When Dominant Culture Doesn't Dominate . . . Or, Cosplay, Geek Culture, and Bourgeois Culture

It's pretty self-explanatory

By Steven McLain

In the 1940s, Stetson Kennedy undertook an anti-racism campaign premised on a simple idea.  Whenever someone heard bigoted speech, that person should frown.  It's brilliant in its simplicity, and highlights the power of ostracism and social acceptance as a means of change.  Stetson was a landmark figure in the struggle against Jim Crow laws, and his bravery in infiltrating and revealing the secret rituals and codewords of the Ku Klux Klan seriously undermined that organization.

After infiltrating the KKK he filtered their secrets to the Superman radio drama, when engaged the popular icon in a fight against bigotry and exposed the organization to its own farce. 

Seriously, how cool a name is Stetson?

Kennedy died in 2011, but both his infiltration of the KKK and his "Frown Campaign" are useful in analyzing the power and delineations of culture.  These in turn can help us identify when and where certain cultures exist, when they have been appropriated, and when they have willingly submerged themselves into the bourgeois culture.

I'd like to make a couple of definitions clear from the outset, since I'll be using them in somewhat esoteric ways (which also differ from social scientists' and semiologists' definition).  First, let's acknowledge that culture is a tough thing to define, since it is inherently nebulous.  But if you can't define what exactly culture is, you can at least define its function.

For the sake of this argument, culture consists of the transmittable values and practices which signify inclusion in a group.  Basically, culture delineates "us" from "them" and includes language (including jargon, accent, patois, etc.), styles of clothing, taboos, rituals, and meaning attached to specific markers (such as flags, buttons, logos, brands, etc.).  You're probably not aware of these things until you enter a different culture, but it's abundantly clear when someone doesn't belong to your culture by the way they walk, talk, or dress.

Kennedy (and Martin Luther King, Jr. incidentally) believed that the bulk of people were good, and could challenge bigoted attitudes by expressing their disdain.  Frowning was a way to demonstrate disapproval, and subtly alter perceptions.  But it relied on a shift in the bourgeois culture so that bigotry was a cultural distinction.  In a sense, bigotry alienated you from bourgeois culture.

Now, generally when we talk about culture, we use hierarchical words of dominance and submission which disguises the real nature of culture as a progressive continuum.  That is, while there are major and minor cultures, one need not inhabit one or the other; indeed, one can occupy multiple cultures at the same time (and probably does).  Instead of dominant or submissive cultures (sub-cultures as they're often called), bourgeois culture reflects the idea that communities often embrace a single, overarching culture under which multiple, fluid identities can emerge and flourish.

When Martin Luther King identified racism, poverty, and militarism as evils, it was precisely because they dehumanized individuals as means to an end, or by obscuring their humanity by overlooking their individuality, or through bigotry.

King said of poverty:

“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty … The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.”

 And racism:

“Racism is a philosophy based on a contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission. It is the absurd dogma that one race is responsible for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of the future. Racism is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies, but minds and spirits. Inevitably it descends to inflicting spiritual and physical homicide upon the out-group.”

And militarism:

“A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war- ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This way of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

MLK

But if he were alive today, I have no doubt Martin Luther King would include consumerism on his list of modern evils right there with racism, poverty, and militarism.

Consumerism exists in that same spectrum of evil by reducing individuals to means of acquiring.  Rather than basing individual worth on the merit of being a human being, what you own determines your worth.  These aren't new criticisms, and shouldn't shock you, but take a moment to really consider what it means that bourgeois culture is also a consumer culture. 

The word "bourgeois" has a tortured history.  It initially indicated the French middle class which emerged between the aristocracy and peasants.  During the French Revolution it acquired a pejorative status which persisted into the nineteenth century, where it eventually acquired its labor implications.  Marx and Engels used bourgeois to signal the propertied owners of capital who alienated workers from their labor.  This is the meaning it largely kept through the mid-twentieth century, until it came to first signify the bureaucratic authority emerging in the Western world; finally it acquired a class signifier in the early twenty-first century and was appropriated by trend-setters and the petty intelligentsia when it was crafted into the patois.  "Bougie" became an indication of pedestrian pretension. 

