[1]The cosplay craze appears livelier in Japan than anywhere else. The following is an invitation to humanities scholars to present papers at a conference entitled Cosplay: Media, Identity and Performance in Japan and Beyond at the Institute of Comparative Culture at Tokyo’s Sophia University: “A vibrant fan culture has developed around manga, anime and videogames, and perhaps the most visible indicator of its presence is ‘cosplay.’ A portmanteau combining ‘costume’ and ‘(role)play,’ cosplay is for some people almost synonymous with Japanese fandom, but its roots are in sci-fi conventions in the United States. Connected with the rich media scene in Japan, the practice of costuming as favorite characters took on a life of its own. Conventions can draw 14,000 cosplayers, and websites over 200,000 users. The annual ‘cosplay market’ is estimated at $350 million. For a short time there was even a ‘professional cosplay course’ offered by a trade school. And this enthusiasm is fast spreading around the world, as evidenced by the annual World Cosplay Summit. The quality of costumes and passion of their wearers continues to draw media attention around the world. Unfortunately, cosplay has yet to draw much academic attention, despite the potential wealth of insights to be gained. This conference brings together scholars from a variety of backgrounds to consider not only cosplay, but also intersections with fashion, subculture, performance, identity and gender.”
[2]Second Life might currently be a fiasco for investors, but it’s fertile ground for academic research. Zoe McMillan and Steorling Heron recently proposed a collection of essays entitled Challenging the Virtuaclass="underline" Women’s Cultural Experience in Second Life and sent out a call to fellow female academics to contribute chapters on the following topics: SL Economic and Business; SL Artistic and Creative Expressions via Building, Scripting, Animation; SL Subculture Identities (for example, Gorean, Furry, Neko, Sci-fi, Borg, Tinies, Roleplay, Child Avatars, etc); SL Relationships/Defending Personal Boundaries (Intimacy/Privacy in Digital Environment). Concerned as it is with these two diligent academics this footnote is not meant to be ironic. The fact is that from the beginning of time humanity has used religion to passionately and devotedly live parallel lives. The mere 2.2 billion Christians currently on planet earth believe in the story of the Second Life. The fact that Second Life the computer game differs slightly from the religious concept is quite irrelevant. The heart of the matter is that the human mind has always been ready to teleport itself into other worlds. And in this respect, the thesis that Google is actually the Heavenly Father is also more plausible.
[3]In the early seventies the psychiatric case of Shirley Ardell Mason, better known as Sybil Isabel Dorsett, aroused unusually widespread interest, her rise to infamy helped by a bestseller written by her psychiatrist, Cornelia B. Wilbur, and two movie adaptions of the book. Sybil’s diagnosis was “multiple personality disorder” (now known as “dissociative identity disorder”), and she was reported to carry sixteen different female identities within her. Interestingly, Sybil’s case inspired the computer security term “Sybil attack.”
5. POST-COMMUNIST PRACTICE: VALENTINA AND EMIR
Valentina Hasan: Ken Lee
Who is Valentina Hasan? Valentina Hasan is a Bulgarian who auditioned for Bulgarian Idol in February 2008. She told the jury that she was going to sing the Mariah Carey song “Ken Lee” (the song’s real name being “Without You”[1]). Valentina Hasan, a stumpy young woman in a cheap peach satin dress and glammy make-up, bravely sang the song in a completely unrecognizable language. To the jury’s snippy question about the language in which she was singing (as if Henry Higgins himself had appointed them!), Valentina, taken aback that they didn’t know, replied: “English.”[2] A video clip with Valentina Hasan’s appearance started doing the rounds on the Internet, and a regional war erupted on chat-forums soon thereafter. Bulgarian commentators distanced themselves from Valentina, claiming that she was Turkish, or maybe a Gypsy, but certainly not Bulgarian; the Macedonians and Turks jumped in and accused the Bulgarians of racism; the Greeks defended the Bulgarians and accused the Macedonians of themselves being “Gypsies” and having stolen the name Macedonia for their non-existent state. These anonymous outbursts, nationalist and racist, soon descended into a tedious Balkan soap opera that was comprehensible only to Bulgarians, Macedonians, Greeks, Turks, Serbs, and Roma. While all this was going on, a million-strong global audience watched “Ken Lee.” Within a month the clip had four million hits and Mariah Carey had tipped her hat to her Bulgarian imitator on French television. Valentina Hasan’s unexpected popularity forced the Bulgarian producers to invite her back for a repeat performance. Dolled up like a real star this time, Valentina sang the song in a slightly more comprehensible English, but to the audience’s delight performed the chorus in her mangled English as she had the first time. On their feet and holding hands, the audience joined Valentina for the chorus of “Ken Lee.” By the first half of May 2008 the video clip had thirteen million hits. Then a hit remix appeared. To this day Internet forums are full of people trying to imitate Valentina Hasan’s unique brand of English.
Valentina Hasan became much more that an ordinary karaoke singer. For a brief moment this anonymous young woman was a “princess.” A Bulgarian, whose appearance, figure, voice, and English had the jury rolling its eyes, won an unprecedented moral victory. Millions of YouTube viewers ruled in her favor.
Emir Kusturica: Drvengrad
Emir Kusturica is a Yugoslav film director with a deserved international reputation. On a hill called Mećavnik in southwestern Serbia, Kusturica has built his own town called Drvengrad or “Kustendorf.”[3] Drvengrad really has tongues talking. Few people in the world get to build their own Graceland, Neverland, or Brioni, and very rare indeed are those who get to raise a pyramid to themselves in their own lifetimes.
On a trip to Serbia in April 2009 a friend talked me into visiting Drvengrad. Built on the crest of a hill and with its own gate, Drvengrad is just like a medieval village, but visitors need to buy an entry ticket. Everything is made of wood, the ground covered in wooden decking, the scattered wooden houses connected by flights of wooden stairs. The houses themselves are perfect examples of wooden architecture. In Drvengrad there is a movie theatre named after Stanley Kubrick, a swimming pool, a cake shop, two or three restaurants, a souvenir shop (in which the only DVDs and CDs on sale are Kusturica’s films and their Goran Bregović-composed soundtracks), a library with a reading room, and an art gallery. The streets are named after Kusturica’s idols, including Matija Bećković (a Serbian poet and member of the Milošević-era political elite), Ivo Andrić, Bruce Lee, Charlie Chaplin, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Maradona, Nikita Mikhalkov, and Jim Jarmusch. The restaurants and cake shop are named after Ivo Andrić characters or works (for example, “Aska and the Wolf” and “At Ćorkan’s”). I don’t think any of the street names are permanent; they change on Kusturica’s whim. All the signs are written in Cyrillic, so the names are lost to many visitors.