Mythologies

Mythologies is a collection of 53 texts written by Roland Barthes between 1954 and 1956 with the wire of the months and the liking of the topicality. In the foreword Barthes specifies " The material of this reflection could be very varied (an press article, a photograph of weekly magazine, a film, a spectacle, an exposure), and the very arbitrary subject: it was obviously about my actualité.".

Summary

The catalog of the myths contains unquestionable a number of subject which can be grouped either by topic or by the form of the message which even conveys the myth him.

Myths by kind

Classification per many occurrences (certain myths are counted several times by the same nature of their myth):

Food: 4 occurrences (the wine and milk, the Beefsteak and the chips, the blue guide, cook decorative)
Consommation (Saponides and detergents, the operation will astra, Jouets, Publicité depth, the " Guide Bleu" , Striptease, the news Citroen

Photography: X occurrences (the actor of Harcourt, Shock photo, Photogénie electoral, the big family of the men, Bichon among negros)
Sport: X occurrences (the world where one catche, the Tour de France like épopée
Made various: X occurrences (Dominici where triumph of the Literature, Marital, Billy Graham in Vel' d' Hiv, the Political lawsuit Dupriez
: X occurrences (Some words of Mr. poujade, Photogénie electoral, Poujades and intellectuals)
Language & Literature: X occurrences (the writer on vacation, Novels and children, " Natilusé and " boat ivre" , Adamov and the language, Racine is Racine, African Grammaire, the literature according to Minou Drouet)
Cultures: With the music-hall
Figures: (Romans with the cinema, Critical dumb woman and blind man, the poor one and the proletarian, Martians, a workman sympathetic nerve, the man-jet, the user of the strike)
Personalities: X occurrences (the brain of Einstein, Iconography of the Pierre abbot, the face of Garbo

To sort: The cruising of blue Blood, Paris was not flooded, Puissance and ease, Two myths of the Young Theater, That which sees Clair, the cruising of the " Batory" , Criticism Nor-Nor, " Continent perdu" , Astrology, vocal art, middle-class plastic, " The lady with the camélia"

Myths by formal vehicle

Classification per many occurrences (certain myths are counted several times by the same nature of their myth):
- Written Speech - Photography (the face of Garbo - Cinema - Report (Bichon among negros - Sport (the world where one catche, the Tour de France like epopee - Spectacle (the big family of the men - Publicity

To sort:
Dominici where triumph of the Literature, Marital, Billy Graham in Vel' d' Hiv, the Dupriez lawsuit Some words of Mr. poujade, Photogénie electoral, Poujades and intellectuals, the writer on vacation, Novels and children, " Natilusé and " boat ivre" , Adamov and the language, Racine is Racine, African Grammaire, the literature according to Minou drouet, With the variety, the Romans with the cinema, Critique dumb woman and blind man, the poor one and the proletarian, Martiens, a workman sympathetic nerve, the man-jet, the user of the strike, the brain of Einstein, Iconographie of the abbot Pierre, the cruising of blue Blood, Paris was not flooded, Puissance and ease, Two myhtes of the Young Theater, That which sees Clair, the cruising of the " Batory" , Criticism Nor-Nor, " Continent perdu" , Astrology, vocal art, middle-class plastic, " The lady with the camélia"

The myth at Roland Barthes

In September 1956, Roland Barthes writes a text whose title is " The myth, aujourd'hui" and which constitutes the second shutter of mythologies in which it analyzes the phenomenon even myth. In opening Roland Barthes the myth defines in it (in agreement with the etymology): " the myth is a word " and it specifies " thereafter; the myth is a communication system, it is a message".

This text makes it possible Barthes to expose its vision of the myth and thus to put in prospect its mythological vision for actualié while exposing to the eyes of all its grid of analysis. The text breaks up into 11 parts: - The myth is a word - The myth like semiological system - The form and the concept - significance - Reading and deciphering of the myth - The myth like stolen language - Bouregoisy like public limit company - The myth is a depolitized word - The myth, on the left - The myth, on the right - Need and limits of mythology

The myth for Barthes is a tool of the ideology, it carries out the beliefs, whose Doxa is the system, in the speech: the myth is a sign. Its meant is a idéologème, its meaning can be anything: “Each object of the world can pass from an existence closed, dumb, in an oral state, opened with the appropriation of the company. ” (Barthes 1957: 216)