An example from the Seattle Times helps emphasize that distinction:

“In an urban environment, in the elements, you want to feel protected,” says Gregg Andrews, fashion creative director at Nordstrom. “You don’t want to feel that you can’t walk on broken concrete. There’s this fashion utility to a boot that makes it very appealing.”

Plus, he says, “boots are sorta like sunglasses — they give you instant attitude . . . A woman could own an entire closet of boots that really would change the look of everything that’s in her wardrobe.”
We will mix and match so many shirts, sweaters, jackets and pants that they couldn’t possibly add up to a cohesive outfit, yet make it look fresh and “seasonless,” to borrow a term used to describe the direction in menswear for the coming year.

We will pair soft fabrics with the leather that will be everywhere this fall, wear white after Labor Day and shamelessly pile on two or three shades of the season’s go-to colors: green, blue and red. We will make tie-dye look bougie and make [ombré] look hippie." [emphasis my own]

Oh, those French

But despite definitional slippage, bourgeois maintains its connection to the middle class, to a system of virtue ethics firmly tied to a social and economic class.  The rise of the middle class is a historical phenomenon which pre-dates the industrial revolution.  It is tied to social movements even today, and indicates a broadening access to political and economic power.  The decline of the middle class is not a signifier of declining economic power per se, but rather points to gradual lessening of access to that power by the largest segment of nation's population.

That intersection creates a unique cultural imperative which includes and supersedes every other culture.  Bourgeois culture in America (and perhaps in most of the developed and emerging world) is associated almost entirely with consumerism.  Worth and value are predicated on one's ability to acquire and conspicuously consume.  These cultural assumptions are what underpin Apple's yearly unveiling of new and only slightly improved iPhones.  Fundamentally, the iPhone and the iPhone 5 are no different (let's not even mention the distinction between the S and C), and the iPhone itself represents only minor aesthetic improvements on pre-existing technology.

Rather, the acquisition and conspicuous consumption of these technology signify inclusion within a particular culture.  That the gold iPhone 5 is seen as a status symbol should surprise no one.  Rather, as an indication of the power of bourgeois culture, the iPhone is the most obvious example of one culture embraced and enfolded by bourgeois culture.

This is not a condemnation of either bourgeois culture, or any of the cultures which oppose or embrace it.  Indeed, many cultures are complementary, or even supplement, bourgeois culture.  Some cultures actively reject bourgeois culture and try to embrace self-sufficiency and autonomy, or see the obvious environmental damage our particular bourgeois culture causes and attempt to meliorate their own impact. 

Culture-jacking

Other cultures which began in conscious opposition to bourgeois culture lack the power or the organization to successfully reject it and either embrace or are co-opted by bourgeois culture.  Consumerism is such a prevalent and powerful force that the latter is more likely the case.  Bourgeois culture may colonize alien cultures and gradually incorporate them into itself, expressing alienness as novelty (culture-jacking, if you will) -- the Asian fetish of the early twentieth century and the television show "The Big Bang Theory" are equally representative of this phenomenon.

It's also what lends legitimacy to a particular culture.  Legitimate cultures consciously articulate a particular vision of the good life.  What that vision is remains irrelevant.  Rather, what is important is that a culture express that vision through its cultural markers.  Remember Kennedy and his frown campaign?  The power of bourgeois culture overruled deeply ingrained bigotry (along with the active participation of civil rights activists, legislators, and the oppressed themselves).  Kennedy was able to de-legitimize the KKK by exposing their secrets to ridicule.  Their cultural signifiers became markers of absurdity.

By appropriating those markers instead, the bourgeois culture maintains the sense of separateness while utilizing the power which separates culture to advance its own agenda.  Geek culture, which peaked in the 80s and early 90s, offered a significantly peculiar version of the good life to differentiate it from bourgeois culture of the time.

