Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957)

Roland Barthes re: Mythologies. Interview on Lectures pour tous - 29/05/1957. All rights INA.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Barthes
• Myth
• Mythologies
• Interview
• Semiotics
• Semiology
• Wrestling
• Plastic
• Culture
• Nature
• History

[Biophily]

Need a translation!

[ranjeetsarpal]

need a translation

[wendysoftnan]

果然，此时的巴尔特是一个美男子丫，怪不得《爱在落日前》里面所­说的一个笑话，一个法国人到了国外，国外某个教的信徒要求着给他­做口活。

[drenachrome]

@kellonius22 - Thank you so much!

[chicopreto]

Need a translation and am not american!

[kellonius22]

(16)

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

[[End]]

[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.