In the myth, writing Barthes, the semiological “meaning/meant chain = sign” is doubled. The myth is constituted starting from a preexistent chain: the sign of the first CHAIN becomes meaning it of the second. Barthes gives the example of a sentence appearing like example in a grammar: it is a sign made up of meaning and meant, but which becomes in its meaning context of grammar new of which meant “I am here like example of a grammatical rule” (Barthes 1957: 222-223). New loan - always not credited - in Valéry, which had specified in this same Such as it is as “ Quia nominor leo ” in fact “I meant am a grammatical rule”. But isn't it said that the imitation is the most sincere form of flattery?

A purely ideological example in this collection is the photograph of a black soldier looking at the national flag, where the sign as a whole becomes meaning it of the myth of the adhesion of the populations colonized with the French Empire.

In last analysis, the Doxa propagated by the myth, for Barthes, is the image that the middle-class is made world and that it imposes on the world. The middle-class strategy is to fill the whole world of its culture and its morals, while making forget its own statute of historical class: “The statute of the middle-class is particular, historical: the man whom it represents will be universal, eternal; (...) Lastly, the idea first of the world perfectible, mobile, will produce the reversed image of an immutable humanity, defined by an infinitely started again identity. ” (Barthes 1957: 250-251)

List myths

In order to provide a list which is not a catalog with the Prévert and in order to foresee the thought of Roland Barthes, you will find for each myth the pemière and the last sentence of the if possible followed text of a setting into prespective of each myth.

the world where one catche

" The virtue of wrestling, it is to be a spectacle excessif." preceded by a quotation of Baudelaire " … the empathic truth of the gesture in the great circumstances of the vie."
" On the boxing ring and at the bottom even of their ignominie voluntary, the all-in wrestlers remain gods, because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the which been able gesture which separates the Good from the Evil and reveals the figure of a Justice finally Intelligible"

the actor of Harcourt

" In France one is not actor if one were not photography by the Studios of Harcourt."
" For a myth as alienated as that of faces of actors, this party is very revolutionist: not to suspend on traditional the staircases of Harcourt, bichonnés, faint, angelized or virilized (according to the sex), it is an audacity of which well little theater treats to the luxe."

Romans with the cinema

" In the Jules César of Mankiewicz, all the characters have a fringe of hair on the front."
" And it is a duplicity specific to the middle-class spectacle: between the intellectual sign and the visceral sign, this art hypocritically lays out a sign bastard, at the same time elleiptic and pretentious, that he baptizes pompeux name of " natturel". "

the writer on vacation

" Gide read Bossuet while descending Congo."
" The spectacular alliance of so much of nobility and as well of futility means as one still believes in contradiction: completely miraculous, each one of its terms is also: it would lose obviously all its interest in a world where the work of the writer would be désacralisé at the point to appear as natural as its vestimentary functions or gustatives."

the cruising of blue Blood

" Since Crowning, the French languished for a revival of the monarchical topicality, of which they are extremments fond of delicacies; the loading on the yath Greek, Agamemmon, has them much distraits."
" Éthérées mystifications, amusing them details of the cruising of Blue Blood, all this anecdotic sweet talk, whose large pressea saoulé its readers, is not given with impunity: forts of their reinflated divinity, the princes make democratically of the policy: the count of Paris gives up Agamemnon to come to Paris " surveiller" fate of the CED, and one sends the Juan young person of Spain to the help of the facism espagnol."

Critical dumb woman and blind man

" Criticisms (literary or dramatic) often use of two arguments enough singuliers."
" You voules not to include/understand the part of the Lefebvre Marxist, but are on the Lefebvre Marxist includes/understands your incomprehension perfectly well, and especially (because I you believe more twisted than uncultivated) the consent délicieusement " inoffensifs" that you in faites."

Saponides and detergent

" The first World congress of Detergency (Paris, spetembre 1954) has authorizes the world to be left with the euphoria of Omo: not only the detergent products, 'have any harmful action on the skin, but even they can perhaps save the minors of the silicose."
" Euphoria which should not make besides forget that there is a plan where Persil and Omo, it is just like: the plan of the trust anglo-Dutch Unilever."

the poor one and the proletarian

" The last gag of Charlot, it is to have made pass half of its Soviet price in the cases of the Pierre." abbot;
" All in all, therefore WHO-Charlot triumphs over all: it is because he escapes from all, rejects any mixed liability company, and never invests in the man but the man alone. Its anarchy, politically debatable, represents in art the form perhaps most effective of the révolution."

