dress up games for girlsI feel the disappointment keenly, even now, on remembering this, but I grasp only wispily, in memory, the reasons for my anticipation, the promise of the lush cruel world of spiky ladies trailing green smoke and elongated swooshy cars and the throat-grabbing fear for the cute puppies. So, even though I haven’t felt this passionate yearning for a movie since I was 6, I can say I have felt it and understand the competition of children around the world to be the first in line for the most recent Harry Potter movie, and their desire to experience the fantasy world fully by imagining themselves as characters in it.I don’t remember, though, anyone dressing up in Cruella or puppy outfits during the parent-supported Dalmatian frenzy that lasted from the movie’s debut in 1961 till at least the mid-eighties.
The original film was released in cinemas four times, the last in 1991, meaning it was already well-known enough by the time of my childhood to be possibly emulated by trick-or-treaters or fans, but I don’t remember any dress-up that accompanied the love. Nor do I remember any costuming or role-playing that accompanied the Narnia obsession of Grades 5 and 6, or the Tolkien obsession of high school (we did play Dungeons-and-Dragons style games and drew our elaborate castle plans but not even the geekiest of us would have dared appear in public in medieval clothes; the social retribution would have been terrible, unthinkable).Now it’s not just children but adults who dress in careful reproductions of costumes worn by their favourite heroes of science fiction and fantasy. They have clubs and conferences and competitions. Their costumes, unoriginal though they are, are art projects. You could say that it’s not these adult role-players who are behaving like children at Halloween, but children who are now, because of the Potter movies, entering the very adult world of cosplay. (It’s mildly creepy to think too hard about that, as it’s of course quite a sexualized world. At anime conventions, “Slave Leia” – Princess Leia as a harem girl – is a notoriously popular role for teenage girls.)
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