Augury

Via Bankuei I find this link to an open letter about fans dressing up as drow or other dark-skinned characters using makeup. In general I find cosplay to be a heinous practice but when it comes down to cosplay or thought-police I’ll side with cosplay.

Quoth the post-author:

My question is not why you would dress up in Blackface anymore- I’ve heard all the defenses and rationalizations- my question is now, WHY AREN’T you dressing as the many characters in movies, comics, or anime who either are nazis or look like klansmen?

If we’re going down the route of what my >impressions are, rather than what the author’s intent is — they do. Notice to anyone dressing up as a military officer from Full Metal Alchemist: Don’t you know how unacceptable it is to dress as a Nazi? It’s not even merely the resemblance of their military uniforms. The Full Metal Alchemist movie makes the Nazi connection to the military in the anime series pretty explicit.

The discussion continues in the comments. Here’s a [truncated] sensible comment from Buzzmo:

Isn’t it worth noting that these people are not in blackface (i.e., minstrels) but simply dressed as drow elves? I.e., they are not dressing up as symbols of real-world hate. Drow may be villains, but they’re fictional villains that (for good or ill) people love. Driz’zt is a hero. Slap him (or any drow) on a book and you sell a million copies. Is it the fanboys’ fault that drow happen to have jet-black skin? Would the dark blue of Nightcrawler or Mystique be equally offensive?

A response from the post’s author:

Hi,

In Germany, let us say that you’re buddhist, and you wear a swastika (which, is a legit buddhist symbol), the Germans will tell you it’s not acceptable. You may have been thinking of the wheel of karma, but in that context, of that place, it’s loaded and hurtful.

In America, for OVER A CENTURY, blackface has been used to demean black folks. And, it’s not over, it’s in the news.

Americans have less than NO excuse to be unaware of how loaded the image is, to paint oneself black, as much as Germans have less than no excuse to know how loaded Nazi symbols are.

At this point Buzzmo backs down, too bad. I don’t think this is a serious argument.

Would these Buddhists really upset anyone if they walked around a Berlin street with swastikas? A few misguided people. Most though? No. If you’re a Buddhist in Germany it may be inappropriate to wear a swastika in public — But the more appropriate culmination of the analogy is whether it’s appropriate for a Buddhist to wear a swastika while at a Buddhist temple located in Germany. Yes, it is.

It’s all about context. At a gaming or anime or other type of convention the relevant context is people dressing up as characters they like. Maybe it’s Drizzt from the R. A. Salvatore books or maybe it’s Barrett from Final Fantasy 7. The cultural connotations that wearing caked-on dark makeup may have in a broader cultural sense do not exist in the gaming subculture and attempting to impose them without any obvious indication of similar intent is just an outright misreading. In the strictest sense we must, as Jeff might say, privilege the intent of the author.

To read a fanboy’s costume as even remotely associated with minstrelry, though, most certainly does not privilege the intent of the author. It does not even appeal to the intent of the author while evaluating myriad other factors that affect a colloquial interpretation. It discards the intent entirely. I find that unacceptable.

It can be hard to accept that feelings are made in error — Being angry or hurt makes us defensive. But misunderstandings cause emotional distress all the time. How many times have arguments occurred between friends due to misunderstandings: “When you said X I thought you meant Y…”?

Since this is a touchy subject for some people I consulted with one of my best friends before making this post, to get her opinion on the entire matter. I’m quoting her example here because I think it’s particularly relevant:

“…Imagine someone coming up to you while you’re singing to your child and becoming enraged. And, eventually, you come to understand that he was captured and tortured and his torturers sang that song to him. I think it’s too much to ask that all items with a bad connotation be removed from sight just because their mere presence will bring up bad memories. But I can see the argument from the other side, that they can’t help having these terrible thoughts when they see/hear the item in question. And it’s most polite to keep those things out of sight so that there’s no chance of such a negative reaction.”

In the end it does come down to an issue of politeness. But politeness is not a one way street. It is impolite to take fandom dress-up into a sphere where its intent is not readily recognized — But it is similarly impolite to ignore the known intent of the text and take offense.