Martians

" The mystery of the Flying saucers has abvord be very terrestrial: one supposed that the saucer came from the Soviet unknown, of this as private world of clear intentions as another planète."
" Hardly formed dasn the sky, Mars is thus aligned by strongest of the appropriations, that of the identité."

the operation will astra

" To insinuate in the Order the obliging spectacle of its constraints, it became from now on a paradoxical but peremptory means of the gonfler."
" Us here, us also, débarassés of a prejudice which was expensive to us, too expensive, which cost us too many scruples, too many revolts, too many combat and too much solitudes."

Marital

" One Marie much in good note presses oneself illustrated: large maraiages (the son of the marshal June and the girl of a tax inspector, the girl of the duke of Castries and the baron de Vitrolles), love matches (Miss Europe 53 and its friend of childhood), marriages (future) of high-speed motorboats (Marlon Brando and Josiane Mariani, Undulating Ralf and Michele Morgan).
" With the first degree, the prestige of marlon is of a muscular, Venusian nature; with the second degree, it is of social order: Marlon is devoted by bandol, much more than it consacre."

Dominici where triumph of the Literature

" All the Dominici lawsuit was exploited a certain idea of the psychology, which is being as by chance that of the Literature bien-pensante."
" To steal its language to a man to the name even of the language, all the legal meutres start with là."

Iconography of the abbot Pierre

" The myth of the Pierre abbot has an invaluable asset: the head of the abbé."
" I then come from there to wonder whether the beautiful one is touching iconography of the Pierre abbot is not an alibi of which part of the nation is authorized, once more to substitute with impunity the signs of charity for the reality of the justice."

Romance and children

" of it has to believe, which at one time gathered on the same photography seventy novelists, the woman of letters constitutes a remarkable zoological species: it is confined shovel-mixes with novels and enfants."
" Morals Jesuit: take acoommodements with the morals of your condition, but never release on the dogma which it fonde."

Toys

" That the French adult sees the Child like naked other itself, there is not of it a better example that the toy français."
" These toys die besides very quickly, and once died, they do not have for the child any life posthume."

Paris was not flooded

" In spite of the embarrassments or misfortunes which it could bring to thousands of French, the flood of January 1955 took part of the Festival, more than of the catastrophe."
" Because the arch ets a happy myth: humanity takes there its distances with regard to the elements, it concentrates there and there works out the conscience necessary of its capacities, making leave misfortune even the obviousness which the world is maniable."

Bichon among negros

" Match told us a history which in known as length on the myth middle-class man of the Negro: a household of young professors explored the country of the Cannibals to make painting there; they took with them them along baby of a few months, Bichon."
" Voltaire would not write today the adventures of Bichon as Match afait it: he would rather imagine some Bichon cannibal (or Korean) with the catches with the " guignol" napalmized of the occident."

--> the report on Fiévet Bichon is appeared in Paris Match N°305 of January 29th, 1955. The article opens so that: " Bichon, the youngest explorer of the world, is two years old today. It is exactly the time which its first forwarding lasted. This small white was born at the Blacks, of Nigeria. His/her parents Maurice and Jeanette Fièvet, both professors, aveint decided to explore, the pallet with the hand, the most primitive areas of Africa noire" Its history was taken again 5 years later in two episodes in the numbers 589 and 590 the July 23rd and 30th 1960.

a workman sympathetic nerve

" The Film of Kazan On the quays is an good example of mystification."
" Because there is to await revolt of the victims much more that caricature E their boureaux."

the face of Garbo

" garbo belongs still at this time of the cinema where the seizure of the human face threw crowd in largest trouble."
" The face of Garbo is Idée, that of Hepburn is Evénement."

