Cosplay's Ritual Practice And Liminal Space

In Chinese,Cosplay,translated as "role-playing",refers to the game activity of playing characters in anime,comics,games,etc.,and is widely prevalent among young people who love quadratic element culture.Although the origin of cosplay can be traced back to Disneyland in California in the 20 th century,the real sense of cosplay activities originated in Japan.It then spread to the Chinese mainland via Chinese Hong Kong and Chinese Taiwan around the 1990 s.In just over 20 years,cosplay has developed rapidly in the Chinese mainland,with cosplay community growing and becoming more specialized and segmented,the presentation of its works also becoming increasingly diverse.Most of the existing studies are descriptive studies of cosplay and focus on how youth groups accomplish self-identity and group identity through cosplay.Most of them are based on the Birmingham School's "resistance-adoption" path.Based on this,this study introduces Turner's "ritual process" theory and examines the impact of the complete ritual process of "prepreparation-mid-performance-post-production" on cosplayers.In addition,this study examines the behavioral characteristics of cosplayers in the liminal of cosplay and explores the meaning behind these behaviors.Based on interviews with 16 cosplayers of different ages from different regions in the Chinese mainland,this study concludes that cosplayers complete their identification with themselves,the group they belong and ACGN culture to through the "ritual process" of cosplay time and time again,in which the liminal stage of cosplay plays a key role.During the liminal stage,cosplayers are not bound by the structure.They can make many "antistructure " attempts,such as "cross-dressing",bold body display,and the exposure of their sexual orientation.It can be said that cosplayers have constructed a ritual time and space in which they can escape social intolerance.The paper consists of three parts: Introduction,Body,and Conclusion.The introduction introduces the background of Cosplay research,the current status of research,key concepts,research methods,and the innovations of this paper.The main text is divided into four parts:Chapter 1 provides a background overview of cosplay culture,mainly tracing the origin of cosplay activities,describing the picture of cosplay activities in China and its development trend;The 2,3,and 4 chapters construct the framework of this paper according to the three stages of "separation/liminality/reintegration" of "ritual process" theory.The "separation" stage in Chapter 2 corresponds to the pre-preparation stage of cosplay.It explores how cosplay creates a ritual space and time,which is related to the social environment,actual needs,compartmentalization of space and time,and the transformation of personal status.Chapter 3is the core chapter of this paper,focusing on what kind of field is created in the liminal stage of cosplay,what "anti-structure" behaviors the cosplayers perform,and how they gain emotional energy.The fourth chapter is the reintegration stage,in which the cosplayers return to the daily life after a journey through the "ritual process" of cosplay,which is a return with a higher level of meaning.The ritual practice of cosplay is seen on a broader social level as a stage of "disconnection" in the social process,bringing conflict and confrontation into the mainstream culture in social development and providing impetus and inspiration for future cultural development.