Representing The Beauty Bias In The Greatest Showman Movie: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This thesis deals with an investigation of beauty bias in The Greatest Showman Movie. The Greatest Showman movie is based on the true biography of P.T Barnum's path to popularity with his circus. This research aims to identify how multimodality in The Greatest Showman movie represents beauty bias. Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) is used because this study works with the movie, which employs visual and verbal modes of meaning-making. The Generic Structure (GS) theory by Halliday and Hasan (1985) to identify the elements of the movie and collect the data. Then, the linguistic data are analyzed using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), focusing on the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions. Meanwhile, visual data are analyzed using Visual Grammar focusing on the ideational, interpersonal, and textual meaning. Afterward, the result of the linguistic and visual analysis is interpreted using a concept of beauty bias by Berry (2007). The finding of this research shows that The Greatest Showman movie represents Beauty Bias through the shots and clauses in the scenes. In conclusion, based on the visual and linguistic analysis, The Greatest Showman movie represents Beauty Bias through the shots and clauses in the scenes.