BIOPOWER AND BIOPOLITICS REPRESENTATION IN A PLAGUE TALE: INNOCENCE (2019)

Oleh :
Rizky Tirta Nugraha - B0322068 - Fak. Ilmu Budaya

This research investigated how the video game A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019) represents biopower and biopolitical control by explicitly illustrating the conceptual model of institutional collapse through its narrative and gameplay mechanics. The study aimed to demonstrate how interactive media simulates the fall of traditional sovereignty and the rise of totalitarian disease management. Utilizing a qualitative research design, the researcher extracted 68 visual and gameplay data points across 9 chapters using purposive sampling. The data were analyzed through first- and second-cycle coding, specifically employing Values, Attitudes, and Beliefs (VAB) coding and Pattern coding, while integrating Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, Louis Althusser’s Repressive State Apparatus (RSA), and Henry Jenkins’s theory of narrative architecture. This theoretical synthesis systematically decoded the textual, visual, and interactive elements. The findings revealed that the game constructs this conceptual model as a terminal cycle of retaliatory violence. First, the narrative and mechanics demonstrate the absolute failure of traditional authority against an ecological crisis. Second, the state evolves into an industrialized biological dictatorship, replacing ideological control with a rogue Repressive State Apparatus that weaponizes the contagion. Finally, the linear level design and lethal gameplay loop function as an architectural trap with no pacifist alternatives. Therefore, the game forces marginalized subjects to weaponize necropolitical violence to achieve spatial and biological liberation. Ultimately, the study concluded that the game's interactive systems and narrative structure prove that absolute biopolitical control inevitably results in its own violent destruction.