Thursday, June 12, 2014

Parasocial Relationships

Parasocial Relationships is part of the Uses & Gratifications theory which was created by Elihu Katz. The uses & gratifications theory focuses on what people use different types of media for using 8 typologies. Parasocial relationships are not part of the 8 typologies. A parasocial relationship  is a sense of friendship or emotional  attachment that develops between TV viewers and media personalities. You might often read a book and feel like you personally know the characters or feel like there is some kind of relationship between you and one of the characters. This relationship is an affect of media. This relationship reminds me of people who go to comic cons dressed up as their favorite character from a comic, video game, movie, television show or book. There are people known as cos players who dress exactly as characters from video games and take on the persona of that character as if they were really them. The fact that a particular media has such a huge impact on someone's life shows that these parasocial relationships are strong.

If you have ever seen any of the Resident Evil movies or played any of the video games, you will know about the Umbrella Corporation. Umbrella Corporation is basically a corrupt form of military group that is involved in top-secret operations like biological weaponry and genetic engineering. This group is known as the 'bad zombie killers' in the Resident Evil games and films. Resident Evil is a pretty popular franchise which has gained a large following over the past few years. So large, that there are groups all over the world that cosplay and hold fundraisers as members of Umbrella Corporation. They are located everywhere and anywhere. There is a 'hive' here in Denver that often comes together during Comic Con and Zombie Crawl to show off their costumes, fake weapons and awesome cars in order to fundraise money for children in different organizations. This relates to parasocial relationships because the fact that these people go out of their way to purchase expensive costumes and fake weapons shows that media has affected the way they relate to Resident Evil. Instead of imagining to be part of a fictional military conglomerate, they are literally dressing up as these characters and taking on their roles.

Last year for Zombie Crawl,  I myself decided to dress up as an Umbrella Corp. member. It was really fun and interesting to see just how it felt to be this fictional character. Of course we've all dressed up for Halloween before, but this felt different from just being in some costume on the hunt for candy because 1.) I haven't trick-or-treated since I was 13 and 2.) because I felt like I was part of this real group even though I knew it was all fake. I had never really gotten into any of the Resident Evil games or movies until I began getting my costume together. When I was researching and learning more about this group I saw people online who would hold these online chat rooms and role play as the popular Umbrella Corp characters. This was of course a little weird but was a perfect example of parasocial relationships.


1 comment:

  1. Thanks for sharing a deeper insight into Resident Evil. Personally for me, I only know of the movie and game, but that's about it meaning I had no clue about the Umbrella Corp. I agree though that it is crazy to see people feel closely impacted by this entertainment. Comic Con is definitely a strong example of this parasocial relationship. Two days ago, Denver hosted Comic Con, and I always find the costumes quite fascinating. I am pretty sure some people probably spend so much money and time to create themselves into their favorite character. The dedication of the people affected by this form of media is quite remarkable although it probably can be seen as wasteful. With that on mind, I enjoy the fact that you focused on the positive light of this relationship and share your experience of playing a different character for a day.

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