STIGMATISASI PENDERITA GANGGUAN MENTAL PADA FILM JOKER 2019

Stigmatization is a negative perception of an individual or group of people who have different characteristics from people around them. People with mental disabilities, one of which was illustrated in the Joker film, can be stigmatized. It was interesting to conduct the research in order to find out how the stigmatization of mental disabilities was addressed in the Joker (2019) film. The method used in this research is Roland Barthes’ semiotic analysis through the denotation, connotation, and myth marking system. The theory used in this research is Erving Goffman’s theory about stigmatization. According to the findings, people with mental disabilities like those depicted in the Joker film were often beaten, kicked, excluded from the society, and difficult to get a job. The stigma that occurred was due to people’s perceptions that people with mental disorders were strange, odd, threatening, even dangerous. The stigmatization that represented in Joker film also related to the state issue that raised in this film, namely regarding the supremacy of white people, as well as the form of social inequality that occurred in the United States of America.