Highlighted by a preoccupation with science and technology, geek culture presented furthering of knowledge as an end to itself.  Geek culture embraced the rational enlightenment virtues of previous generations and molded it with a fascination of technology.  The result was a vision in which science and technology were lauded for their own sake, and elevated what bourgeois culture considered hobbies to ends of themselves.  Geek culture appropriated the mode of bourgeois culture as the means for its own ends; this appropriation both legitimized and enabled geek cultures to oppose bourgeois culture.

By Ibrahim Evsan

But by the early twenty-first century, bourgeois culture responded by re-appropriating the symbols of geek culture into itself.  The pre-eminent example is the colonization of Comic-Con by a consumer culture marked by conspicuous consumption and acquisition as a determination of worth.  And we should be clear that legitimation is not itself a moral judgement, but rather a statement of definition.  That is, to be legitimate, a culture must correspond itself to a peculiar vision of the good life which differs from another culture.

Indeed, the simple proliferation of Comic-Cons (San Diego, New York, Portland, OR, etc.) are not indicative of the power of a particular culture, but rather representative of the appropriation of geek culture to bourgeois culture.  Geek culture may persist, but incoherently.   

Legitimization is both a strategy and goal of bourgeois culture.  As a strategy, it allows bourgeois culture to colonize peculiar cultures.  This is also why I suspect that cosplay is itself not a legitimate culture.  Emerging from both geek and nerd culture (historically an offshoot of Renaissance Fairs and, I imagine, the costuming impulses of Halloween) it allows both men and women an opportunity to assume alternate and deviate identities.

Though I can't speak to motivations, and while much of it seems like a harmless vacation from the self, cosplayers such as Ani Mia, Jenni Hashimoto (who was featured in a Business Insider expose of the New York Comic-Con) and other members of that community who peddle their wares (as it were) on the internet or on cable reality television (such as The SyFy Channel's "Heroes of Cosplay") have either consciously adopted bourgeois culture, or been appropriated by it.  Failing to cogently express a vision of the good life, and adopting the vision of a competing culture reveals their complicity in delegitimizing their peculiar culture.

The "Fake Geek Girl" controversy raging throughout the interwebs is a clear indication that geek communities understand that their culture is being appropriated.  Alice Vega, a geek commentator, offers a few words of live-and-let-live that hints at libertarian moral laissez faire but fails to recognize the invidiousness of these cultural appropriations.

"First off, a Fake Geek Girl is defined as a female of any age faking it in the geek culture, i.e. cosplaying characters she doesn’t know, saying she’s a gamer but has never touched a Playstation, etc. You might have seen some of these girls or know some yourself. But here’s a newsflash: Who the fuck cares?"

Vampirella at Rose City Comicon

Her rant betrays her naivety.  "Heroes of Cosplay" may indeed introduce outsiders to a niche hobby, and may help inspire new fans to go out and indulge their self-obscuring fantasies.  And "fake geek girls" may indeed by culture-jacking geek culture as a means to garner attention, or they may be intentionally sexualizing themselves as a means of re-appropriating their sexuality from a dominance culture they navigate at their own peril.  What commentators like Vega and the geek community in general fail to understand, however, is that they are willing participants in their own appropriation.

So while the libertarian in me is crying "no harm no foul," the better part of my nature is worrying that people are building castles in the air and failing to address the real problem.  As a self-identified geek I understand the frustration of the community, but want to point out that it's already too late.  Unless we can re-craft a peculiar vision of the good life, bourgeois culture will always win. 

Sex in the Media, the Ethics of Cosplay, and Kant

http://w2.parentstv.org/main/MediaFiles/PDF/Studies/2010_SexualizedTeenGirls.pdf

A report made by Parents Television Council was recently released examining the frequency of sexual exploitation on television, especially humorous depictions of underage exploitation. 

"In the present study the PTC examined the prevalence of sexually exploitative images in the media and found that these images have become common themes in primetime television."

