Issue 05
The Fiction We Live
By Ian SattlerPhotos By Elena Dorfman
America is officially out of ideas. Even a passing look at the cultural landscape of the country will show a veritable wasteland of creativity and artistic ingenuity. Movie theaters are crammed to the gills with remakes of other movies and old TV shows. It’s only a mater of time before we move past this current crop of rehashed cinema and into some sort o strange hybrid where people are trying to remake movie remakes of TV shows. And the shows on American TV aren’t faring much better. There are about50 versions of CSI now and double that amount for Law & Order. It’s as though the instant there’s a good idea, studios are lining up to copy the hell out of it. All of this copycatting has left an interesting entertainment void for the youth h of America. You see, kids can’t really grasp why a remake of any old show is cool because they have no reference point for it and carry no nostalgia for it because they weren’t alive the first time around. So instead of trying to create interesting original material for young people to watch, programming directors have turned to one of the most reliable nannies American children have ever had for new shows to copy. This nanny could produce shows that appeal to boys and girls of all ages. This nanny could sell toys and video games in the millions. This nanny could even get American kids to read. This nanny is Japan, and it has started a full-on cultural revolution that may never end.
Japanese pop culture has been affecting American pop culture for years, and vice-versa. But,starting with the dawn of video games in the 1980s, Japan has quietly been amassing more and more power over Americans than they even realize. Think about it: Super Mario is Japanese (not Italian), and that goes the same for most Nintendo characters. Voltron and Transformers were also built in Japan. Hello Kitty? More like Geisha Kitty. More recently, Gwen Stefani turned to the proven safety and credibility of Japan to help sell records and even started dragging a gaggle of Harajuku girls around everywhere with her. For a generation in the U.S., the groundwork has been laid for inherent acceptance of Japanese culture. Japanese shows, games, books, and music are now the biggest thing going in America, an absolute phenomenon, and most of the country still has no idea any of this is going on.
On December 27, 2003, the Washington Post ran an article detailing the incredible success of Japanese products in the States. Revenue from royalties and sales o f music, video games, anime (essentially any Japanese cartoon), manga (the thick, compact comic book s), art, films, and fashion went up 300 percent between 1992 and 2002, reaching a total of $12.5 billion. Japan’s cultural exports are now worth three-and-a-half times the value of all the televisions they exported in 2 0 0 2. Still not convinced of the power of this wave of entertainment? “Anime” brings up an astonishing 30 million hits on Google. Compare that to “ Lord of the Ring s” at 2 1 million and “ Britney Spear s” at just 14 million (down to a mere 3 million if you include the word “naked” in that search).
In other words, Japanese pop culture has captured the hearts and minds of American youths in ways that nothing else ever has. And the relationship is growing at a staggering rate, to the point where it is affecting the way business is done in this country. Manga sales have seen a double-digit increase every year for the last five years, and have forced large retail chains to continuously cater to this new audience, which includes a massive number of teenage girls. And each new reader seems to be on a miss ion to seek out and find others with similar interests, creating a massive fan network in local communities and on the Internet. “I don’t know what it is exactly, but there’s something inherently social about anime,”says Chris Oarr of A D V Films, the number-one distributor/producer of anime in North America and the UK. “I’m not just talking about conventions, but about anime clubs and even the online culture around anime. You think of TV as an isolating activity,something you enjoy on your own. But it seems that anime is just better enjoyed with other people. Can you imagine a bunch of teenagers forming a club to watch episodes of Veronica Mars in the school library? No way! But every month we’re sending screener disks to 1200-plus clubs that do just that with ADV anime.”
Such social activity is the true pulse of Japanese culture’s hold on young America, a grass roots-marketing bonanza in which a rabid fan population is highly motivated to create new ways to access their hobbies. This has led to the birth of several sub genres within the J-Pop umbrella. By far the most interesting and dominant of these subcultures is cosplay, in which fans elaborately dress up as their favorite characters not only to compete at conventions, but also in smaller clubs in their home towns.