Power and ease

" In film of Black series, one arrived maitenant at a good gestuaire of the ease; pépées with the soft mouth launching their rounds of fuméee under the attack of the men; slappings of Olympian to give the signal Net and parsimonious fingers of one lowers; peaceful knitting of the wife of the gang leader, in the middle of the situations more brûlantes."
" But this gesture, to mean that it merges with the act, must polish all emphase, be thinned jusuq' with the perecptif threshold of its existence; it should not have that the thickness of a connection between the cause and the effect; breadth ease is here the most astute sign of the effectiveness; each one finds there the ideality of a world returned at mercy under pure the gestuaire human, and which would not slow down any more under the embarrassments of the language: the gangsters and the gods do not speak, they move the head, and very accomplit."

wine and milk

" The wine is felt by the French nation as a good which is clean for him, as well as these three hundred and sixty cheese species and its culture."
" And the characteristic of our alienation present, it is precisely that the wine cannot be a happy substance out with fact, except forgetting unduly that it is also the product of a expropriation."

the beefsteak and the chips

" The beefsteak takes part in the same blood mythology as the vin."
" The general knew our national symbolic system, it knew that the chip is the food sign of the " francité". "

"Natilusé and " boat ivre"

"The work of Jules Verne (which one celebrated the fiftieth anniversary recently) would be a good object for a criticism of structure; it is a work with thèmes."
" The truly contrary object in Nautilus of Verne, it is the drunk Bateau of Rimbaud, the boat which says " je" and, released of its concavity, can make pass the man of a psychoanalysis of the cave to poetic true of the exploration."

Publicity the depth

" I indicated that today the publicity of the detergents flattered primarily an idea depth: dirtiness is not torn off any more on the surface, it is expelled of its cabins more secretes."
" This public opening of the interiority of the human body is alleurs a general feature of the publicity of the products of toilet. " The pouriture is expelled (teeth, skin, blood, breath) " : France feels a great pang of hunger of propreté."

Some words of Mr. poujade

" What the lower middle class respects more in the world, it is the immanence: any phenomenon which even has its own term in him is a simple mechanism of return, i.e., with the letter, any phenomenon paid , is pleasant for him. "
" And it is precisely what is sinister in the poujadism: that it has from the start claimed with a mythological truth, and posed the culture like a disease, which is the specific symptom of the facismes."

Adamov and the language

" One comes to see it, the good sense poujadist consists in establishing a simple equivalence between what is seen and what est."
" Contrary, the theater which is opposed more to this dramaturgy of the situation verbal: Giraudoux, for example, whose language is sincere, i.e. Giraudoux itself. The language of Adamov has its roots with the air, and the oin knows that all that is external benefits the théâtre." well;

the brain of Einstein

" The brain of Einstein is a mythical object: paradoxically, the greatest intelligence forms the image of mechanics the best sophisticated one, the too powerful man is separated from psychology, introduces into a world of robot; it is known that in the science fiction novels, the supermen always have something of réifié."
" Thus einstein satisfies it fully with the myth, which makes fun of contradictions provided that it installs an euphoric safety: at the same time magus and machine, permanent researcher and the incomblé discoverer, unchaining best and worst, brain and cosncience, Einstein achieve the most contradictory dreams, mythiquement reconcile the infinite power men on nature, and the fate of one crowned which it cannot yet rejeter."

the man-jet

" The man jet is the pilot of plane with réaction."
" The man-jet is a réifié hero, as so today still the men could design the sky only populated of semi-objets."

Racine is Racine Barthes stigmatizes the use of tautology and perhaps answer Valery and its " work is the œuvre"

"I already announced the predilection of small-bouregoisie for the reasoning tautological ( a penny is a penny , etc). "
" Root it is Racine: admirable safety of the néant."

Billy Graham in Vel' d' Hiv

" So many missionaries brought back religious manners of the " to us; Primitifs" , that it is quite regrettable that a wizard papou was not in Vel' d' Hiv to tell us in his turn the ceremony chaired by Dr. Graham under the name of countryside of évangélisation."
" The countryside of Billy graham was only one episode maccarthyste."

the lawsuit Dupriez

" The lawsuit of Gerard Durpiez (who assassinated his father and his mother without known mobile) watch well coarse contradictions where our Justice." is locked up;
" Other contradictions exist with the center even of each one of these capacities: justice, one saw it, irrationally dissociating the cause and the end, comes from there to excuse a crime with proportion of its monstrosity; legal psychiatry voluntarily gives up its own object and returns the assassin to the boureau, at the moment when psychological sciences deal with more each day greater proportion of the man; and defense itself hesitates between the claim of a advanced spychiatrie. who would recover chque criminal like a demented person, and the assumption of a " force" magic which auarit invested Dupriez, as at the more good weathers of sorcery (pleading of Me Maurice Boy). "

