ABSTRACT

This thesis is conducted based on research on dystopian film trilogy, Hunger Games, released from 2012-2015. It focuses on disobedience issue and aims at describing disobedience practices in the movie and investigating how the movie represents disobedience practices in 21st  century of America. The research is descriptive qualitative. As the research falls under American Studies which stresses on interdisciplinary perspective, this thesis combines historical and socio-culture approach on civil disobedience phenomena and adopts theories of dystopia, media spectacles, and semiotic film.  The  source  of  data  are  Hunger  Games  (2012),  Catching  Fires  (2013)  and Mockingjay (2014 & 2015). The main data are scenes, dialogues, and figure behaviour in the movie trilogy. Based on textual and contextual analysis, disobedience practices in the movie  have  been  implemented  as  conscientious  measures  to  eliminate  any  dystopic control of Government. Its representation of America in 21st century can be seen from the youth political involvement and media utilization during disobedience movement. Representation of youth disobedience is marked by the crisis of Keystone XL Pipeline installation in America. The movement has been considered as the biggest youth disobedience in environmental issue. Representation of spectacle on disobedience can be seen in the case of Tim DeChristopher. Climate disobedience practiced by DeChristopher has inspired director and artist to make his political resistance into spectacles in form of movie adaption and music video. Both film and the cases have demonstrated two major phenomena.  First,  young  people  are considered  as  typical  agent  of  change  that  will potentially lead to a better future. Second, in the spectacle era when media has infiltrated human everyday life, political agenda and events are transformed into cinematic terms as a new political strategy.

Keywords:  youth,  civil  disobedience,  dystopia,  media,  spectacle,  movie,  American thought, Hunger Games