Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957)

[chicopreto]

Need a translation and am not american!

[kellonius22]

(16)

...Again the title is Mythologies, Roland Barthes, Editions du Seuil.

[[End]]

[drenachrome]

@kellonius22 - Thank you so much!

[kellonius22]

(15)

Thanks; there are, evidently, a number of other things in Barthes' book that one couldn't discuss here; it's not a particularly easy book to read, but it's a very seductive book; it has a marvelous quality - that while reading, you will have at once the impression that you are reading about things you know very well, but at the same time you will discover that you are marvelously intelligent as you advance through the book, and that's a compliment to Roland Barthes....

[kellonius22]

(14)

Do you think there is a Citroen-ist myth?

[Barthes] Well, at least when the new Citroen was introduced, it functioned as a sort of magical object, shining, without joints, with many windows - a sort of object fallen from the sky, as in Voltaire's tales.

[kellonius22]

(13)

Last question: you write that the new Citroen [car] resembles a Gothic cathedral. Could you explain?

[Barthes] Ah, yes - it's an image that I used at the beginning [of that section], because I believe that an automobile, above all a national automobile, is at once the work of a collective, anonymous, working man's, engineer's project; and at the same time is consumed by a large number of the public - at once produced and consumed - exactly like the grand cathedrals of the middle ages.

[kellonius22]

(12)

where at one end one heated some sort of green and red materials, and at the other side, in just a second, an ashtray appeared, completely done, as if by a magical transformation, almost as if by sorcery.

Is perhaps also some of the mystery of plastic that it lies, that its exterior aspect has little resemblance to its interior aspect?

[Barthes] Exactly: that's why plastic makes not-very-poetic toys, because when broken, they are no longer pretty.

[kellonius22]

(11)

[Barthes] Yes, as if a handful of letters were the key to open the universe.

Even more powerful, with Einstein, is that he searched for but did not end up finding the key to the universe.

[Barthes] Exactly, which allowed us to keep the spiritual side alongisde.

What do you think about plastic?

[Barthes] Ah, I was very struck by the magical aspect that advertising, for example, gives to plastic. I remember seeing an exposition of plastic where there was a large apparatus...

[kellonius22]

(10)

[Barthes] It's an ambiguous myth with two elements: (1) the idea of a brain that is genius but still mechanical, like a machine, (2) this brain produces a content that can be completely encapsulated in a certiain mysterious formula [e=mcˆ2], just like in the time of the Ancient Hermetics.

Which is to say - reducing all the problems, worries, difficulties of the world to a small little formula.

[kellonius22]

(9)

[Barthes] I don't know; I don't pretend that Abbe Pierre built his own iconography - but rather what shows itself as an intense spiritual vocation still has, spontaneously, taken the form of the exterior images of a legend.

What do you think explains the prestige of Einstein (for the mass public)?

[kellonius22]

(8)

And what did you write about Abbe Pierre?

[Barthes] I tried to analyse what I called the "iconography" of Abbe Pierre, that is, the photographs published of him, where one sees function, a little mysteriously, a bit inexplicable, a whole ensemble of signs of Franciscanism -- the haircut, the beard, the cane, the "canadienne" coat.

How should one interpret all that?

[kellonius22]

(7)

[Barthes] Ah, yes - I wrote of it as well because I think we all agree this is a large national French myth. I once saw a French spy film - at one point the priest's servant receives the German spy (disguised as a frenchman), and says: I'm going to give to you some steak, and a little later, when she realizes that the man was a spy, says, "and to think I gave him some steak!" - so one sees here that steak functions as a symbol of French patriotism.

[kellonius22]

(6)

...above all of Payment; the justice of wrestling is above all a justice of payment; one hears the public cry "make him pay," it's all about making the evildoer pay.

You write that wrestling serves to express a certain idea of justice.

[Barthes] Exactly.

What do you think of steak with french fries?

[kellonius22]

(5)

[Barthes] I used to go fairly often to a wrestling hall in Montmartres, and I was always very struck by the fact that this spectacle, which we call a sport, used motifs from, for example, comedia dell'arte - it's a sort of script upon which the wrestler improvises episodes. These scripts and episodes have, in my sense, a moral sense - that is, that the wrestler mimes and improves on the ancestral images of combat with the figure of Justice, Triumph, Defeat, Begging (for mercy) ...

[kellonius22]

(4)

[Barthes] I tried to ask what made them large-scale collective representations, reminding us therefore of what myth used to be, and in what way these myths are still myths of today, are produced by our society, and by our history.

So, for example, let's take some of your chapters: what seems to you to characterize wrestling?

[kellonius22]

(3)

[Barthes] Yes; I came across these myths because they were part of the news from my day-to-day life, just like they were part of the day-to-day life of the rest of us, at the time I was studying them.

Now the harder part: how would you describe the work you did on this material?

[kellonius22]

(2)

But starting with the first part of the book, the catalogue of myths, which you have analyzed in a way that of course is not a simple inventory, I think first what is striking (I should explain, first, for the listeners, that the subjects of your analyses are very familiar: soap, wrestling, Abbé Pierre), still there is something of a census of a few principles that run through all the myths of our daily life, yes?

[kellonius22]

Here's a go at a translation, if this helps: (Post 1)

Now that I have to describe Barthes' Mythologies I'm a little bit embarrased because it's rather difficult to explain: I'm counting a bit on Roland Barthes to explain it for us -- how can we describe your book, Roland Barthes?

[Barthes] I'm a bit embarassed myself, because the book is a collection of analyses of myths of day-to-day modern life, capped off with a sort of theoretical essay about, more abstractly, the notion of "myth today"

[Sunomis]

If you do not understand French, then read Mythologies.

This video is essentielly excerpts of this book.

[readchomsky]

I speak 73 languages, but not French!

[nikorobinson87]

Hablo español... sería genial que alguien pudiera traducir este texto, al menos al ingles

I speak spanish, it where great if someone could translate this video for english or spanish...PLZ!

[tom10thumb]

I'd love to hear a translation of this as well!

[ZabRinUta]

it would be great if someone posted a translation...I know english, Italian and Spanish, but sadly not French :((

[tom10thumb]

I wish that there was an English translation as well. It looks wonderful though.

[JeanChristianBouvier]

je viens de decouvrir cet interview avec emotion et plaisir !



[JeanChristianBouvier]

je viens de decouvrir cet interview avec emotion et plaisir !

[ranjeetsarpal]

need a translation

[Biophily]

Need a translation!

[EnthusiastMonicle]

the world is not just for English speakers! he was french after all

[EgonSchiele2]

Thanks for posting this!