Mythologies (1957)
Introduction
Roland Barthes is a key figure in international intellectual life. He is
one of the most important intellectual figures to have emerged in postwar
France and his writings continue to have an influence on critical debates
today.
When he died in 1981, he left a body of major work but, as many of his
friends and his admirers claimed, with still more important work to come.
I can't possible hope to do justice to the diversity of his various
writings here - I can only point you in the direction of Culler (1983),
Moriarty (1991) and Rylance (1994) where you will find good accounts of
his career - so I will plunge straightaway into a discussion of
Mythologies, which is one of his earliest and most widely-read
works. Mythologies is one of Barthes's most popular works because
in it we see the intellectual as humourist, satirist, master stylist and
debunker of the myths that surround us all in our daily lives.
Mythologies is a text which is not one but plural. It contains
fifty-four (only twenty-eight in the Annette Lavers's English translation)
short journalistic articles on a variety of subjects. These texts were
written between 1954 and 1956 for the left-wing magazine Les Lettres
nouvelles and very clearly belong to Barthes's `période
"journalistique"' (Calvet: 1973 p.37). They all have a brio and a punchy
topicality typical of good journalism. Indeed, the fifty-four texts are
best considered as opportunistic improvisations on relevant and
up-to-the-minute issues rather than carefully considered theoretical
essays. Because of their very topicality they provide the contemporary
reader with a panorama of the events and trends that took place in the
France of the 1950s. Although the texts are very much of and about their
times, many still have an unsettling contemporary relevance to us today.
Although there are a number of articles about political figures, the
majority of the fifty-four texts focus on various manifestations of mass
culture, la culture de masse: films, advertizing, newspapers and
magazines, photographs, cars, children's toys, popular pastimes and the
like. This broke new ground at the time. Barthes showed that it was
possible to read the `trivia' of everyday life as full of meanings.
Mythologies, however, includes not just the fifty-four journalistic
pieces, but an important theoretical essay entitled `Le Mythe aujourd'hui'
(Barthes: 1970 pp.193-247). `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' is a retrospectively
imposed theoretical conspectus (an overall view, summary or survey) which
is an important theoretical or methodological tract in its own right, but
in no way central to an understanding and appreciation of the other texts
in Mythologies. The fact that it is positioned after the
journalistic articles is significant. This expressed not simply the
chronological order in which they were written, but also how Barthes
wished us to read the text as a whole. `Le Mythe aujourd'hui' was not
intended to be seen as the theory underpinning the practice
of the fifty-four articles which were more spontaneous and intuitive. What
`Le Mythe aujourd'hui' does, however, is to make more explicit some of the
concerns that underpin the fifty-four essays. There is, then, a certain
amount of continuity between the two `parts' of Mythologies.
Dans la vie quotidienne, j'éprouve pour tout ce que je vois et entends une
sorte de curiosité, presque d'affectivité intellectuelle qui est de
l'ordre du romanesque. (Barthes: 1981 p.192)
A simple example of Barthes getting under the surface of things is the
essay `Iconographie de l'abbé Pierre' (Barthes: 1970 pp.54-6). The abbé
Pierre was a Catholic priest who achieved a certain amount of media
attention in the 1950s (and in the 1980s and 1990s too) for his work
with the homeless in Paris. What interests Barthes is, perversely, the
abbé Pierre's clothes and, in particular, his haircut. We would expect
such a man to be indifferent to fashion and to consider a certain
neutrality or `état zéro' (Barthes: 1970 p.54) to be desirable. However,
far from being neutral or innocent, the abbé Pierre's clothes and
hairstyle send out all sorts of messages. The abbé Pierre's simple
working-class `canadienne' and austere hairstyle all connote the qualities
of simplicity, religious devotion and self-sacrifice. His clothes and
hairstyle make a fashion statement of sorts - as much, if not more, than a
Lacoste polo shirt or an Armani suit - and are rich in connotations:
Ce que je n'aime pas dans l'Occident, c'est qu'il fabrique des signes et
les refuse en même temps. [...] de quel droit parlerais-je au nom de la
vérité? Mais à battre en brèche inlassablement la naturalité du signe; ça
oui! (Barthes: 1981 p.95)
We inhabit a world, then, of signs which support existing power structures
and which purport to be natural. The role of the mythologist, as Barthes
sees it, is to expose these signs as the artificial constructs that they
are, to reveal their workings and show that what appears to be natural is,
in fact, determined by history. This is certainly how Barthes saw the role
of the criticism in general in the autobiographical Roland Barthes par
Roland Barthes and its relevance to Mythologies is clear:
Il ne sortait pas de cette idée sombre, que la vraie violence,
c'est celle du cela-va-de-soi (Barthes: 1975 p.88)
... on peut attaquer le monde et l'alienation idéologique de notre
monde quotidien, à bien des niveaux: Système de la mode contient
aussi une affirmation éthique sur le monde, la même d'ailleurs que dans
des Mythologies, à savoir qu' il y a un mal, un mal social,
idéologique, attaché aux systèmes de signes qui ne s'avouent pas
franchement comme systèmes de signes. Au lieu de reconnaître que la
culture est un système immotivé de significations, la société bourgeoise
donne toujours des signes comme justifiés par la nature ou la raison.
