engleski

Clothes in Croatian mid-20th Century Picturebooks as Indicators of Ideological Change

An analysis of Croatian picturebooks after WWII has shown that the image of the child inscribed in depictions of space reflect social and ideological changes over time (Narančić Kovač 2019). The present study focuses on representations of clothes as an element of the visual discourses in Croatian picturebooks in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. It is a turbulent period of transition which brought about change in social norms and values. Social norms can “be understood as a kind of grammar of social interactions” so that a certain “system of norms specifies what is acceptable and what is not in a society or group” (Bicchieri, Muldoon and Sontuoso 2018). According to McCallum and Stephens (2011), a society expresses and conveys its current values and attitudes through a narrative discourse: “all aspects of textual discourse are informed and shaped by ideology”, and texts for children “either implicitly reflect its social function of defining group of values or seek to challenge received ideologies and substitute new formations” (370). Based on these theoretical foundations and given that social identity is also communicated by clothing and fashion (Davies 1989), the characters’ clothes depicted in our corpus are analysed and their meanings are interpreted in a wider historical and cultural context. The types of clothes found in the analysed picturebooks include national costumes, uniforms, formal and seemingly unmarked clothes. Special attention is given to different kinds of hats and other details. The findings show that what characters wear sends a strong ideological message about acceptable and desirable values. Specific items of clothing promote implicit social norms, reveal the image of the child dominant in different ideological and historical contexts, and influence the process of the formation of new social identities in young readers in accordance with newly established systems of values.

clothes ; Croatian picturebooks ; identity ; ideology ; social norms

Konferencija je održana u hibridnom formatu, dijelom uživo, a dijelom online.