The report highlights the increasing depiction of women as sexual objects, and the increasing prevalence of sexual exploitation and violence.  By presenting exploitation and violence in the context of humor, the report contends that acceptance of such acts is increased.

Specifically, the study examined the prevalence and trivialization of sexual exploitation in the media. Therefore, in addition to examining how often females and particularly young females were associated with sexually exploitative themes, the study examined the number of times sexually exploitative themes were presented in a comedic context intended as humorous entertainment for the viewer.

Basically, the viewer is directed to find sexual exploitation humorous and therefore accept such behaviors as normal.  For example, "dead hooker" jokes were made several times, erasing the civil and personal abuses which prostitution often produces.

Most worryingly, the report highlights the connection between humor and underage exploitation.  That is, when a female was depicted being exploited, more often than not that female was underage.  Since young women model acceptable behavior from older women and more and more from media sources these television shows create an atmosphere of acceptable behavior which young women can emulate.

These images are believed to be a powerful force in shaping the sexual decisions and behaviors of developing youth. Associating laughter with topics like rape, child molestation, prostitution, sex trafficking, and sexual harassment further compounds the effects of sexualized media images. As long as there are media producers who continue to find the degradation of women to be humorous, and media outlets that will air the content, the impact and seriousness of sexual exploitation will continue to be understated and not meaningfully addressed in our society.

Adult women were also often depicted in sexually exploited roles, increasing the likelihood that girls and young women would model their behavior on these depictions. 

The report concludes that "if past research is correct that television can shape our attitudes towards social issues, and if media images communicate that sexual exploitation is neither serious nor harmful, the environment is being set for sexual exploitation to be viewed as trivial and acceptable."  This conclusion raises questions of its own which the report raises but does not answer.  Namely, is it every acceptable to laugh at sexual exploitation of anyone, but especially of a child?  The connection between the fantasy of a television show and the reality of behavior norms remains obscure, and the report adds that further research is necessary.  Certainly, however, this is a worrying trend and raises even more trenchant ethical problems surrounding certain geek sub-cultures.

I've been harping on cosplay for a while because this is what the interwebs are intent on talking about.  An ongoing debate between male convention-goers, female convention-goers (especially models and cosplayers) and John Scalzi has created the convention and internet meme: Cosplay does not equal consent.

At the heart of the controversy are numerous allegations and instances of harassment of women in the industry made by male convention-goers .  Sometimes the incidents are obvious: ass-grabbing, fondling, and coddling of female models by men.  Sometimes they're more obscure and often involve jokes and inappropriate comments.  As often as not the incidents reflect an ongoing perception by many men that their culture is being appropriated by women.

This offers an interesting tangent I'll not address here, except briefly.  To whom does a particular culture actually belong?  Is it even something that can be "owned?"  Certainly it can be appropriated, as Jazz and Rock n Roll have been demonstrating since the early twentieth century.  Cultural boundaries shift to include previously marginalized or excluded populations, or are actively appropriated to minimize or diminish cultural homogeneity.  The colonization of cultural norms often reflects the power dynamic between colonizers and colonized, with an appropriated culture actively used to disrupt patterns of community and social life around which populations cohere.  That's just a really complicated way to say that people often appropriate culture to lessen the power of that culture.  So when male gamers, geeks, and nerds complain about women in their ranks, it's as often because they believe their community is threatened by that intrusion.

Moving on.  Regardless of why men and women choose to dress up in costume, they should expect a minimum of personal security.  That is, everyone has a right to not have violence acted against them.  Their personal boundaries are inviolate as a matter of principle.  But when they present themselves as visual representations they can expect some manner of objectification which blurs the line between human being and objet d'art.  An inanimate object has no inherent moral or ethical obligation owed to it.  This is really obvious ethical territory, so I won't delve too deeply.  But it presents a jumping off point from the previous study to an ethic of victim-blaming.

Namely, if a person consciously chooses to depict himself or herself as an object of admiration, does that person relinquish his or her right against certain -- but only certain -- protections?  

