Introduction to Semiotics of Cultures, 2010 Ronald Barthes – Modern Myths

1. Introduction to Semiotics of Cultures, 2010Ronald Barthes – Modern Myths Vesa Matteo Piludu University of Helsinki

2. The first part of Mythologies • Is fragmentary, kaleidoscopic • The articles seems to be disconnected • But there is a recurrent topic: all the myths are presented by media as natural and obvious fact, without historical and social background • Even are all myths of the ‘50, some element of them could be easily found in contemporary popular cultures • For the most part written every month for Les Lettres Nouvelles between 1954-56 • The theoretic part, analyzed in the first lecture, Myth Today was written in 1972

3. The myths of French society are part of a process in which the middle class or bourgeois ideology falsely impart universal standing to symbols that have an historical status

4. Best cultural criticism: no criticism at all! • The Middle class hit lights well balanced rhetoric: it is always better be moderate • Culture, as a noble universal thing, should be opposed to ideologies (reactionary or communist) • Culture is falsely presented as something created ex-nihilo, outside the social choices • It should be good for all, light, pure • Opposed to heavy, dark ideologies • The culture is supposed be good for all, something neutral, free from judgment • The best literature is presented as eternal

5. Eternal or social artist? • The best artists or literates are heroes admired without critic, good only for National pride • In Italy Dante is considered the eternal poet, it is mythologized and depurated from his historical and political environments • But Dante is far to be a neutral moderate: he put an relevant number of popes, priests and politics into the Inferno (hell)

6. Critics of novels and drama • When the critics doesn’t understand a word of the book they add two arguments: • Criticism is unnecessary because the subject is ineffable • If they are too stupid to understand the book, this is unsuitable for the common folk (even more imbecile) • So where is the problem? The clarity of the author • Ideas seems dangerous if they are not controlled by common sense • Culture should be nothing but a sweet rhetorical function, ready to be understood by all • If critics fear the analysis, why they become a critic? • Problem: it’s impossible to understand philosophy using the common sense • But luckily the philosophers are able to understand the critics’ disappointment and common sense

7. Verne as a national myth • Verne is a myth of French literature, general synonym for • adventures • travels • modernity • technology

8. Verne as the mythographer of closed spaces • For Barthes Verne’s literature is something else: • A self-sufficient cosmology of closed spaces • The travels of Verne are mostly exploration if closures, the delight of the finite: something similar to a children’s tent • The Mysterious Island, the travel to the centre of the World • Verne, as man-child, re-invented a microcosms, it fills it and it close it: the writer seems to be obsessed by plentitude and appropriation, accumulation of object • He tends to be encyclopedic as a Dutch painter and says: the world is finite, numerable, suitable for inventories and catalogues

9. Nautilus as a nice house • Is a progressive bourgeois: the world is like a nutshell, an object in his hand • The ship is not a model for departure but closure: a nice finite space with many objects, a home, a house, like the nautilus, the most lovely of caves • Inside the human habits • Outside the vagueness of waters • The Nautilus could be considered the opposite of Rimbaud’s Drunken boat,clearly a symbol of exploration

10. Nemo in the Nautilus

11. Outside the Nautilus

12. Writers in holiday • Article on Le Figaro • Bossuet going down to Congo • In vacation the writer add vocation to leisure • Common holidays are for working people • The writer is different from the common mortals: even in vacation, he doesn’t stop producing: • He is writing memories, correcting proofs or preparing in absolute secret his next book • It’s natural that the writer is writing all the time and in all the situations • He is prey of an inner god who speaks all the time: his muse doesn’t know the word vacation • Angiographies of genius, of different beings

13. Women novellist • According to Elle • Women novelists produce essentially to things: children and novels • Jacqueline Lenoir (two daughter, one novel), Marina Gray (one son, one novel), Nicole Dutreil (two sons, four novels) • It seems that the little bohemia allowed (be a writer), is logically connected to the previous tribute to nature • Discurse: • Women novelists are obviously brave, symbols of self-confidence, they write like men: a model • Even so, don’t forget they are women too • Women are considered mostly as homogenous being

14. The mystic brain of Einstein • The genius’ brain had a magical dimension, that had been studied with seismographers • Einstein death: “the most powerful brain has stopped thinking” • The formula E=mc2 is of an unexpected simplicity, suitable for modern myth • It has been considered a kid of magic formula of the word

15. The magician that failed • Also Einstein is a common mortal, suitable to failure • He died without having been able to verify the equation in which the secret of the world was enclosed

16. The craziness of genius

17. The Riddle of Einstein’s Brain

18. ????

19. Nibbing on Einstein’s brain

20. Einstein Brain Station (!)

21. Jet - pilot • Jet – pilot as a new race: half robot with a new skin • Dietetic prescriptions • New technical race

22. Aviators vs. Jet - pilot • First aviators: hagiography, age of miracles and excess • Jet-age: monastic, continence, temperance • Uniform and mask • Submission to collective ends • Inhuman condition and religious call

23. Electoral photography • The nature of the election is elitist and paternalist • Electoral photos try desperately to create a personal link between the politicians and the electorate • The politic exalted himself as a perfect model of a social type, that is somewhat similar to the elector • In a certain sense the elector is persuaded to elect a double of himself

24. Electoral photography • Mystical connection between thought, will, reflections, actions: the inner dream • Hit lighted social status, respectability

25. Spider-Obama

26. The Savage Dragon

27. Myths and elections: “Rome is a jungle … Vote for Tarzan!”

28. The wrestling and performance of pain • Is not a sport, a demonstration of excellence, as boxing or judo • Judo in particular eludes any theatrical element, has a esoteric meaning and even the defeat is eluded rapidly • Is a staged event • Is a show of excess, like the one in Ancient theatres • A spectacle, a performance of suffering and passion • The public is completely disinterested if the contest is rigged or not, they are interested in the quality of the performance • In wrestling there should be an immediate reading of passions: all the gestures are excessive, especially in defeat

