Your Flaw, Our Laugh: Usage of Ableism on Tretan Muslim's Content

Hutomo Farras Dimastrian, Dr. Dian Arymami, S.I.P., M.Hum

2026 | Tesis | S2 Ilmu Komunikasi

Penggunaan orang dengan disabilitas untuk hiburan bukanlah hal yang baru, dengan kasus baru dari Tretan Universe (Kanal YouTube dari Tretan Muslin) dimana dia memiliki sekelompok orang disabilitas yang dinamai Mutant Squad. Penelitian ini kemudian mengeksplorasi dan memahami bagaimana acara ini bisa mengkekalkan ableisme? Melalui analisis wacana multimodal kritis, penelitian ini pertama menganalsisi semua sumber daya semotika yang digunakan di acara ini, dengan menggunakan grammar visual (van Leeuwen & Kress, 2020) dan sistem grammar fungsional (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2015). Berdasarkan penemuan penelitian ini, Clash of Mutants menggunakan tiga diskursus ableisme utama di acaranya. Yang pertama adalah tindakan melihat yang mengobjektifikasi para kontestan yang memili disabilitas, dehumanisasi, dan juga pembangunan dan mempertahankan makna normalitas.

The use of disabled people in entertainment is not a new thing. One of the most famous examples is probably the use of Lester “Beetlejuice” Green in the Howard Stern show where Beetlejuice is a disabled man who serves as a comedic relief and punchline due to his disability. This utilization of disabled people for entertainment is not anything that is new, with the curious case of Tretan Universe (Tretan Muslim’s YouTube channel) where he has a dedicated group of disabled people that he call Mutant Squad. They are used in many of his shows such as Take out Mutant, Sekolah Normal, and Clash of Mutants This research then aims to explore, how does this show perpetuate ableism? Through critical multimodal analysis, this research first analyse all the semiotic resources that were used in this show, by using Visual grammar (van Leeuwen & Kress, 2020), Systemic functional Grammar linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2015) audio aspect b Cohen (2000). These will be used to analyse all the semiotic resources that were used to help produce and reproduce the discourse of ableism that happened in the show Clash of Mutants.

Based on the findings of this research, Clash of Mutants uses three main discourses of ableism in their show. The first being the act of staring that objectified the disabled contestants, dehumanization that strips away their humanness and makes it easier for them to stare, and laugh at the contestants, and construction and maintenance of normalcy to further emphasize their weakness.

Keywords: Ableism, Disabled, Discourse, Objectification, Dehumanization, Normalcy.

Kata Kunci : Ableisme, Disabilitas, Diskursus, Objektifikasi, Dehumanisasi, Normalitas.