Representing Sundanese Cultural Values in the Seren Taun Documentary through Barthes’ Semiotics

Abstract

This qualitative study examines how Sundanese cultural values are signified in six scenes of a Seren Taun documentary associated with the Sunda Wiwitan community in Cigugur, Kuningan. Using Roland Barthes’ distinctions among denotation, connotation, and myth, the article traces how depicted rituals become narratives of communal identity rather than treating visual interpretations as direct facts about community beliefs. The selected scenes concern a bow dance, angklung performance, water vessels, a Garuda-like effigy, a tiger effigy, and rice pounding. The analysis identifies linked representations of courage and gender, musical solidarity, human–nature relations, collective labour, ancestral remembrance, spirituality, and intergenerational transmission. Across scenes, the film constructs a broader myth of harmonious cultural continuity while also raising questions about gendered responsibility, idealized solidarity, and the selective visibility produced by documentary framing. The contribution is an explicit cross-scene account of how these meanings are naturalized and where plausible alternative interpretations remain. The evidence concerns one audiovisual text, not audience reception or an exhaustive account of Sundanese practice. Documentary production metadata and still-image reuse permissions require author verification before publication.