhesive (not spirit gum unless you're one of the people it likes, but maybe surgical adhesive, which is almost as easy to use) to put them directly to skin instead?
It occurs to me that there are also people who cast hollow, lightweight horns in resin, and you may be able to find something like that, but I think they're generally used as part of a mask or headpiece instead of stuck straight on, hmm.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 01:00 am (UTC)Maybe if you're not sure, you could message the community moderator and ask if it would be an appropriate post.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-11 06:11 pm (UTC)