29. Wrestlers and theatre • The wrestlers are presented as types, as mask of the antiquity or Commedia dell’Arte • Orsano was the effeminate teddy boy • Reinières the image of passivity • Mauzard arrogant as a cock • Thauyin was the very representation of ugliness, baseness: dead flesh • All his action were represented by viscosity • The body is a symbol of the moral values: treachery, cruelty and cowardice • The types represent an Human comedy of passion were all is clear, intelligible, an immediate pantomime • The suffering man is similar to a tragic mask

30. Wrestling and justice • The pleasure in wrestling is seeing a barbarian concept of justice working perfectly: eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth • In wrestling the villain is about to win, doing all the kind of tricks and breaking all the rules: he is the very image of transgression • The public is revolted against him and in favor of the contestant • At the end the contestant win and the public enjoys to see how the villa is defeated • For this reason, a fair fight is an exception, in wrestling the orgy of evil works better to create interest in the public • The public loves the baroque confusion

31. French and American wrestling • In France wrestling is more connected with the barabarian concept of justice • In America there are more complicate symbols connected to politics and ethnic issues: the wrestling seems a mythological fight between good and evil

32. The Villain • Is an unstable, socially unpredictable • He accept the rules when they are useful to him, but takes refuge behind the rules when he consider that they are favorable to him • It breaks all the possible laws when is useful to do so • The wrestling villain isn’t only cruel, he is inconsistent: he offend not only moral, but logic • For the public what is intolerable is not the rule-breaking, that is normal, but the fact that the villain remain unpunished, as it generally happens in real life • The wrestling should be exactly what the public expect: pure signification of an ideal brutal justice • The villains are somewhat similar to many Italian politics, but unfortunately these are never brutally punished by machos on a public stage

33. Papa Shango vs. Ultimate Warrior 1992 • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrQnoplcmz0&feature=related • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6nU3tU87ew&feature=related

34. Spider Man – Green Goblin

35. Asterix

36. Bud Spencer & Terence Hill • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9jHnSNYMxU

37. Striptease • Few erotism • Baroque exoticism: Chinese woman with an opium pipe • Venetian decor with gondola • Fours, adornments more important than naked skin: ritualized objects are acting as a luxurious shell • The woman is presented as a mineral • The alibi of art makes ritual gestures that are a kind of exorcism of sex • Moulin Rouge even worse: contest and prizes • Striptease became a sport, a career, even a National institution

38. The Lost Continent: postcard ethnography • False ethnographic film • 4 Italian explorers in Malay archipelago • All is easy, innocent as a tourist boat trip • Postcard world based on the glamour of the images • Formal exotism without historical background • The Far East is somewhat similar to west: the Buddhists monks are presented was quasi-Christian • All the folkloric rituals are presented as natural, they “illustrate” the nature (season, death, storm or whatever), never history • Fishing is not presented in its reality, but is presented the romantic essence of be a fisherman

39. Edward Curtis’ staged natives

40. The Lost Continent: postcard ethnography • Fishing is not presented in its reality, but is presented the romantic essence of be a fisherman • Beautiful sunset, eternal natural condition • Peril on the sea and women weeping at home

41. The madonnas of Curtis

42. Curtis Natives

43. Amazon indios

44. Indios and boxers

45. The Blue Guide’s world: human commedia? • In classic tourist guide book’s all is picturesque: landscapes, humans, monuments • Man seems to exist only as types: Basque sailor, Catalan tradesman, Cantabrian sentimental highlander, Italian romantic lover man, Brazilian sensual, Parisian sophisticate • All the “national” characters are clear prototypes of a classical ballet or Commedia dell’arte • Only in trains or metro: there is a very “mixed” people • Any analytical description is futile

46. Many of the monument preserved: • Present a country selecting only national characters and monuments suppress the social reality of the land • Art is presented as the fundamental value of cultures, eliminating the rest • Arts is represented as an economic good, that could be “accumulated”: ´Spain is full of art, rich of sculpture … the museums are full of treasures of art • The country seems in competition to demonstrate to have more art or more relevant, ancient art • The contents of the art, or the meaning of paintings, seems to be less interesting of the great amount of it

47. Abbé Pierre • Presented bearded: a clear symbol of monastic evangelical life, missionaries, poverty, apostleship or hermits • The secular, urban clergy is represented shaved, more temporal

48. Padre pio – Sant’Antonio Abate

49. Soap-powders and detergents • In the first Word Detergent Congress • There was Omo euphoria • The detergents haven’t harmful effect on skin and they could save miners from silicosis • Chlorinated fluids are presented as aggressive: they beats, pushes • They are like liquid saviors but blind, liquid fire in war: they burn, kill the dirt • Powders are selective: are separating agents of liberation • The dirt isn’t killed, is forced out, as in an exorcism • They aren’t soldiers, are police • The dirt, in any case, is the enemy

50. Omo myths: dept and foamy • Commercial and social vanity: comparison between two objects and one is whither than the other • In Omo myths, the consumer is helping the police, he is the accomplice of a liberation • Omo is cleaning in dept all what is obscure • But are the clothes so deep as seas or oceans • Mythology of foam • the foam is absolutely useless • It’s only luxury, a symbol of abundant proliferation, a vigorous germ, an airy substance • Bubbles connected with air and spirituality • The mythology cover the real abrasive function of the detergent under the cover of a mystical substance that govern the molecular order of materials … transforming all in bubbles