ABSTRACT
This research is essentially aimed to explain how the movie Bad Ass represents Frank Vega as a vigilante and what is the motive of the representation of Frank Vega as a vigilante. The research provides the analyses of Frank Vega who becomes a vigilante which is caused by the socio-cultural condition of American society.
This is a descriptive qualitative research which takes Bad Ass movie directed by Craig Moss released in 2012 as the main source of the data of this research. There are two kinds of data; primary and secondary data. The primary data are taken from some elements of Bad Ass movie such as costume, camera placement, dialogues, figure behavior, lighting, makeup, scenes, and other cinematographic elements. The secondary data are gathered from books, journals, and online articles which are related to the topic. This research was conducted under the framework of American Studies. As consequences, it employs interdisciplinary studies which incorporate several theories and approaches such as semiotics film theory and socio-cultural approach to analyze the movie.
As the result, the movie represents Frank Vega as a vigilante who is independent, who is not related to crime control value, who still has a little trust to the police, who still obeys the law, and who is not related to lynching (killing the victim). Further, the reason behind Frank’s vigilante action is the U.S. Government’s failures to do its duty prevents and reduce crime (especially homicide which is caused by gun violence) and enforce the law without performing discrimination. Moreover, the movie is intended as the embodiment of the society’s shared opinion of the U.S. Government’s failure in controlling gun ownership, to push down homicide which is caused by gun violence, and to do its duty to enforce the law without performing discrimination toward minority people and the U.S. Government’s achievement such as the government decision to pull out U.S. soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan to end the war in both of those countries, to save America from economic crisis and to provide jobs for American society through some economic regulations.
Keyword: movie, vigilante, homicide, discrimination, government failure, govenrment achievement.