The 80’s weren’t very kind to nerds. I’ve written about it before, but it’s a truth that bears repeating. Especially if you want to really understand the message here. The 80’s weren’t very kind to nerds. So when I say that my first experiences with what we call cosplay happened to me in 1984, I want you all to know it was really something special.
The person who introduced me to the art of dressing up as fictional characters was none other than my own father. If you’ve read any of my other blog posts (and I hope there’s maybe one or two of you out there) you know my father is something of an enigma. He was Christian and a Pagan. He was a great dad and he was neglectful father. He was a card-carrying Capitalist Reagan Republican who dreamed of living in a post-scarcity secular socialist utopia where people worked not for the pursuit of wealth, but for the betterment of mankind.
It’s that last point that prompted him to do something that, to 9 year-old me, seemed completely and wholly strange. He bought a Starfleet uniform with the intent to wear it for the premiere of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Not an easy feat in the pre-ecommerce days. He found the costume vendor in an advertisement in the classified section of Starlog magazine.
Without hesitation, I thought the uniform was absolutely badass. There he was, my dad, a Starfleet captain. Seeing him for the first time in uniform, I knew that this is what I wanted to do. Perhaps I was also inspired by the fact that I was not allowed to dress up for Halloween and I had found a miraculous loop-hole. It doesn’t count as being satanic if it’s not on Halloween! Checkmate! It was so simple, so perfect, so completely obvious that I could scarcely believe I hadn’t thought of it before.
On the big day, the premiere of The Search for Spock, my dad couldn’t bring himself to do it. He put the uniform on, then took it off. Then he put it on and took it off again. Us kids begged him to wear it. We were proud. My mom demanded he not waste the money he spent on it by not wearing it. It was no use. In the end, he couldn’t bring himself to wear it out in public. He feared the looks, the mockery, and the laughter. It was the 80’s and people – respectable people, grown ass adults with wives and children – did not simply walk into a theater dressed as one of the characters.
In keeping with the contrasting dual nature of my father, he taught me two things that night. The first: to find so much joy in the fantastic and whimsical that you do whatever you can to feel like you are a part of that fantasy. And the second: to be ashamed of that.
15 years later, the night The Phantom Menace opened in theaters, I wore a Jedi Knight costume. It was the first time I would wear a costume to the movies, but it wouldn’t be the last. I wasn’t greeted with jeers, or laughter. I wasn’t mocked or heckled. As I walked up to wait in line I heard someone say, “It’s about time the real fans started showing up.”
I wish my dad could have experienced that, too.
