Welcome to the first in a series of videos on Roland Barthes' "Mythologies," which is a text
from 1957. This particular text is a frequently studied work in terms of literary theory, cultural
studies, English -- different disciplines like that. It's not a really difficult text in terms
of literary theory, but it has its challenges, and I thought it might be nice to do a series on it.
Now the text has come out in different editions. I'm looking particularly at the 1972 English
translation. It doesn't have all the essays that Barthes wrote, and later editions include some
extra essays as well. But it has enough examples to to get you started and to really get into the
theory. So, the book consists of two sections. The first section is really just examples ... and in
this video I'm just going to talk about the very first example, which is wrestling. We have this
corny sort of image here, which is fitting because wrestling is all about corniness,
as we will find out. In subsequent videos I'll do at least a few more examples, and we'll see how
many we actually cover. If you want to see lots, you can let me know in the comments, but the main
thing is that as we go through the examples we start to get a hint of the theory overall, so that
when we get to the second part, which is really kind of Barthes taking a step back and thinking
about what all of this means, we will be well prepared to understand where he's coming from and
what he's doing overall. We can already introduce [the book and the theory] a little bit because
he's really talking about semiotics. Semiotics is the study of signs and he's going back especially
to a previous thinker, Ferdinand de Saussure, who wrote a lot about sign systems and how we
should understand them.What's unique about Roland Barthes is that he applies these signs not just to
language but [to] the culture, and that's the big breakthrough here, that he's trying to say, well,
we can not only look at how language functions but we can look at how something in culture (something
like wrestling) can act like a sign system, and we need to interpret that particular sign system. So
in the introduction to the 1970 edition he says, "I had just read Saussure." He says this in the
preface, and he's very conscious of the fact that he's so influenced by this particular thinker.
Now in terms of his big picture, right at the start here even before we get to the theoretical
part we can see that what he's trying to do is he's trying to see how myth functions in
relation to what he calls history and nature. So if we think of history ... we have all kinds of
events that happen. You know, the 1968 Paris Student Revolt, let's say. That's one event.
He actually refers to that in the preface. Lots of different events happen. Wrestling can be an event
too. And what tends to happen is that these events are turned into myth somehow. We create a myth
out of these events. And then over time this myth starts to take up the whole field. In other words,
it seems like it's the only reality out there. It's as if everybody has to believe in it,
and that makes this myth seem natural. So this is going to get a bit messy here, but this ... myth
all of a sudden seems very natural, because it's the only thing that we can think of. We can even
call it universal. It's as if it's the only perspective out there. Now for Roland Barthes
it's especially a certain social class that creates these myths. That's the bourgeoisie.
So the bourgeois myth is what rules supreme and by "bourgeois" he means kind of traditional,
conventional society in this period -- everything that a leftist like Barthes doesn't like,
as you can imagine. He basically says that this myth is typically read or interpreted
or presented to us through a sort of bourgeois lens. So if we kind of draw some spectacles here,
it's as if we are looking through the same glasses all the time. And it's the job of the critic,
which in this case would be Barthes . . . so if we draw him over here, okay, so there he is ... and
he's kind of looking at all of this, it's his job to demystify the situation ... to kind of
take the mythical element away and expose things as they really are. And as he's talking about
striptease in one of his chapters, that kind of taking away of the clothing, I suppose that
that applies also to what he himself is doing. One of the questions would be whether any of
this this kind of revealing of what's really there has its own sexy quality you could say.
Now Barthes is aware that as he is looking at the myth, it's possible that he himself creates
new myths. Do we ever really escape this notion of myth? That raises the question, well, what is his
mythology? Does he have his own mythology? Does he have his own sign system that we from our vantage
point then need to understand? In fact, that's why we can also draw ourselves. This would be
the reader of Barthes ... looking at Barthes. We come with our own spectacles, and as you can start
to see, this really complicates the picture. But Barthes does raise this in his preface,
this problem of what is his own mythology. Is he totally neutral? Can you ever escape myth? These
are some of the questions that he is asking right from the start. So let's have a look
at wrestling then. We'll just sample one chapter here just to get us into the text a little bit. As
I mentioned if you want to have lots of examples covered that's totally fine. You can let me know.
