Reuse of Harry Potter in Cosplay and Doujinshi: Authorial Intent and Social Norms

The use and reuse of media is commonplace today, with digital technology and the
Internet making media easily available to people worldwide. The Harry Potter series, written by J.K. Rowling, is one such example of a cultural media product that has gained immense global popularity. Looking at Harry Potter in the context of how its Japanese fandom reuses elements of the series, specifically the characters, provides a particularly interesting frame for analysis of reuse as some forms can be particularly contentious. Unlike song and dance sequences, which are removable from the context of the original films they appear in (Novak 2010:60), I would argue that characters are so integral to a story and thus require a higher degree of adherence to the source material. In the case of Harry Potter, when characters are reused in a way that retains the original context or authorial intention they are acceptable; however, when character is reused in a way that perverts or associates the characters, and thus the original text, with socially taboo behavior, it is unacceptable.

One way Japanese fans, (and many North American ones as well), acceptably reuse characters from Harry Potter is by engaging in cosplay. Cosplay involves dressing up in a costume resembling that of a favorite character from an anime (cartoon), movie or game, usually at a convention, and often involves hours of painstaking labor crafting the costume by hand. This is a form of impersonation, that is acceptable to authors and within the fan community and while some in wider society may find the act of dressing up on a day other than Halloween strange, generally nobody takes issue with this behavior, (aside perhaps from people who would take issue with the original works on religious or other grounds to begin with). This is acceptable in part because dressing up in a costume and the act of impersonation do not defy any social norms; there are times when it is perfectly acceptable for everyone to do these things, thus the author’s work is not associated with any practices or ideas that may be harmful to the original work.

Additionally, the costumes, as mentioned above, are usually incredibly well designed and thus can be seen as a tribute to the author’s original work. Cosplayers do not take liberties with the original character designs or costumes, they try to make exact replicas (see Figure 1). Therefore, no harm is done to the characters being reused and the author’s original work is being praised in that someone wants to take the time to re-create their creation.

            When characters or aspects from the story are reused in ways that place characters in socially unacceptable situations or simply severely altered from their original selves, both the artist themselves and fans can feel as though the work is being violated. This can be seen in doujinshi (fan produced comics), which reuse popular characters in original stories and are popular among a subgroup of anime and manga (comic) fans. It is not doujinshi’s use of the characters themselves that is the problem, but the context in which they are used. Doujinshi often place characters in distorted sexual relationships, taking a heterosexual characters and placing them in a homosexual relationships, taking siblings and placing them in incestual relationships and many involve rape. One such Harry Potter doujinshi sees James Potter raped by a group of Slytherin students, while Remus Lupin watches from a closet. Orbaugh speculates that Rowling might, like some Japanese authors, find doujinshi’s use of her characters an “unforgivable violation”(2010:184). She and Hahn Aquila also note the outrage of many Harry Potter fans, the majority of whom are not part of the doujinshi reading subculture, who voice their outrage through online message boards(Orbaugh 2010:184; Hahn Aquila 2007:42). These reuses by some fans are unacceptable because they involve taboo actions like rape, and because they alter the source text in ways that completely alter the characters, which are an integral part of the original.

             

             Novak says that with reuse there is a ‘tension between “tribute” and “mockery” that can never be resolved’(64). While doujinshi may not be a direct mockery of the original texts, it does alter them to a point that it could harm the reputation of the Harry Potter franchise if it became associated with them, in the same way a mockery might. Cosplay on the other hand, is acceptable, because it is clearly a tribute, upholding the intention of the author’s creation. How true a reuse stays to the original work, and whether or not it associates that work with immoral acts determines the acceptability of the reuse. 

 

Figure 2: A picture of a Harry Potter doujinshi depicting Harry kissing Draco. http://www.flickr.com/photos/unforth/2351423810/

Figure 1: A cosplay of Lord Voldemort. http://fullcosplay.tumblr.com/post/449153212/cosplay-lord-voldemort-harry-potter-series

Works Cited

Novak, David

2010 Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost World of Bollywood. Cultural Anthropology 25(1): 40-72.

Orbaugh, Sharalyn

2010 Girls Reading Harry Potter Girls Writing Desire: Amateur Manga and Shoujo Reading. In Girl Reading Girl in Japan. Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley eds. 175-188. London: Routledge.

Hahn Aquila, Meredith Suzanne

2007 Ranma ½ Fan Fiction Writers: New Narrative Themes or the Same Old Story? Mechademia 2:34-47.