Roland Barthes
Myth Analysis
In his essay “Myth Today,” Roland Barthes tell us that myth (this unit’s version of depth analysis) “is not defined by the object of its message but the way in which it utters its message”
(109). We know that myth is a form, a structure that “impoverishes” or “puts at a distance” the original meaning of a sign, substituting something else for it. “We know,” he argues, “that myth
is a type of speech defined by its intention” (124). As we move from the image of the little boy saluting the flag, we encounter not the horrors of French coloniality but almost the opposite: the
tender caress of the colonist’s flag, the touch of the paternal fatherland. This boy has not been violently colonized, myth might tell us, he has been brought into the fold. This is why myth is “is never arbitrary,” why myth always has an agenda, an intention (126). Barthes, deciphers the little boy’s salute as “an alibi of coloniality,” a gesture that lets the colonizers, as it were, off the hook (129). If, as we see in the example of the little boy’s salute and in the preordination of French toys,
reality is always political, then “myth,” works in the other direction, functioning as “depoliticized speech” (142). Its job is to talk about things, to make them innocent. Myth “abolishes the
complexity of human acts,” giving “them the simplicity of essences” (143). And, hence, myth enacts a type of violence, a violence that is hard to see unless one is on the hunt for it.
Write a paper find an element of culture (it can be an object, a person, a film, a novel, a blog—anything at all) and demonstrate how it enacts myth as Barthes defines it.