If we operated in a vacuum, ethical action would be easy.  In a world of one there are no moral or ethical obligations.  But add even a single person and that calculus changes.  Moreover -- and I accept this axiomatically -- human beings possess only a single right granted by nature: the right to use violence to achieve your own needs and wants.  This is the only right naturally granted to individuals.  But in society, we willingly relinquish that right to ensure that violence is not used against us.  This is the single obligation of the state to its citizens.

The other rights such as freedom of speech, religion and so on, are historical accretions or tangents of that primary obligation.  Recognizing their artificiality (and in some instance arbitrariness) allows us as reasoning people to craft a system of morals and ethics which best reflects our needs and wants.  As such we have constructed a moral system which exemplifies the individual and makes the individual inviolable except in certain rare exceptions.

But a person may willingly relinquish certain rights in the pursuit of other ends.  A citizen relinquishes some rights when entering the military, we relinquish the right to enjoy the total fruit of our labor when we offer the government a percentage of our labor in the form of taxes -- wealth necessary to accomplish other goals we have collectively decided are worthy of pursuit. 

The reciprocal nature of moral obligation helps explain how someone can relinquish certain duties owed to himself simply by being a human being in modern society.  First, people are owed a certain level of truthfulness; that is, they cannot be coerced into normal actions by means of withholding information which they deserve to have.  In normal circumstances they also cannot be coerced into certain actions by the threat or use of violence.  These are expectations of behavior, as rights necessarily are, but expectations to which a person can appeal for redress when they are violated.

But this ethical system also requires that people's behavior remain appropriate to the social context.  Each person is sovereign in her actions, and sovereign in her responsibility.  That is, she must take responsibility for all breaches in which her negligence was the primary motivator.  For instance, a starving man's theft of bread is mitigated by his starvation.  In normal circumstances, theft is punishable as a breach of social and ethical obligations (you owe it to your neighbor that you won't take his stuff), but starvation is beyond (we hope) normal circumstances.

Similarly, in normal circumstances, a person's autonomy is inviolable.  However, as punishment for a crime that person may be imprisoned and his autonomy circumscribed.  In some instances, the crime may be sufficiently heinous or particularly egregious to merit permanent expulsion from the protections and privileges of society.  In these instances, capital punishment in the form of execution is merited until such a time as expulsion may be made in another form.

Which is a very dry detour from where I started and that was wondering what obligations models and cosplayers willingly give up when they don (or doff) certain clothing.  Cosplay may not equal consent, but does it equal a level of objectification which must be constantly combated by reminders of a person's humanity?  Possibly.  If that's the case, then are these not mitigating circumstances which perhaps lessen the offenders culpability?

I'm going to say no, and here's why.  Just as the thief still bears an obligation to remit what he has stolen to the owner (return in kind or as payment), people always have an obligation to others that cannot be reduced.  The mitigating circumstances might help diminish the punishment, but never the obligation itself.  As such, social ostracism might be an appropriate punishment for offenders at conventions, but I cannot see an ethical reason to withhold convention fees already paid, or the imposition of some sort of fine.  A declaration that such behavior is unacceptable is ethically permissible, but punitive actions are impermissible.  And certainly an apology is in order.

However, a model relinquishes the right to be offended by photography, harmless objectification (is objectification ever harmless . . . ?) by the very fact that they have willingly assumed a level of deviation from social expectations already.  Just as a person in public has no reasonable expectation of privacy, a cosplayer has less by the fact that they have willingly called attention to themselves.  Moreover, though turnabout does often seem fair-play, certain creep-galleries (in which the cameras are turned on photographers, often men, who seem particularly invasive in taking pictures) are themselves impermissible insofar as photographers have not assumed the same level of provocateur.

To be clear, this ethical system only includes actions that are not in and of themselves already illegal or clearly delineated in some kind of statement of acceptable behavior to which the offenders have had access and/or have read and understood.  This is an ethics of the gray areas in which we find ourselves daily and hews mostly closely to Kant's categorical imperative: People must never be treated merely as means to an end. (An interesting aside: This is the moral foundation against prostitution and sex work.  Where it gets really convoluted is where it descends into deontological morality, which I might turn to in another post.)