Cosplay is a booming industry in Japan, where people can actually earn a living as professional cosplayers at themed restaurants or modeling costumes in scoresof professional magazines and websites devoted to the subject. There’s also a burgeoning porn industry revolving around cosplay. While still in a relative stage of infancy, cosplay in America is quickly becoming a major pastime for fans. “Cosplaying is a hobby for a lot of people,”says cosplay expert Bamboo Dong. “And what better way to get along with people than to have similar hobbies? It’s almost like a fandom inside a fandom, especially with the Internet. There are hundreds of sites, communities, and forums devoted to cosplay, and it’s just filled with people who have the same interest. It’s a great way to bond with people and encourage each other, and with cons(convention s), there’s always a convenient way to put faces to screen names. There are some really prissy, elitist cosplayers who can stink up the hobby and sneer down their noses at those with imperfect costumes, but they’re really the bad apples. Take them out of the equation and you’re pretty much left with a friendly community of people who are passionate about their hobby. After all, it takes a certain amount of pass ion and craziness to go around dress ed like a cartoon . . . especially when you step into fast food restaurants with blue hair and swords hanging by your side.”
Once they’ve decided on which characters to portray, based on a serious level of soul-searching and planning, cosplayers have a few ways to go about putting their costumes together. They can buy parts from boutique stores on the Internet, or commission costumes to be created by designers specializing in the form. Many take great pride in the ability to find the perfect components for their costumes from the most random everyday objects,sometimes taking years to complete their versions of characters. The real payoff for many of these fans is the chance to display their costumes at any number of conventions, which draw thousands of fans across the country every month.
Anime conventions are the Mecca of all things J-Pop, and include massive dealer areas for buying the latest in DVDs, CDs, manga, and toys. Various events during the show pull in large crowds, including talent meet-and-greets,staged reenactments, and competitions for fan-made music videos that combine anime footage with anything from Tori Amos to Metallica songs. But the masquerade costume contest is the highlight of every show, further pushing cosplay as the main attraction in this world.
“As new generations of anime fans are growing up, they’re gaining more experience in cosplay,” explains Bamboo. “Every year I go to conventions, I see the costumes get better and more intricate. And, as people network and talk at cons, or hang around on online forums and communities, they trade tips and ideas too,so you really see the cosplay community helping each other out. Another aspect of it, though, is the Japanese influence. More than ever, people are cosplaying not only asanime/manga/video game characters, but also other aspects of Japanese pop culture. Thousands of people dress up as their favorite J-Rock band members, like Mana from Malice Mizer, or Aya from Psycho Le Cemu, etc. Even more people have dipped into the EGL (elegant, Gothic Lolita) trend. If you’re not familiar with it, EGL is a term coined by Mana to describe a certain Gothic Lolita look, where it’s almost the goal to look like a Victorian doll. In Harajuku, girls get together on the weekends and dress in EGL outfits, and sit around for tourists to take pictures of them. That may very well be how it became so popular internationally, but for whatever reasons, American cosplay is reflecting that with all the J-Rock and Gothic Lolita cosplay. There are even stores that specialize in EGL clothing.”
To an outsider spending any time around these fans, it immediately becomes apparent how honestly excited they are about their hobby and lifestyle. It’s contagious, in a way. Photographer Elena Dorfman was drawn in at first sight, and her fascination led her to create a body of work that she plans to exhibit in spaces like the Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York. “What surprised me most about this culture is that it even existed,”she says. “I had no idea that this group wasaslarge and as vocal and as powerful as it is. These kids help shape the game industry, the publishing industry, and to some degree, the animated film industry. They are a giant subculture totally off the radar as far as the mainstream goes. That won’t exist for long. The subjects themselves are as varied as they appear in the photos, though they all have the love of cosplay—the desire to take on and live within an alternate personality—in common. I was struck by the general innocence of the subjects. Often, they were at least 10 years older than I guess ed them to be, and they seemed to lack the jaded attitudes of most young adults I’ve known.”
It seems inevitable that the powers that be in the American entertainment industry will eventually figure out what’s been going on under their noses and give it their all to exploit the J -Pop phenomenon for everything it’s worth. But by then this group of fans may be too smart and too impervious to even notice, distracted by the need to find the perfect blue hair dye to finish their costumes and become spitting images of characters like Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Either way, the next time you see somebody at your local Taco Bell waving around a sword and singing in Japanese, at least you’ll know what’s going on.