A look at Roland Barthes' "Mythologies"

Barthes, Roland Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang 1987)
Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was a French social and literary critic whose landmark book Mythologies expanded upon the theories of semiotics first popularized by Ferdinand de Saussure. While initially intended for a literary audience Barthes work is relevant to artists of all mediums who desire to take responsibility for the meanings signified through their artistic expressions.

Mythologies is a collection of essays that take a critical look at various aspects of post-world war II French popular culture during the period of de-colonization. The topics of his essays are varied and innocuous at first glance. Barthes looks at media attention towards society’s artists, the cultural value placed on Wine and Steak Tar Tar, the theatrical elements of professional wrestling, and the photographs of political candidates to name a few. The initial banality of these topics is soon replaced by an intense scrutiny of the significance of the messages created and consumed by the public. The intent of his writings is to reveal the political ideology embedded into mass media and its influences on popular culture through a series of arguments that expose the Myths that compel society to confuse cultural ideology with a truth.
Barthes rationales are based upon the idea that the eternal quality of Nature is the only truth and rhetoric, which is not truth, is the key ingredient of Mass Media. Rhetoric in Mass Media persuades a culture to adopt certain political-social ideals and to perceive as natural (and therefore justified) the affectations or ephemeral elements of a consumer culture. Much of Barthes’ Mythologies takes a Marxists view of a society divided between the proletariat masses and the petit bourgeois.

In his final essay Myth Today, Barthes reveals the structural elements of semiotics, which are the bases for his inquiry and cultural criticisms. Barthes introduces deSaussure’s system of signification that has three elements: signifier, signified, and sign. Signs are the meaning created by the combination of a signifier (form) and the signified (content). Barthes work extends beyond deSaussures by suggesting not only a denotative level of meaning, but a second level of connotative meaning that treats the denotative sign as the signifier for the connotative “Myth”. Barthes illustrates that signification is a function within culture that is dangerous because it is consumed as a “national” truth and is often not analyzed for the ideology it possesses.

Even though Mythologies is an analysis of 1950’s France and is based on the ideals of structuralism which have been subtended by contemporary social-constructionism theories, it remains relevant today as we bear witness to an America political climate that portrays the myth of patriotism and consumerism at the