This all becomes much more complicated if one considers the pervasive atmosphere of sexual exploitation present in the media -- especially social media, which is its own kind of echo-chamber.  It calls into question the notion that certain behaviors are made entirely without coercion.  If a girl grows up perceiving certain actions as acceptable, and allowing herself to be exploited because she is unaware that she is being exploited, are her actions freely made?  Indeed, cannot one make the argument that producers of such content are themselves under an ethical obligation to cease their own behavior?

I'm going to leave these questions largely unanswered, since the report leaves them unanswered as well.  But I will leave you with their parting challenge:

The frequency with which viewers are able to watch and laugh at these sexual exploits further supports the notion that media is potentially creating an environment that trivializes the sexualization and sexual exploitation of women. The significance of “frequency” is especially relevant in this study given the continual absence of countervailing messages among the programs examined. When we laugh about dead hookers it becomes increasingly difficult to see the mistreatment of sex workers as a national civil and human rights issue. The same can be said for child molestation, sex trafficking, etc. When these messages, images and ideologies are delivered via mass media, the definition of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors are communicated both implicitly and explicitly to viewers. Similarly, when the media associates humor with sexual exploitation they are sending a strong message that these issues are harmless and require neither urgency nor a strong response.

Although results from this report are disturbing, it is the desire of the PTC [Parents Television Council] that these findings will spur concern, increased dialogue, and a collective responsibility to find answers that will result in a qualitative difference in the lives of young girls and women everywhere.

Cosplay and Fan Fiction

Robin Hobb (who is also Megan Lindholm) once remarked at a book signing that she thinks of fan-fiction as a misuse of limited time.  We're all given a limited period within which to make our art and she thought that fan-fiction (and to a lesser extent commissioned work like film novelizations and filling in for deceased authors as Brandon Sanderson is for Robert Jordan) was time poorly spent.  Instead, she advocated that authors invest in themselves: that instead of playing in someone else's sandbox, they should be making characters and worlds of their own.  I think it's good advice, but it's not advice that I gravitate to.

You see, I started in Wheel of Time fan-fiction.  I'm sure much of it is still floating around the interwebs and my success (or lack thereof) might be an effective scale by which to judge Robin Hobb's advice.  But I have a hard time accepting that the hundred of hours and millions of words (yeah, I counted once) were wasted.  I have to believe that I gained valuable insights into the mechanics of story, plot, narrative, and characterization.  And though those words will never be published, that's okay.  I erred often and frequently, but I learned from those mistakes and I carry them with me still; they influence how I write this blog, how I write papers, how I write articles, short stories, and novels.

Similarly, as I was thinking about fan fiction, I got to thinking about cosplay.  For those of you not in the loop (an orbit I barely inhabit) cosplay stands for costume play and is devoted to fans of particular works of fiction wearing the attire, or acting in the manner of, their favorite characters.  There's quite a bit of ruckus being made as to whether it's part of nerd culture, or geek culture, somewhere in the middle, or something else entirely.  It has the feeling of a Renaissance Fair without the obvious anachronisms.  Or, at the very least, entirely intentional anachronisms.  And it's also related to steam punk, which is a whole other kind of nerdery on which I'm not qualified to comment.

But it strikes me that the investment of time, energy, and creativity so prevalent in cosplay is a kind of misappropriation of talent, skill, and dedication.  For the same reason as Robin Hobb advised against fan fiction, I have to wonder if these people couldn't excel at their own endeavors.  Much like the teacher who wonders if little Johnny couldn't be a prodigy if he just applied himself, I wonder if cosplayers are just not applying themselves.

But I have to take a step back.  After all, I was a writer of fan fiction.  I loved it.  It gave me a sense of community and included me in a creative world that was also a creative outlet and source of inspiration.  Possibly, cosplay does the same.  Nerd, geek, whatever.  It's the community that formed around common interests that really matters. 

But still.  I have to wonder.