(Barthes: 1981 p.67)
Let me try to clarify these points with an example from
Mythologies. In `Le vin et le lait' (Barthes: 1970 pp.74-77)
Barthes explores the significance of wine to the French. Wine is clearly
an important symbolic substance to the French expressive of conviviality,
of virility and, more importantly, of national identity. Nothing could be
more expressive of an `essential Frenchness' than a ballon de
rouge. The uproar caused at the beginning of Monsieur Coty's
presidential term of office by being photographed at home next to a bottle
of beer, rather than the obligatory bottle of red, captures this perfectly.
Barthes unsettles the mythological associations of wine by making explicit
wine's real status as just another commodity produced for profit. He draws
attention to wine-makers' exploitation of the Third World, citing Algeria
as an example of a poor Muslim country forced to use its land for the
cultivation of a product - `le produit d'une expropriation (Barthes: 1970
p.77) - which they are forbidden to drink on religious grounds and which
could be better used for cultivating food crops. Barthes makes explicit
the connections between wine and the socio-economics of its production.
And this is an integral part of his aim as a mythologist: he must expose
the artificiality of those signs which disguise their historical and
social origins.
Click for Lecture
2.
Works by Barthes Cited
What is
Mythologies About?
Interrogating
the Obvious
Mass Culture, Myth and the
Mythologist
Myth and Ideology
Further Reading
Introduction
What is Mythologies About?
Interrogating the Obvious
... ce qui m'a toujours préoccupé [...] c'est le problème de la
signification des objets culturels. (Barthes: 1981 p.64)
Barthes often claimed to be fascinated by the meanings of the things that
surround us in our everyday lives. If there is a certain amount of
thematic continuity between the two `parts' of Mythologies then it
is here, in their shared interrogation of the meanings of the cultural
artefacts and practices that surround us. Barthes often claimed that he
wanted to challenge the `innocence' and `naturalness' of cultural texts
and practices which were capable of producing all sorts of supplementary
meanings, or connotations to use Barthes's preferred term.
Although objects, gestures and practices have a certain utilitarian
function, they are not resistant to the imposition of meaning. There is no
such thing, to take but one example, as a car which is a purely functional
object devoid of connotations and resistant to the imposition of meaning.
A BMW and a Citroën 2CV share the same functional utility, they do
essentially the same job but connote different things about their owners:
thrusting, upwardly-mobile executive versus ecologically sound, right-on
trendy. We can speak of cars then, as signs expressive of a number of
connotations. It is these sorts of secondary meanings or connotations that
Barthes is interested in uncovering in Mythologies. Barthes wants
to stop taking things for granted, wants to bracket or suspend
consideration of their function, and concentrate rather on what they mean
and how they function as signs. In many respects what Barthes is doing is
interrogating the obvious, taking a closer look at that which gets taken
for granted, making explicit what remains implicit.
... la neutralité finit par fonctionner comme signe de la
neutralité, ... La coupe zéro, elle affiche tout simplement le
franciscanisme; conçue d'abord négativement pour ne pas contrairier
l'apparence de la sainteté, bien vite elle passe à un mode superlatif de
signification, elle déguise l'abbé en saint François. (Barthes:
1970 p.54)
Barthes is not claiming that the abbé Pierre cynically manipulated his
public image, but is making the point, rather, that nothing can be
exempted from meaning (see Barthes: 1975 p.90). Every single object or
gesture is susceptible to the imposition of meaning, nothing is resistant
to this process. This is especially the case when, like the abbé Pierre,
one is subjected to the attention of the media. Barthes takes his argument
one step further however. The media's stress on the abbé Pierre's devotion
and good works - symbolized by his haircut! - diverts attention from any
form of investigation of the causes of homelessness and poverty. Media
representations of the abbé Pierre, claims Barthes, sanctify charity and
mask out all references to the socio-economic causes of homelessless and
urban poverty. What emerges in `Iconographie de l'abbé Pierre' is a
strategy that is repeated throughout Mythologies: Barthes begins by
making explicit the meanings of apparently neutral objects and then moves
on to consider the social and historical conditions they obscure.
