The Operation of Hegemony in Scott Westerfeld's Uglies

Abstract

Uglies is a dystopian fiction written by Scott Westerfeld, first published in 2005. This novel presents a world in which the government indoctrinates people into believing they are ugly unless they get plastic surgery. The novel illustrates how power and ruling class position could be reached by conducting a process of negotiation rather than using coercive action. In Uglies, the special circumstances as the dominant class tries to obtain authority to manage the society with the help of ideological state apparatuses and repressive state apparatuses. This study uses Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony and is supported by Louis Althusser's concept of apparatuses. This study aims to illustrate the five stages of hegemony operation in a dystopian society and finally connect them to the real condition of the United States as the setting place of the novel. The result of this study portrays that Uglies establishes the hegemony operation from how the Special Circumstances as the government indoctrinates its ideology of beauty doctrines to validate the existence of beauty standards in the society. The novel's illustration of hegemonic power is closely connected to the hegemonic power of liberalism ideology in the United States. When almost half of the population underwent surgical and minimally invasive cosmetic procedures to augment a certain body feature. Hence, as a literary product, Westerfeld criticizes the construction of beauty standards that contradict each other to finally gain the phase of having authority to take control the society.