Power and Social Gap in Gundala Transmediality

Abstract

. For centuries, social class is still existing and has resulted the clashes between humans. Indonesian society has hundreds of millions of populations which is dominated by the working class, but a smaller number of middle classes still holds the highest power and can control all aspects in the social life. It causes various conflicts that have plagued the community. The working class is always marginalized and subordinated. Social inequality ensued and caused chaos. Sometimes people are not aware of this problem and just remain unconscious. Therefore, literary works and other cultural products are often presented as a tool to voice the opinions and describe the social realities that actually occur in our society. In 2019, Hasmi's comic Gundala Putra Petir was adapted into a movie also titled Gundala: Negeri ini Butuh Patriot which is written and directed by Joko Anwar in collaboration with Bumilangit Studio. Then Bumilangit Studio published its movie adaptation comic titled The Official Movie Adaptation Gundala: Takdir which is a piece of the puzzle to build the story world of Gundala (2019). The distribution of the Gundala story (2019) is not only limited to movies and printed comics, but is also presented in the online comic titled Gundala: Son of Lightning which is published in the online comic platform Webtoon . The comics are positioned as complementary which is separated from the movie. It's an effort to build the story world of Gundala (2019) as part of the BCU ( Bumilangit Cinematic Universe) . By using the concept of habitus, capital and field from Pierre Bourdieu and the concept of transmedia storytelling from Henry Jenkins to build the story world of Gundala, this paper is expected to be able to dismantle the power relations and social gap which are presented in Gundala (2019) transmediality.