Representation of Power Relations in Death Race

ABSTRAK Suciyati, Mei. 2011. Representation of Power Relations in Death Race. Thesis, English Department, Faculty of Letters, State University of Malang. Advisor: Evi Eliyanah, M.A. Keywords Death Race. The film represents how discipline is established in order to sustain the creation of prisoners as ‘docile-bodies’ in Terminal Island Penitentiary, the prison institution this film narrates about. Hence, the focus of this study is to analyze how the narrations and the plots of this film show the establishment of discipline that represents particular power relations. In reference to the study focus, the analysis will employ Foucault’s theories on discipline as the way to exercise power. Above all, this study finds out how Death Race represents particular power relation through the establishment of discipline in Terminal Island Penitentiary. The establishment of discipline is suggested through the spatial organization of the prison as well as the exercise of particular disciplinary techniques in making the prisoners docile, thus, useful. i : Power, Power-Relation, Death Race, Discipline, Prison Foucault’s concepts of power have been considered the reforming ones. Foucault has poled his power concepts apart from other’s by decentralizing power to its most subtle existences and relations in society. He views that power does exist in the form of relations that lead to the modification of individual actions (Foucault, 1995: 219), and is reproduced through the relations. Foucault’s views of power have been linked to his analysis of discipline as the technology of the exercise of power through its particular and strategic mechanisms. Through his analysis of discipline, he suggests several power concepts such as it is ‘omnipresent’, and is not simply repressive as Marxists and other theorists do. Besides, the power exercised through the establishment of discipline brings him on linking it to the presence of prison as the ideal locus for exercising disciplinary power. The representation of power-relations through the establishment of discipline is found in fil