Constructing Single Women in Indonesian Popular Culture: Representation of Single Women in Kapan Kawin?

Abstract

Movie is a representation of social reality, one of them related to gender issue. Discussions about gender and media tend to focus on woman since they are treated as an object. The purpose of this study is to see how a single woman in Indonesia is being represented through popular culture in the film Kapan Kawin? This research uses semiotic as a method with text analysis as the primary data collection techniques and interviews, literature studies as secondary data collection techniques to examine the socio-cultural context. The result shows that the audio–visual text in this movie contains myths that indicate symbolic violence against single woman. Single women is constructed as a successful career woman. On the other hand, single women are forced to get married due to their age. In other words, the discourse on women in Indonesia is still dominated by patriarchal culture.

Keywords: gender, single women, representation, movie