Shock photo

" Genevieve Serreau, in her book on Bretch, recalled this photography of Match , where one sees a scene of execution of Communist Guatemalans; it precisely noted that this photography is by no means terrible in oneself, and that the horror comes from what we let us look at it center of our freedom; an exposure of Shock photos to the gallery of Orsay, of which very little, precisely, succeed in shocking us, paradoxically gave reason to the remark of Genevieve Serreau: it is not enough for the photographer to us to mean the horrible one so that us it éprouvions."
" Literal photography introduces with the scandal of the horror, not with the horror it-même."

Two myhtes of the Young Theater

" If one judges some by recent Concours of the Young Companies, the young theater inherits with rage the myths old (with the result that one does not know any more very well what distinguishes them one from the other). "
" In the art of the theater, the style is a technique of évasion."

the Tour de France like epopee

" There is an onomastics of the Tour de France which only says to us with her that the Turn is large a épopée."
" This does not prevent the Turn from being an attractive national fact, insofar as the epopee expresses this fragile moment of the history where the man, even awkward, deceived, through impure fables, envisages all the same with its way a perfect adequacy between him, the community and the univers."

--> is joined at the end of the text a lexicon of individual mythologies of the courreurs, appear in it: Jean Bobet, Louison Bobet, Brankart, Coletto, Coppi, Darrigade, De Groot, Gaul, Geminiani, Hassenforder, Koblet, Kubler, Lauredi, Molineris, Antonin Roland

the " Guide Bleu"

"The Blue Guide hardly knows the landscape but in the form of the pittoresque."
" The Guide does not say to us, obviously, how this beautiful prosperity is distributed: undoubtedly hierarchically, since one wants to specify well us that " the serious and patient effort of these people went until the reform of its political system, in order to obtain regeneration by the honest application of solids principles of order and hiérarchie". "

That which sees Clair

" Journalism is all with technocracy today, and our press hedbomadaire is the seat of a true magistrature of the Conscience and the Council, as at the more good weather of the jésuites."
" The apparent freedom of the councils exempts real freedom of the conduits: one seems to release a little on morals to surely hold good pus on the dogmas constitutive of the société."

decorative Kitchen

" The newspaper It (true mythological treasure) gives us about each week a beautiful photography colors of an assembled dish: gilded young partridges piqués of cherries, chicken rosâtre chaud-froid, drinking cup of crayfish girdled of red carapaces, enjolivée creamy Charlotte of candied fruits drawings, génoises multicoloured, etc."
"

the cruising of the " Batory"

"Since there are from now on middle-class voyages in Soviet Russia, the large French press started to work out some myths of assimilation of reality communiste."
" Le Figaro knows its middle-class well: freedom out of window, on a purely decorative basis, but the Order at home, with title constitutif."

the user of the strike

" There are still men for whom the strike is a scandal: i.e. not only one error, a disorder uo an offense, but a moral crime, an intolerable action which disturbs in their eyes Nature."
" While protesting that this strike to express: the paradox, it is that the man middle-class man calls upon the naturalness of his insulation at the exact moment when the strike curves it under the obviousness of its subordination."

African Grammar

" The official vocabulary of the African businesses is, one suspects it, purely axiomatique."
" Official rhetoric piles up the covers of reality in vain, one moment ago when the words him résistentet oblige it to reveal under the myth the alternative of the lie or the truth: independence is or is not, and all the adjectival intentions which endeavor to give to nothing qualities to be it are the signature even of the culpabilité."

criticism Nor-Nor

" One could read in naked first numbers of the daily Express train , a critical profession of faith (anonymous), which was a superb piece of rhetoric balancée."
" These are not any more its ornaments that it defends, it is its skin: I am afraid well that new criticism Nor-Nor is not late of a saison."

