What has Roland Barthes' idea of myth contributed to our understanding of popular culture?

The consequence of this, then, is that everything can be a myth. 

        Anything that has meaning has the potential of becoming mythical. This means that there is no need to separate between both linguistic and visual representations – they are both signs of meaning and equally constitute a language-object.

Barthes’ icons

Clearly, Barthes did not pull his theories out of nowhere – his thoughts were influenced by great theorists that came before him. The two most significant to Barthes were Ferdinand Saussure and Claude Levi-Strauss.

        Numerous structuralist scholars were influenced by Saussure’s work on structural linguistics, and Barthes was no exception – indeed, he is the most popular scholar to expand on Saussure’s concepts to interpret cultural instances as ‘codes’. The foundation of Saussure’s theories was that meaning is made through difference –something only has a meaning when we can determine something it is not (for example, a ‘dog’ is a furry, four-legged creature that is not a cat; a man is not a woman). Barthes took Saussure’s linguistic system of ‘langue and parole’ and adopted it within the social dimension.

        Lévi-Strauss was an anthropologist who applied Saussure’s theories to his own area of study (such as kinship). He believed that ‘Although they belong to another order of reality, kinship phenomena are of the same type as linguistic phenomena’. Lévi-Strauss believed that there would be one standardised system connecting all myths and societies, and Barthes adopted this approach.

Barthes and Lévi-Strauss came up with fairly similar ideas, and it seems accepted that Barthes would be attracted to his findings of similarities structural elements in the lives and tales of varied tribes. Lévi-Strauss wrote:

‘With myth, everything becomes possible. But on the other hand, this apparent arbitrariness is belied by the astounding similarity between myths collected in widely different regions’

Barthes built upon the work of his icons – he did not believe in adopting inferred ideologies, regardless of their source. With Saussure, Barthes introduced the idea of ‘the motivated’ in as a concept in between ‘the icon’ and ‘the arbitrary’. With Lévi-Strauss’ work, Barthes wanted to look at all past and future works through the language the authors used, arguing that authors could not help but be no more than expressions of the times and cultures they lived in.

Barthes and the schools of thought

Barthes’ insightful criticism contributed greatly to the development of various theoretical schools - in particular, Semiotics and Post-Structuralism.

        Post-Structuralists rejected the idea of an underlying structure upon which meaning can sit, unchanged. Meaning is always in process. Within post-structuralism is the belief that the situation is more complex than Saussure’s theory of the signifier, signified and the sign suggests. In ‘The death of the author’, Barthes argues that a text is:

‘a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture’

In other words, only a reader can bring a temporary unity to a text – there are numerous readings to a text, dependent on the person reading it.

Barthes also merged Marxist theories relating to commodity fetishism with Post-Structuralist ideas, bringing into world-view the relationship between consumerism and the ‘realm of the sign’. In addition, whilst Levi-Strauss worked in search of a universality or standardisation throughout all the many types of myths, Barthes focussed on the possibility of difference as a role of language. In this way, Barthes became a link between Structuralism and Post-Structuralism.

        In Elements of Semiology, Barthes introduced four classifications (terms borrowed from linguistics) of elements that make up the process of semiological analysis. These applications of concepts of language/speech, signifier/signified, syntagm/system and denotation/connotation surely changed the ways in which Semiologists worked -he introduced a new process of analysis which is still used to this day.

Barthes’ influences in effect today

Whilst Barthes’ influence is mostly found within the aforementioned theoretical fields, it is also felt in any field relating to the representation of information – computers, photography, film, television, music and literature. In media and communication studies, the main reason that Barthes’ work can be considered critical is that he related linguistic rules to cultural codes.

        Barthes’ biographer argues that in France, Mythologies did not simply influence scholars, journalists and critics, but novelists and filmmakers of the ‘Neuvelle Vague’.

Barthes’ influence is not just limited to the disciplines of media – the concept of myth also crosses over to politics.  The myth function allows interpretation to become fact; this transforms the cultural into the natural and can be argued to be a political practice. Building on Barthes, Weber talks about the theory of ‘unconscious ideology’- an ideology which has no formal name and as such is difficult to identify: it is the commonsense foundation of our world views which are beyond debate.

Although there is no one canon of thought within his theory, Barthes is arguably one of the most influential scholars in the area of mass communication and popular culture.

It is undoubtedly agreed that Barthes’ work had a great influence upon the way we examine not just popular culture, but also other aspects of media. Jonathan Culler describes him as ‘a cultural institution’, whilst Wayne Booth once said of him ‘(he is) the man who may well be the strongest influence on American criticism today’.

Barthes’ thoughts were affected by existentialism, Marxism, structuralism and psychoanalysis. He developed these philosophical ideas and theories, and in turn had influence on later theorists.  Some would argue that the lack of ‘Barthesism’ today means that his work was not influential or important. However, Barthes himself spoke publicly about his distaste of adopting pervious theories – even his own. Instead, he preferred to ‘unlearn’ all his previous ideas, and become a true free thinker.

Bibliography

Âhӓll, Linda, ‘Images, Popular Culture, Aesthetics, Emotions: The Future of International Politics?’, Political Perspectives, 3, 1 (2009)

Barthes, Roland  ‘Le Myth, Aujourd’hui’(1959), in Sontag, Susan (ed,) A Roland Barthes Reader (London:Vintage) pp93-149.

Barthes, Roland, Elements of Semiology (London:Atlantic), 1997 (reissue, original 1964)

Barthes, Roland, Leçon (French and  European, 1989) p.45/478

Booth, Wayne, Critical Understanding (University of Chicago Press, 1979)

Lavers, Annette, Roland Barthes: Structuralism and After (London:Methuen), 1982.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude ‘The Structural Body of Myth’ (1955), in Adams, Hazard and Searle, Leroy (eds.), Critical theory since 1965 (University Press of Florida, 1989) pp808-822

Lévi-Strauss, Claude ‘Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology’ (1963), in Innis, R.E (ed.), Semiotics-An Introductory Anthology (Indiana University Press, 1985) pp110-128.

Kurzweil, Raymond ‘Structuralism: Roland Barthes’, Studies in Communications, 2, 61-89

Rylance, Rick, Roland Barthes (London: Simon&Schuster), 1994.

Weber, Cynthia, International Relations Theory: A Critical Introduction (London:Routledge), 2005.

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