From the Panels to the Margins: Identity, Marginalization, and Subversion in Cosplay

In investigating the ways social actors experience and interact with mass media texts, I examine how cosplay, as a performative practice of identity in relation to popular culture, enables social actors to subvert and reproduce marginalization towards minority status groups. Theoretical arguments apply a constructionist framework in order to examine the participants’ meaning making processes. The study addresses the following research questions: (1) what social function does cosplay serve for participants; (2) how do cosplayers perform race and gender; (3) how do cosplayers resist, negotiate, or reinforce race and gender-based marginalization? Drawing upon qualitative data gathered from observing two large metropolitan comic book conventions and from conducting nine in-depth interviews, the author forms two arguments. First, cosplayers are capable of both subverting and reinforcing marginalization. Second, the processes of identity-making, social capital, and social cohesion that promote cultural capital in cosplay are stratified along race and gender