xoxo, Aca-fan Girl
Ah, the viewing party. I used to co-host weekly "Lost" viewing parties, but eventually we gave them up as the show started going downhill and haven't yet managed to organize them since its revival. The point is, I'm attending a "Gossip Girl" season finale party this evening, complete with dress code, and it's making me want to expand my definition of cosplay. After all, the evening is bound to include the following: 1. cocktails, 2. cocktail dresses approximating the couture on the show, 3. cattiness, 4. overt alignment with a particular character (dude, if I could dress up like Chuck Bass, I would...love the scarves, love the absurd plaid pants), and 5. embodiment. True, I might not be pretending to be Blair, specifically, but I'm trying to approximate her attitude, aesthetic (down to the trademark headband with bow) and lifestyle with similarly like-minded fans. It's also important to note that our hostess tonight actually lived this lifestyle growing up in NYC, and thus has a kinship with the characters and locations that is deeper than my own. I did go to a very tony private school where I was something of a Dan Humphrey (namely, not "poor" by any reasonable person's definition, but certainly an outsider economically speaking, and there primarily to bolster the school's arts program), so I can relate to/vouch for the quasi-authenticity of the world that "Gossip Girl" creates. Let's just say it's not a coincidence that I have a few dresses hanging in my closet for just such a party.
In short, it's the fan-lite version of cosplay, perhaps further evidence that the term has been steadily losing its anime specificity for some time now. As the only person in attendance who has ever actually cosplayed (again, I'm using the looser, Americanized definition- I'm currently planning on attending Comicon this summer as the Silk Spectre [Sally, not Laurie] from Watchmen, with my boyfriend as The Comedian), and one who has seen its popularity as a form of fan production explode in recent years, I have to wonder if events like this screening party are indicative of yet another way that fan practices are being mainstreamed. At any rate, I'll bring up the idea to the group tonight and see what they say- they're all dear friends and colleagues from USC, so I'm sure the responses with provoke interesting discussion. I think they'll all be somewhat surprised to think about this event as a "fannish" practice beyond the "normal" boundaries of collective viewing, as we've all had multiple conversations that expose a clear delineation in their logic between how they engage with media (fannishly to the degree that they discuss episodes with friends, but in no way involved with the "fandom" side of things), and how I tend to. As many aca-fans have discussed in recent months, that gap seems to be steadily closing, and I'd put this event forth as evidence of that. I'll be sure to link pictures.
On a related tangent, a new cosplay cafe opened in LA...anyone interested in checking it out with me?
http://www.royal-t.org/cafe/
Any Waldorf, van der Woodsen, Archibald or Bass would totally approve of the finger sandwiches.
xoxo,
Aca-fan Girl
In short, it's the fan-lite version of cosplay, perhaps further evidence that the term has been steadily losing its anime specificity for some time now. As the only person in attendance who has ever actually cosplayed (again, I'm using the looser, Americanized definition- I'm currently planning on attending Comicon this summer as the Silk Spectre [Sally, not Laurie] from Watchmen, with my boyfriend as The Comedian), and one who has seen its popularity as a form of fan production explode in recent years, I have to wonder if events like this screening party are indicative of yet another way that fan practices are being mainstreamed. At any rate, I'll bring up the idea to the group tonight and see what they say- they're all dear friends and colleagues from USC, so I'm sure the responses with provoke interesting discussion. I think they'll all be somewhat surprised to think about this event as a "fannish" practice beyond the "normal" boundaries of collective viewing, as we've all had multiple conversations that expose a clear delineation in their logic between how they engage with media (fannishly to the degree that they discuss episodes with friends, but in no way involved with the "fandom" side of things), and how I tend to. As many aca-fans have discussed in recent months, that gap seems to be steadily closing, and I'd put this event forth as evidence of that. I'll be sure to link pictures.
On a related tangent, a new cosplay cafe opened in LA...anyone interested in checking it out with me?
http://www.royal-t.org/cafe/
Any Waldorf, van der Woodsen, Archibald or Bass would totally approve of the finger sandwiches.
xoxo,
Aca-fan Girl