ROLES OF MYTHICAL CREATURE CHARACTERS IN CREATING A TV DRAMA SERIES WORLD OF THE HIMAVANTA

Abstract

                  This article aims to research roles of mythic animals in creating a TV drama series World of Himavanta and explore humanness reflected in interactions between human characters and mythical animal ones. The research findings show that mythic animals play several constructive roles in creating the TV drama series, namely 4 roles as follows: 1) emphasizing traits of male human characters including leadership, courage, and wisdom and emphasizing traits of female ones, that is, gentleness, compassion, consultancy, and troubleshooting; 2) emphasizing traits of mythical animal characters; 3) making scenes, viz., demonstrating land ownership of mythic animal characters and contributing to the realism of Himavanta forest; and 4) emphasizing the theme of the series, humanness reflected in interactions between humans and mythical animal characters can be divided into 2 aspects, namely humans’ good conscience and bad conscience. Not only does the use of mythic animals as a main element of the story provide amusement, but it also reveals other dimensions of humans, viz., thoughts, cultural beliefs, and morals.