A Study on the Characters' Costumes in the Disney's Animations

Abstract

This study aims to provide a new perspective on Disney's animations, by examining how Disney systematized and transformed his own ways of cognitive systems of producing meaning through the costumes of his characters. For this purpose, 10 Disney animations of which the main characters were costume-wearing humans were selected and analyzed. First, the characters' costumes of the passive female heroines were much different from those of the active female heroines while the costumes of male heroes did not have any common characteristics. Second, the characters' costumes according to the settings of the animations had different aspects: the Western-Europe-based animations exhibited the appropriate costumes of the set times, but the non-Western-Europe-based animations exhibited the imaginative costumes of Disney rather than the appropriate costumes of the actual countries. Third, the costumes played the role of expressing the situations of the animations, and had their own repetitive conventions in each animation. Changes in the situations or the upward mobility of the status could be found easily through the costumes, but such distinctiveness became less visible in the later animations. Disney displayed his own distinctive formula of visual aesthetics through the characters' costumes. But it is recommended that we should have the critical views on the cultural messages of Disney's to prevent fixed ideas or cultural prejudices.

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