Cultural reference of verbal and visual representation of apparel in popular culture

Abstract

The article analyzes the vestimentary code in Eduard Uspensky’s children’s novella and its screen adaptation. In mass culture, the stories about Prostokvashino have shaped the image of a space where hierarchies are dissolved – a significant and reproducible concept within the Russian cultural code. The study aims to interpret vestimentary fashion through the lens of the carnival paradigm and uncover the linguocultural subtext of the literary and animated narrative. By combining hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches, we decode linguocultural stereotypes mediated by specific sign systems and interpret them within the context of intracultural situations. The analysis concludes that the vestimentary code in the Prostokvashino stories performs both an aesthetic and a sense-making function, marking the opposition between official and carnival reality. The article argues that the stories about Prostokvasino generate a transmedial text by means of animated sequences of Soviet Animation, which expand the content of the original verbal narrative through translating static images into dynamic audio-visual ones. These findings demonstrate that the language of costume in both literary and cinematic texts not only shapes the visual appearance of characters but also deconstructs the world of late Soviet norms and values, contrasting official reality with carnivalesque freedom.