Striptease

" The Striptease - less Parisian striptease is founded on a contradiction: désexualiser the woman in the moment even where one it dénude."
" The Striptease reinstates the room here, is familiarized, embourgeoise, like if the French, contrary to public American (at least what one of known as), and according to an irrepressible tendency of their social status, could conceive the erotism only like one domestic property, guaranteed by the alibi of the weekly sport, of course more than by that of the magic spectacle: thus in France the striptease is nationalisé."

the news Citroen

" I believe that the car is today the rather exact equivalent of the large Gothic cathedrals: I want to say a great creation of time, conceived passionately by unknown artists, consumed in his image, if not his use, by whole people which adapt in it an object perfectly magique."
" The object is completely male prostitute, suitable here: left the sky of Metropolis, the goddess is fifteen minutes mediatized, achieving in this exorcism, the movement even of the small-bourgesoie." prmotion;

literature according to Pussy drouet

" The business Minou Drouet was presented for a long time in the form of a police enigma: is this it or this is not it? "
" A small tear for Drouet Pussy, a small shiver for poetry, and us here are débarassés of Littérature."

Photogénie electoral

" Certain candidate-deputies decorate of a gate their leaflet éléctoral."
" Almost every three quarters are upward, the face is raised towards a light surnaturellequi aspires it, the high one in the areas of a high humanity, the candidate reaches the olympe high feelings, where any political contradiction is solved: Algerian peaces and war, progress socialet employers' benefit, teaching " libre" and beet subsidies, right-hand side and the left (opposition always " dépassée"!), all that coexists peacefully in this pensive glance, noblement fixed on the int^érêts occults of Ordre."

"Continent perdu"

"A film, Unintermitting lost, clarifies well the current myth of the exotisme."
" It is thus seen that the " beautiful images" from lost Continent cannot be innocent: they cannot be innocent to lose the continent which was with Bandoeng. "

Astrology

" It appears that in France, the annual budget of the " sorcellerie" is of approximately three hundred millirads of francs."
" One knows well at least another of these nominalist attempts: the Literature, which, in its degraded forms, cannot go but naming further lived; astrology and Littérature have the same task of institution " retardée" reality: astrology is the Literature of the small world bouregois."

vocal art middle-class

" It appears impretinent to make the lesson with an excellent baritone, Gerard Souzay, but a disc where this singer recorded some melodies of Fauré seems me well to illustrate a whole musical mythology where one finds the principal signs of art bourgeois."
" They make confidence with the immediately final matter of the musique."

the plastic

" In spite of its names of Greek shepherd (Polystyrene, Phénoplaste, Polyvinyle, Polyéthylène), the plastic, from which one comes to concentrate the products in an exposure, is primarily a substance alchimique."
" The hierrachie of the substances is abolished, only one replaces them all: the whole world can be plasticized, and the life itself, since, appears it, one starts to manufacture aortas in plastiques."

the big family of the men

" One presented to Paris a great exposure of photographs, of which the goal was to show the universality of the human gestures in the daily life of all the countries of the world: birth, death, work, knowledge, plays impose the same conduits everywhere; there is a family of Homme."
" Thus, I fear well that the final justification of all this adamism is not to give to the immobility of the world the cuation of a " sagesse" and of a " lyrique" who perpetuate the gestures of the man only for best the désarmocer."

--> the big family of the men is a xposition which took place in Paris with museum X between X and Y. It is an exposure realized for MoMa of NY and whose police chief of exposure was Edward Steichen

With the variety

" the time of the theater, whatever it is, is always lié."
" The city rejects the idea of a formless nature, it reduces space to continuous of solid objects, brilliant, produced , auquels precisely the act of the artist gives the prestigious statute of a very human thought: work, especially mythifié, makes the happy matter, because, spectacularly, I lsemble to think it; métallifiés, launched, caught up with, handled, very luminous of movements in perpetual dialog with the gesture, the objects lose here the disaster stubbornness of their nonsense: artificial and ustensils, they cease one moment annoying . "

"The lady with the camélia"

"One still plays, I do not know or in the world, the Lady with the camellias (and one played it some time ago in Paris). "
" Phraseuse and noble, in a word serious , it makes only the endormir."

Poujades and the intellectuals

" Who are the intellectuals, for Poujade?. "
" Only from the point of view of the ethnologist, the conduits of integration and exclusion are obviously complementary, and, in a sense, which is not that he believes, Poujade requires for the intellectuals, because if he condamme, it is magic under evil: in the company poujadist, the intellectual with the share cursed and necessary of a wizard degradé."

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