I'm Going To Comic-Con As The American Middle Class

The Week magazine recently did a story implying that the rise in cosplay is evidence of how poor the economy is. The idea is that people are turning to escapism because of how disappointing their reality is. That may seem like the sort of thing that only a myopic business journalist would think, seeing everything in economic terms. Perhaps they need to find a hobby. How about cosplay? They could dress as a Ferengi, it'll be fun. Or they could be more creative and dress as the invisible hand of the market.

But seriously, I think they actually do have a point. It was simplistic to think of it in economic terms, but the fact is that lots of people are disappointed with many aspects of their real lives. I'm reminded of a quote from one of the Trekkies movies (documentaries about Star Trek fans.) A member of a Klingon-themed rock group, when asked how long he'd continue, said, "When the real world stops being lame, I'll stop doing this." That's one of my favourite movie quotes, and I remember it whenever I feel any shame in my geekhood.

Because that Klingon has got a point: reality does suck. We don't realize it because there's a real prejudice against fantasy, and an assumption that reality is inherently good. The trouble with that assumption is that the line between reality and fantasy isn't as clear as we think. If you're a hunter-gatherer living in the Great Rift Valley of Eastern Africa, presumably reading this on a laptop left by missionaries, then fine, you're living in reality. Anyone else out there is living in a world that we've created. And there's really no reason that your created reality is any better than the one that Klingon rocker lives in. As an example, it's often noted that there's a parallel between the fantasy world of sci-fi & fantasy, and the fantasy world of sports.  When you think about it, there's no reason for dressing as a fantasy character to be less acceptable than putting on a sports jersey.

The modern world is disappointing a lot of people in a lot of ways. I don't want to sound like a pessimist claiming that everything is terrible all the time. I think you can attribute a lot of that disappointment to the changes society is going through. Some of that is economic: we've been promised a lot of things we haven't received, whether it's a stress-free technology job or a decent living from a manufacturing job. But there's plenty of non-economic dissatisfaction too. At your local convention, you'll probably see a woman cosplaying to escape a world where she's been objectified and disrespected, and a man cosplaying to escape a world in which entitlements and expectations that have changed to become unfamiliar to him.

So it's not surprising that many people use popular fantasy to escape from an unpleasant reality.  And once you abandon the assumption that our society is somehow inherently good, it's not even troubling.