A Brief Look at Subcultures: Cosplay Edition
According to the Cambridge dictionary, the definition of a subculture is that “of a particular group of people within a society that are different from the rest of that society.” Cosplay, in turn, is a portmanteau of two words, “costume” and “play.” This is referencing a performance art in which the cosplayers embody and become a character through a costume. The character can be from any form of media: from literature to animation to video games; there is even a subclass of the performance art wherein original characters are used. More often than not, cosplayers turn to animated media or video games for their source material. Because of that, it’s easy to imagine that the cosplay subculture developed only recently with the advent of video games and animation.
In the case of cosplay, it has had a long and varying history that can be surprising. It’s easy to think of cosplay only appearing with the first sci-fi conventions in the 1970s and earlier, but that isn’t the case. Cosplay can be seen as descending from the Carnival season’s masquerade balls in the late 15th century (and as early as 1094)and the pageantry of royal entries throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period. From then on, using costumes to become someone else has trickled down into different forms and mixed in with other cultural traditions (such as Samhain becoming Halloween). From elegant bal masques to fancy dress and costume parties, the evolutionary leap into cosplay is a quick and easy one.
The difference is that, in the past one hundred years, it’s fully developed into a subculture of its own, not just as a seasonal or societal event. Anthropologists and psychologists have studied the cosplay subculture in the past and continue to do so. In an email interview with an anthropology student of the Royal Agricultural University of Gloucestershire, Michela Guilfoyle explains that “much research has been done into the various subgroups of the cosplay community.”
An example of this research can be found in The Geek Anthropologist, a website created and run by, as the name suggests, anthropologists. The “geek anthropologists” who contribute to the site look at geek culture (which they are a part of) through a socio-cultural lens. More research into this subculture and its history can be found through university studies and by members of the community itself.
Michela Guilfoyle went on to add that “the cosplay subculture is one of the most well known and heard of modern subcultures that has been intergrained into mainstream culture.” It crosses and brings together a variety of demographics and, with the continued advent of the digital age, the subculture has only grown in popularity. There are plenty of online forums, some of them dating to the Internet’s birth, and others continuously appearing as new social media sites emerge.
TikTok cosplayer Tori Miller (also known as The Wandering Cosplays) is an emerging cosplayer from the Northwestern US with a background in theatre acting. In an email interview with her, she briefly talked about how cosplay is a performance art. Especially with how “it can also bleed into acting and theater, which is typically more performative than cosplay” nowadays with the rise of apps like Instagram Reels and TikTok. Cosplayers have taken to recreating full scenes or even creating alternative storylines through the use of apps like TikTok, collaborating with other creators across the world even during a pandemic.
While this can lend itself to creating sketchy scenarios and even scandals (the Clapdaddie scandal of 2020 and more), it does lead to the creation of a global community that can easily be studied and documented by anthropologists and members of the cosplay community.
Tori Miller does say that cosplay being studied by anthropologists “[is[ a smart move for history itself. Story telling [h]as existed since the dawn of time, which implies that a variation of cosplay has existed that long too. Why shouldn’t it be studied?”
