OtaGonzo: The First Philippine Cosplay Mini-Summit
by otaking on Aug.16, 2009, under Otagonzo
The Boot of Truth speaks!
I scratched my head as I listened to the ABS-CBN representative, Zyd Abila, attempt to answer the pointed and obviously-entrapping questions posed to him by Robert Wong of Cosplay.Ph, while the representatives from the different sectors of government listened idly at issues they didn’t understand. The less-than-unified cosplay community, big business, and government face-to-face for the first time, and already this was degenerating into the otaku equivalent of the Middle East peace talks.
The First Philippine Cosplay Mini-Summit, held on August 15, 2009 at the UP Diliman Information Technology Training Center, was organized by Holy Ground Productions and USP Events Specialists. It was ostensibly organized to give cosplay the chance to voice their concerns to the government in the same way the game development and animation industries have done. But that’s not how the event was unfolding from where I was sitting.
My line of work has made me very skeptical about anything that has to do with the government. Considering the government’s persistent failure to address things like education, health care, and housing, it was a longshot to bet on the idea that somehow the government would actually help a subculture within a subculture that was already under attack from hardline moralists eying a spot in next year’s elections.
Cyberservices Commissioner Mon Ibrahim from the Commission of Information and Communication Technology highlighted how unaware of cosplay the government actually is, especially considering his own son is a cosplayer and this fact managed to escape his notice until a week ago.
James Ramana, Division Head for Creative Industries, at the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions, spoke about promoting the arts because of its contribution to the national economy, but seemed unwilling to actually take on cosplay because it’s not an industry.
Eric Tamayo, Special Assistant to the Undersecretary for International and Economic Relations, Department of Foreign Affairs, lit up when he heard the words Japan and Korea, as if from a deeply-uninterested slumber. He stressed the economic importance of the Creative Services, stating that we were undergoing a shift from the production of goods to providing services. So cosplay is a service industry now?
Ranulf Goss, Vice President of the Game Developers Association of the Philippines, proudly stated that cosplay was a reflection of their work and the work of the local animation industry. When I asked him why local cosplay seemed to be largely a reflection of foreign animation and characters, he gave the answer that even though games like Final Fantasy and anime like Code Geass were foreign, Filipinos worked on them behind the scenes and therefore cosplay was a reflection of the work of these unsung heroes. I leave it to the reader to decide whether this answer was an acceptable one.
Finally, GM Zyd from Amped briefly stated that he was an anime fan, thought that cosplayers could naturally transition into a career in the gaming industry because they were being nurtured ‘like vegetables in a farm’, and then launched into a fifteen-minute-long audio-visual commercial for all of Amped’s games.
What the heck was going on?
The opening salvo of the forum was fired by Robert Wong of Cosplay.ph, at GM Zyd, along a clearly-drawn line – cosplay as an industry, or cosplay as a hobby. On one side stood the money, on the other, the actual cosplayers. Robert took great offense at Zyd’s insinuation that the cosplay community was a ‘farm’ for the gaming and animation industries, and he made his displeasure plain with a withering (some have said excessive) series of accusations that took the ABS-CBN representative aback.
But the point he was making was plain: If you cosplay for its own sake, it’s cosplay. If you cosplay for money, it’s modelling.
The government representatives had a comically consistent stance: We can’t promise anything now, we’ll look into it, but you’d better ask the other guy. The CyberServices commissioner said that since cosplay is largely done at conventions, perhaps CITEM could handle it. The Creative Industries Division head of CITEM said that since cosplay wasn’t an industry, maybe they should try the DFA for help with Japan. The DFA representative said that since the cons and gatherings were held in the country, maybe the cosplayers could ask the local government heads instead. And all of them pointed the finger at the beleaguered National Commission for Culture and Arts, infamous for the Carlo J. Caparas National Artist debacle, which exposed the level of corruption in that government agency.
In response to what specific help the government could provide, there was a phrase repeated, almost like a mantra: “We’ll look into it.” As a lawyer, let me translate. This is government doublespeak for “We don’t want to promise anything. But we don’t want to refuse you outright because it would look bad.”
They did say, however, that if there was a unified association of cosplaying industry heads, then it would be easier to ‘initiate talks’. Unified association of cosplayers? Seriously? The cosplay community, like anything else in this country, is a microcosm of the country – a fragmented, bickering lot of factions, each group rising and falling in prominence as time passes.
Dunbar’s Number is a theoretical limit, approximately set at 150, of how many people a single individual can maintain stable social relationships with. After this limit is crossed, social cohesion disintegrates, and a given social unit will split up into smaller pieces.
Cosplay is a victim of its own growing success. There are now so many cosplayers that there is no way all of them, all fairly opinionated and outgoing people, will unite into a single cohesive social unit. There simply is no incentive to, at this point. There is no singular ideal that unites the community. Words like ‘costripper’ and ‘models’ and ‘cosplay mafia’ are being used to cut away whole sections of the community that are not aligned with the speaker.
Yes, the government is being evasive and vague and non-committal. But faced with the current state of the cosplay community, can you blame it at all?
The organizers of the event had the best intentions in mind, and should be commended for what they tried to accomplish that day. Perhaps the event was simply the start of a grand sequence of events that will someday unite the entire cosplay scene into a under a massive government-subsidized industry association. It’s good to dream. But as I sat there listening to the open forum, I could only look toward my friends John and Neph and shake my head.
There were many young cosplayers in the audience, but they seemed lost and unwilling to engage in the discourse. Not that I blamed them. All the older people in the audience all seemed to have their own agendas, none of which seemed to have anything to do with actual cosplay.
I spotted Mica in the crowd again, this time without her usual Taiga costume. She sat there, looking confused and a little bored at all the commotion. I briefly wondered if somewhere in the audience, a certain someone who claimed to despise cosplayers was eying her with a combination of desire and self-loathing for finding a cosplayer attractive.
The thought quickly passed.
I remembered my wife’s niece and her friends at the Metro Comic Con, happily cosplaying in a hodge-podge of hastily thrown-together clothes, without a care for cosplay factions or government support or service industries or international competitions.
And once again, I envied them.
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August 17th, 2009 on 6:27 am
Perhaps you mean “Robert needs to catch up.
” Even though I was associated with Cosplay.ph, those were my own personal opinions based on how I see and experienced cosplay. You may quote me on that if you like.
Isnt making the act of cosplay as being “professional” with pay loses its appeal as being fun, or it loses its spirit because the reason for cosplaying is simply because it pays well? Linking to the wiki of Amateur sports doesn’t explain the need for its 20th century application to pay good sports players to continue playing for a team. Besides, there were no terms available for a paid sports player then, but to a person paid to wear a costume by a company for its own self interest and promotion is usually called a model? That term has been around longer than cosplay.
August 17th, 2009 on 6:34 am
“Isnt making the act of cosplay as being “professional” with pay loses its appeal as being fun, or it loses its spirit because the reason for cosplaying is simply because it pays well?”
If every human endeavor that was ever professionalized automatically lost its fun and spirit, then nobody on this planet would love his job.
August 17th, 2009 on 4:21 pm
Thanks for the link love! I’ll put up pictures in a bit!
August 19th, 2009 on 3:18 pm
If we all had the same opinion, there would be no need for discourse.