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Rating:  -
This thin book is a collection of Roland Barthes' short pieces on culture. The style of much of the book is journalistic and easy-to-read.
In this book, Barthes tries to uncover the mythmaking latent in advertising, films, media articles, exhibitions etc. The selection spawns across diverse subjects to explain why and how Romans are defined as Romans in films (with a fringe cut as a standardized technique), mythmaking inherent in celebration of the mystique of Greta Garbo's face, the use of language to dominate and condemn the illiterate, the rhetoric of advertising margaraine, the meaning and rhetoric of plastic, striptease and wrestling as spectacles etc.
At the end of the book, Barthes explains his concept and theory of myth as a sign that has become a signifier for another signified. This portion is of special relevance to those wanting to be initiated into semiology.
Rating: -
I was amazed by the extensiveness of issues discussed in this book. Barthes had gone beyond the so-called 'conventionalized' myths. Rather than talking about Hercules, he discussed about wrestling in the perspective of myth. I think if you are interested in structuralist-poststructuralist analysis of myths you must read this book.
Rating:  -
I thought that many of Barthes's themes resound astonishingly well even today.
However, I found myself overly distracted by his underlying premises in many cases, which simply echo the outmoded Marxist/Atheistic materialism so prevelent in the 1950's literary community. One example is how he blames the middle class in France for propaganda that features a patriotic cover on a national magazine and a photograph of a young soldier. In fact, the middle class (or bourgeoisie) is blamed for every societal issue Barthes defines.
When will the literary community understand that the middle class is not the enemy of a free society?? Why does EVERY literary study or contextual analysis need to be based on Marxist theory?? Come on! It's the 21st century after all. Can we please update the scholars with the realities in which we live day to day??
But returning to Mythologies -- I would recommend reading because of how well the topics parallel our common experience. Just beware that many of his conclusions are from an outmoded, unrealistic, and impractical worldview.
Rating: -
When I finished this latest re-read of Mythologies I was initially struck by how funny it was. This was something of a big realization for me, stemming from a memory of burning brain cells with a furrowed brow, trying to understand what he was saying and being almost afraid to enjoy it. So there's one of the consolations for growing older for you-- I'm getting confident enough to really enjoy Barthes.
I'm not saying that I fully understand him yet. I'm not sure that I ever will. I think that "Myth Today"(the book's final and most central essay) still remains fairly firmly out of reach. But it's true that each time I re-read Barthes, I get something more out of it-- I manage to scale heights that I didn't think I would ever get to the last time around.
Isn't it the mark of a brilliant book that it grows with you?
Particularly recommended this time are the essays "Soap Powders and Detergents" and "Operation Margarine".
Rating: -
Ths book was written by an ardent Maoist in the heady days in which all of Parisian intellectual circles were Maoist. It is now a top read by anyone who comes into contact with the Maoist Literature Association (known as the MLA). Cultural Studies is an extension of Mao's Cultural Revolution.
As with Mao, the idea was to change the meaning of virtually everything, taking the mandarin intellectual class, and moving them to the fringes of society, and taking the marginal farmers and moving them into the universities. In a similar way, Barthes takes marginal cultural activity such as professional wrestling, and moves it to the center of cultural discourse, while he takes Shakespeare, and the canon, and moves it to Manchuria.
It's a heady experiment. In China, the result led to a staggered economy, massive famines, and the death of the entire intellectual class. In the west, it has mostly remained a literary curiosity, but one with a curious history.
Barthes often praised the Maoists, and even travelled to China with other members of Tel Quel (Philippe Sollers and Julia Kristeva were fellow travellers, and they learned Chinese in order to translate Mao's poems into French). This book must be read in tandem with Simone de Beauvoir's book The Long March (about Mao's Revolution) and Julia Kristeva's Chinese Women, in order to give it a historical and intellectual context.
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