• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.61-78
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• 2008

Comedy costumes worn on the comedians/gag men express the information of the performances such as character's era, place, social rank, present environment, age, sex, occupation, emotion, relationships between the characters, importance and mood in visual language. The comic is found when these informations are reversed, revealed, exaggerated or distorted. To analyse the TV comedy costumes, 5 subordinate concepts of the comic which are Body, Gender, Age, T.P.O.(Time, Place, Occasion) and Role could be identified, and the results from the analysis focused on (10 shows were selected from each of the first and second half of the years from 2003 to 2007) are as follows: Distorted and ugly body implies the resistance against the ideal body. Reversed or confused sex are usually expressed as men dressed in women, and these mean breaking the dichotomy between male and female, and coexistence of the masculinity and feminity, and satirizing the social custom restricting women by moral rules. It could be recognized that the way of men's dressing in women have been changing keeping pace with the times. The discord between age and costume was often expressed with children's wear and childish props. This implies the liberation from the age role. The comic expressed from the inadequate costume for T.P.O. usually appeared with the costumes 20-30years behind the times. When there were discordance with the acts and acts expected from the outfit(appearance) also made an ironical laugh. The comics acquired by vulgarization and exaggeration of the characteristics of role(figures/occupation) were from the imitation and deformation of the objects in stereotypes, and through this dissolving the custom was under way.