VISUALIZING SOCIAL INEQUALITY THROUGH CHARACTER AND ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN IN JUMBO: A DESIGN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS USING PIERRE BOURDIEU'S THEORY

Abstract

This article examines how Visual Communication Design (VCD) in the Indonesian animated feature Jumbo (2025, dir. Ryan Adriandhy, Visinema Studios) constructs and communicates social inequality. Although Jumbo became the highest grossing Indonesian film of all time and the highest grossing animated feature in Southeast Asian history, its visual system has not yet been examined through a design analytical lens. This study addresses that gap by combining Design Discourse, the treatment of design artifacts as carriers of argument rather than decoration, with Pierre Bourdieu's relational sociology of habitus, capital (economic, cultural, social, symbolic), and field. Using a qualitative, single case Design Discourse Analysis informed by social semiotics, the study treats scene, frame, character, environment, visual symbol, composition, color palette, camera angle, lighting, and visual hierarchy as units of analysis. Purposive sampling targets scenes with the clearest class contrast, particularly those built around the protagonist Don, his orphanhood and inherited storybook, his antagonist Atta, whose public mischief has been described in the film's press coverage as shaped by economic constraint, and the talent show arena that structures the film's social field. Findings, developed inductively and reported with explicit placeholders where frame level empirical coding by the researcher is still required, indicate that character silhouette and costume, environment density and material texture, color saturation, and camera positioning function together as a coherent design discourse that stratifies characters along Bourdieusian lines of capital before the narrative articulates class difference verbally. The article contributes a transferable coding framework and visual analysis matrix for Indonesian animation studies, extends Bourdieusian film analysis into the specific vocabulary of character and environment design, and offers practical guidance for animators and designers seeking to audit the class assumptions embedded in their visual systems.