Roland Barthes “Mythologies”

According to one of the definitions in Merriam-Webster dictionary, myth is a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone especially: one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society. This was close to what Barthes’ perspective that myth is read as a value system, which is put into the social and conventional contexts. The mythical meaning of an object exists not in itself, but in the interpretations and wrapped package of norms. Barthes said: “Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utters this message.” Why would the king who dressed like a normal man in Blue Blood Cruise be amusing? Why do people think this is abnormal? It is because people’s mythical logic of a king is different from an ordinary man. What people see in the face of superstar Garbo are the humanization of goddness, and the standardization of attraction and enchant. Also, Barthes’ discourse of brain of Einstein serves as another good example of myth, which a signifier signified not only the neutral object but a tale with imbedded analogies of great advance in science.

The danger is the power and the expansion of the myth. Even if when we think of a word: Iraq, China, Bush, Obama, democracy, food, it is never neutral. They are not only a person, an object or a location but they contain abundance of connections to what they are put in the cognition of society.