At times illuminating, frustrating, thought provoking, unrelatable Roland Barthes has a different understanding of what myth is than most. He feels as if no one is intentionally creating myths anymore but they are being creating all the same via social values. This book is broken into two parts the first part is a collection of essays he wrote where he analyses various events and things in the modern day and explains the modern myth that is attached to them. This branch of study is I guess called semiology, basically it looks at things in the world and looks for things that carry more meaning than their essence. For example, he breaks down different portraits styles of French politicians to explain why they were cropped just so, looked in such and such a direction, wore just such a suit etc. etc. etc. All choices deliberately made to communicate more than just happenstance random choice but instead a specific meaning. He saw myth as an organizational tool used to maintain and justify a given social order. As indicated in this quote:
“I am at the barbers and copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolor. All this is the meaning of the picture. But whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any color discrimination, faithfully serve under the flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors …”
One further conclusion from this line of thinking is that modern myth is more prevalent on the right than it is on left. This is a matter of necessity as the left, before being concretized as the left, is always a force of revolution and revolution’s job is shake up the order. On the other hand, the job of the right is to maintain order and thereby myth has more of a foot to stand on. One of my favorite essays was titled “Operation Margarine” where he describes the process whereby you are inoculated to the evils of a given thing. Here is an excerpt worth quoting a length:
“One can trace in advertising a narrative pattern which clearly show the working of this new vaccine. It is found in the publicity for Astra margarine. The episode always begins with a cry of indignation against margarine. “A mousse? Made with margarine? Unthinkable!.” “Margarine? Your uncle will be furious!” And then one’s eyes are opened, one’s conscience becomes more pliable and margarine is a delicious food, tasty digestible, economical, useful in all circumstances. The moral at the end is well known. “here you are rid of a prejudice which cost you dearly!” It is in the same way that the Established Order relievers you of your progressive prejudices. The army, an absolute value? It is unthinkable: look at it vexations, its strictness, the always possible blindness of its chiefs. The church, infallible? Alas it is very doubtful: look at its bigots, its powerless priests, its murderous conformism. And then common sense makes its reckoning.: what is this trifling dross of Order, compared to its advantages? It is well worth the price of an immunization. What does it matter, after all, if margarine is just fat, when it goes further than butter and costs less? What does it matter after all, if Order is a little brutal or a little blind when it allows us to live cheaply? here we are, in our turn rid of a prejudice which cost us dearly, too dearly, which cost us too much in scruples, in revolt, in fights and in solitude. "