So what is wrestling? Well, the first thing we can say about it is that it's a spectacle.
It's not a sport, he says. It's very dramatic, but the outcome is not as important as the process.
It's much more like a play. We enjoy the action, we follow it, we watch it, but we don't worry too
much about who wins, in part because the whole context is somewhat artificial and possibly fixed
anyways. The next thing that's important is that he talks here about what kind of sign this is. He
says that in wrestling signs are always clear. So as you read each chapter, before you get to the
theoretical part, I would encourage you to kind of try to figure out what is the theory about
signs in this chapter? Don't get sucked into just a topic, whether it's margarine, or cars,
or steak, and stuff like that. Try to figure out what is he actually saying about the way
in which signs are operating here. When it comes to wrestling, he says there is a kind of "pure and
full signification." In other words, every sign is super obvious in what it means. He writes at one
point, "The gesture of the vanquished wrestler (so the wrestler who's on on the mat, you might say,
who's being beaten) signifying to the world of defeat, which far from disguising he emphasizes
and holds like a pause in music, corresponds to the mask of antiquity meant to signify the tragic
mode of the spectacle." In ancient times, they would have these masks on to signify if they were
laughing or crying. It was very obvious. In the same way here, the signs are super super. You're
not going to be mistaken about what a particular move in wrestling or a particular pose represents.
We also see that we have these very clear types of characters. His example here is of Thauvin,
the disgusting man, the bastard, who is cruel and unpredictable. We kind of hate him,
but we also understand his sense of justice and the way he's trying to survive in a certain
kind of world. It's a complicated picture here, but it's nevertheless a type. And if
you've watched a little bit of wrestling, you can probably see other types as well,
like the pretty boy. And there's lots of other ones. But the main point here is that these
types of characters are very easy to read. You know what you're dealing with. We can also say
that there are very clear narrative patterns. ... The stories are predictable. And yet we
enjoy watching them anyways. So, commonly we have "Suffering, Defeat, and Justice." The suffering
has this classical sense of spectacle, which also creates a sort of heroism, because even if you are
a wrestler who's defeated, there's still heroism in that to some extent. The justice part I think
is really quite fascinating here because this is not your traditional justice. One of the things
that you'll recognize as you go through the book is that Roland Barthes, being quite the leftist,
hates traditional institutions, which of course means that he's also going to hate or distrust
the traditional justice system. Maybe that's where he kind of admires wrestling a little bit,
because very rarely is a fight ever truly fair. We're dealing with a kind of extrajudicial way of
understanding the world, which has its own its own kind of logic, and its own kind of appeal.
Another thing that's that's predictable is that we have very symbolic moves ...
when it comes to wrestling. He talks about the hold, the forearm smash,
and other moves. These things are predictable and they have their symbolism, their meaning.
If we sum all of this up, what we can say is that on the one hand we have a great deal of formalism.
All of these things follow a predictable form and a pattern. But there is still something
genuine in wrestling as well. If you read between the lines in the chapter you see that
Barthes is trying to get at that the wrestling is this weird paradox, where on the one hand
it's conventional, it's artificial, it's fake. But you get the sense that it's not entirely
bourgeois in the way that other things. There's still the sense of rebellion and
unruliness and chaos, which I think Bart seems to secretly admire a little bit.
So here right away in the book you start to get this tension somewhat, where we think,
well, is this bourgeois? Is it not? Does Roland Barthes like it? And as you go on,
right away [in] the next chapter he starts talking about representation of Roman-ness in Hollywood.
There he talks about signs that are artificial but are not genuine. So what makes a sign seem
more genuine and something that we can admire and what makes something artificial and hypocritical?
Is there a standard for that? How do we apply that to signs? That's a question that I'm not sure
Barthes always raises or even answers, because that gets to the heart of who he is. What does
he think is hypocritical? That's really one of the issues that this book struggles with. Okay,
so hopefully that gives you a good sense of the first chapter, [and] the introduction,
and we'll go on with our series and talk some more about other examples and the theory.