Representasi Rasisme dan Diskriminasi dalam Video Klip Musik (Analisis Semiotika Roland Barthes pada Video Klip “ELEMENT.” oleh Kendrick Lamar)

Racism and discrimination in the United States are deeply rooted social issues. Delivering criticism through music/video media based on hip-hop/rap culture can at least open the eyes of the general public to issues of racism and discrimination. Videoclip “ELEMENT.” by Kendrick Lamar is one of the media for African Americans to show their daily lives. The harsh reality of life conveyed through the signs in this video clip is analyzed to find out how black people (African-Americans) are represented.
Semiotics basically studies how humans give meaning to the things around them. The theory used by researchers is Roland Barthes' semiotics, which uses two stages of meaning, namely connotation and denotation. Connotation is the second level and denotation is the first level, apart from that there is the highest level, namely Myth. These stages are important to obtain a subjective and objective interpretation, which aims to describe the representation of black people (African-Americans) in detail in the visual aspect along with the lyrics in the "ELEMENT" video clip.
This research uses a semiotic method with a qualitative approach to constructivist interpretive data type. Roland Barthes' semiotic method was used to analyze data by collecting scenes, describing and analyzing them, then interpreting the data to find conclusions and linking them to Liliweri's definition of racism and Theodorson & Theodorson's definition of discrimination, then dissecting the lyrics to strengthen the interpretation.
The results showed that African Americans received negative representation. This video clip is one of their media to represent resistance to racism and discrimination. The visual pieces can be interpreted to mean that government policies are very racist. Most of the visuals can represent the impact on marginalized people from crime to mental disorders, then some of the visual pieces remind of old history. This video clip also symbolizes the urgency of change and resistance to racism and discrimination