Abstrak
This thesis is conducted based on examining three music videos of “Public Enemy” released in 1989-1991. It focuses on black people protests on racism and discrimination. It aims at describing black people protests on racism and discrimination that happen in modern era through music videos and investigating what aspects of the protests are subjected to. The research is descriptive qualitative. The source of the data are three music videos from “Public Enemy” entitiled ‘Can’t Truss It’ (1991) from the album Apocalypse 91... Enemy Strike Black, ‘Get the Fuck Outta Dodge’ (1991) from the album Apocalypse 91... Enemy Strike Black and ‘Fight the Power’ (1989) from the album Fear of A Black Planet. The main data are scenes, lyrics, and figure behaviour. As the research is conducted under American Studies which develops Interdisciplinary Studies, this thesis combines historical and socio-cultural approaches on racism and discrimination phenomena, explores black musicology, and adopts semiotic theory of Michael Riffaterre as postulation of lyrical realm. All of components in the music videos including scenes, figure behaviors and its lyrics accentuate form of protest which is expressed by black people. This research also reveals that racism and discrimination upon black people in the past are actually extended to modern era but in different forms. Even it has been regulated and structured during the Declaration of Independence of America. Slavery may have been diminished, but black people are still poor and end up becoming low workers of capitalists.
Keywords: black protest, racism and discrimination, music videos, “Public Enemy”