Mass Culture, Myth and the Mythologist
Le départ de cette réflexion était le plus souvent un sentiment
d'impatience devant le `naturel' dont la presse, l'art, le sens commun
affublent sans cesse une réalité qui, pour être celle dans laquelle nous
vivons, n'en est pas moins parfaitement historique: en un mot, je
souffrais de voir à tout moment confondues dans le récit de notre
actualité, Nature et Histoire, et je voulais ressaisir dans
l'exposition décorative de ce-qui-va-de-soi, l'abus idéologique
qui, à mon sens, s'y trouve caché. (Barthes: 1970 p.9)
Mythologies is, superficially at least, a rather puzzling title for
a book concerned with the meanings of the signs that surround us in our
everyday lives. A myth, after all, is a story about superhuman beings of
an earlier age, of ancient Eygpt, Greece or Rome. But the word `myth' can
also mean a ficticious, unproven or illusory thing. This is closer to the
sense that Barthes explores in Mythologies. Barthes is concerned to
analyse the `myths' circulating in contemporary society, the false
representations and erroneous beliefs current in the France of the postwar
period. Mythologies is a work about the myths that circulate in
everyday life which construct a world for us and our place in it:
La France tout entière baigne dans cette idéologie anonyme: notre presse,
notre cinéma, notre théâtre, notre littérature de grand usage, nos
cérémoniaux, notre Justice, notre diplomatie, nos conversations, le temps
qu'il fait, le crime que l'on juge, le mariage auquel on s'émeut, la
cuisine que l'on rêve, le vêtement que l'on porte, tout, dans notre vie
quotidienne, est tributaire de la représentation que la bourgeoisie se
fait et nous fait des rapports de l'homme et du monde. (Barthes: 1970
p.227)
What joins the journalistic articles and the theoretical essay is the
conviction that what we accept as being `natural' is in fact an illusory
reality constructed in order to mask the real structures of power
obtaining in society. Mythologies - both the journalistic articles
and the theoretical essay - is a study of the ways in which mass culture -
a mass culture which Barthes sees as controlled by la petite
bourgeoisie constructs this mythological reality and encourages
conformity to its own values. This position informs the various texts that
make up Mythologies.
... l'opération critique consiste à déchiffrer l'embarras des raisons,
des alibis, des apparences, bref tout le naturel social, pour
rendre manifeste l'échange réglé sur quoi reposent la marche sémantique et
la vie collective. (Barthes: 1975 p.63)
Myth and Ideology
Le propre des Mythologies n'est pas politique mais
idéologique. Le propre des Mythologies, c'est de prendre
systématiquement en bloc une sorte de monstre que j'ai appelé la
`petite-bourgeoisie' (quitte à en faire un mythe) et de taper
inlassablement sur ce bloc; la méthode est peu scientifique et n'y
prétendait pas; c'est pourquoi l'ouverture méthodologique n'est venue
qu'ensuite, par la lecture de Saussure; la théorie des Mythologies
est l'objet d'une postface (Barthes: 1971 p.96)
It is possible to argue that `myth', as Barthes uses it in
Mythologies, functions as a synonym of `ideology' (for a more
detailed discussion of this complex issue see Brown: 1994 pp.24-38). As a
theoretical construct `ideology' is notoriously hard to define. However,
one of the most pervasive definitions of the term holds that it refers to
the body of beliefs and representations that sustain and legitimate
current power relationships. Ideology promotes the values and interests of
dominant groups within society. I like the explanation Terry Eagleton
comes up with in his book Ideology: An Introduction:
A dominant power may legitimate itself by promoting beliefs and
values congenial to it; naturalizing and universalizing such
beliefs so as to render them self-evident and apparently inevitable;
denigrating ideas which might challenge it; excluding rival
forms of thought, perhaps by some unspoken but systematic logic; and
obscuring social reality in ways convenient to itself. Such
`mystification', as it is commonly known, frequently takes the form of
masking or suppressing social conflicts, from which arises the conception
of ideology as an imaginary resolution of real contradictions. (Eagleton:
1991 pp.5-6)
This particular definition of the workings of ideology is particularly
relevant to Mythologies. Common to both Eagleton's definition of
ideology and Barthes's understanding of myth is the notion of a socially
constructed reality which is passed of as `natural'. The opinions and
values of a historically and socially specific class are held up as
`universal truths'. Attempts to challenge this naturalization and
universalization of a socially constructed reality (what Barthes calls
le cela-va-de-soi) are dismissed for lacking `bon sens', and
therefore excluded from serious consideration. The real power relations in
society (between classes, between coloniser and colonised, between men and
women etc.) are obscured, reference to all tensions and difficulties
blocked out, glossed over, their political threat defused.
Further Reading
Works on Barthes
Works of Related Interest
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Last
Update 11-Feb-99