Mythologies by Roland Barthes

3 Stars

There are times when I realize that I can be very lazy in my reading, and this book is the slap that reminded me. 

I wish I had started with the second section first, Myth Today because it was an excellent review of semiotics, which I have minimal understanding of and what I knew was dusty and the terminology did not come easily or quickly. By the end of the essays I was skating along, but it is not speedy reading per se. 

I feel like this book hasn't aged well. The ideas are still valid, but because Barthes utilized contemporaneous cultural phenomena of 1950s, which was a strength of his work and now a weak link because not all of them are immediately graspable. The examples are so pinned to precise moments in time that the arguments are no longer relevant for most individuals. Post modernism isn't my forte, and frankly, I feel like the brief exposure to Saussure that I've had did Mythologies a disservice since good arguments are like structures, you build them. 

Even with all these drawbacks, the value in Barthes' theories is clear, some easier to extrapolate than others. Some thoughts to tickle:

Where would be without the male gaze?

"Such is the world of Elle: here women are always a homogenous species, a constituted body jealous of its privileges, even more enamored of its servitudes; here men are never on the inside, femininity is pure, free, powerful' but men are everywhere outside, exerting pressure on all sides, making everything exist; they are eternally the creative absence, that of the Racinian god: a world without men but entirely constituted be the male gaze, the feminine world of Elle is precisely that of the gynoeceum."

Yes, this is boats.

"To possess an absolutely finite space: to love a ship is first of all to love a superlative house, one that is unremittingly enclosed, and certainly not loving great vague departures: a ship is a habitat phenomenon before being a means of transport."

And this tidbit--La! Substitute US or any nation state for France. 

"When things become serious, abandon Politics for the Nation. For men of the Right, Politics is the Left: they are France." 

I had already experienced much of Barthes peripherally, but sitting down and reading his work was good and I probably should have carved out time earlier. C'est la vie. 

It might be Old Fashioned, but still good.