Contemporary literary studies do not limit its study only on the study of classic literary text. Literary studies nowadays also study popular culture, especially the media, by utilizing progresses in the fields of Semiotics and Cultural Studies. Studying popular culture media is considered to be as important and rigorous as studying literary Classics, since the analysis required are no less demanding and complex, and the cultural impact of popular culture is also significant. This study, in the tradition of Cultural Studies, analyses popular culture by concentrating on ideology, also utilizing Marxist notions of it. This study chooses to analyze a relatively new medium that has not been researched much, which is video game. Video games are now one of the established popular culture medium, which has ideologically loaded content. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is chosen as the object of this study because it is one of the successful video games which have received much attention from the general public, academics, and governments because of its explicit violent and criminal theme. The game focuses on criminal acts against the repressive law and the State. This study analyses the repressive ideology in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, by focusing on the representation of the repressive society, namely the State and its apparatuses and the oppressed lower class. The scope of this study is on the analysis of the relevant elements of the game, focusing firstly on the narrative elements, through the understanding of its semiotic elements. Semiotic is used as an analytical tool to observe the representations of the elements of the society in the game. This study is a form of Cultural Studies that uses literary approach, and the aim of this study is to find the working of the repressive ideology involved, using the Marxist theories especially those developed by Louis Althusser. From the analysis, the State and its apparatuses are represented in exaggeratedly negative form of repressiveness, and so are those who are compliant to the State’s ideology. Repressiveness is seen firstly from the way the ruling class utilizes the State’s Repressive Apparatus. The repressiveness and negative theme is also apparent in how the State / ruling class utilizes the Ideological State Apparatuses to support, justify, and ‘necessitate’ this kind of repressiveness. The dominant ideology of the society from the workings of these apparatuses can be found out to be repressive and negative, in the ways of representation summarized above, especially in the criminal theme and point of view of main story. On the other hand, those who resist the State’s repressiveness: the lower class, the Gangs, criminals, and Carl Johnson, are criminals and villains. Both the State and its resistant elements are therefore represented as negative. It can be seen from this perspective that the game creates a negative society where compliance or resistance to the State is actually compliance to the negative ideology of the State. The State and the resistant elements, however, are in an inter-related existence. The repressive State exists and becomes a necessity because of the threat of the resistant elements, and the resistant elements can only exist and flourish inside a State which has repressive law and which provides conditions suitable for them to exist. The State creates its Self from the resistant elements which are its Other. This creates a binary opposition between the State and its resistant elements in terms of Gun Possession, material appearance, ways of conduct, and capital ownership. The cultural themes of race and ethnicity, and also the label ‘minorities,’ are also built on this Self-Other dialectic. This dialectic, supported with cultural ‘otherness’ built by the theme of ethnic minorities, are used for the purpose of defining the State’s superiority or ‘righteousness’ and the minorities’ inherent inferiority, ‘wickedness,’ or ‘resistant’ attribute. There are many more areas that further studies may reveal, such as studies focusing more on the racist and sexist representations in this game or in other games. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas can be a very good example of an easily accessed and interactive media that promotes criminality and deviant behavior, seeing that player must commit criminal actions to be successful. Further government regulations on such evil-themed media with dangerous material are necessary, as they may cause detrimental effects on its players, especially to children
