muthuvel's Reviews > Mythologies

Human beings have always known for succumbing to certain ways of consumption patterns of material and non-material entities under the name of this complex whole of culture. Other than this socially obliged conspicuous form of consumption that could be observed in everyday trivial mass activities, there are factors of psychology influenced by what he calls as 'myth' some of which were elucidated by Barthes using then contemporary cultural references of the French society varying from literary articles, wrestling matches, court cases, Charlie Chaplin, Einstein's brain, politics, advertising, etc., These reflections were initially published as monthly articles in French newspapers between 1954 and 1956 ( except for the wrestling essay in 1952), and writing these essays had more to do with the attitude of mass cultural behaviour of seeing things as 'natural' with "which newspapers, art and common sense dress up a reality which even though it is one we live in, is undoubtedly determined by history."

The second part of the work 'Myth today' by which Barthes associates using the series of essays to generalize this theory of myth using semiological elements and ideologies driving to the birth of ephemeral forms yet everlasting myths. This is a highly recommended reading for whoever interested in exploring what it means to be a linguist, mythologist or a cultural anthropologist for that matter. And surely, this particular essay needs a lot of revisiting.

"this is the case with mythology: it is a part both of semiology inasmuch as it is a formal science, and of ideology inasmuch as it is an historical science: it studies ideas-in-form."