Mythologies

A collection of short essays on French everyday life, written mostly as a monthly column between 1954 and 1956, followed by a long theoretical essay. Barthes reads ordinary things as if they were texts: professional wrestling as a spectacle of clear moral signs, the brain of Einstein, wine and milk as national drinks, steak and chips, soap powders, toys, the new Citroën car, Roman costumes in films and travel guides. In each case he shows how something cultural and historical is presented as natural and obvious. The closing essay, Myth Today, gives the theory. Drawing on Saussure's analysis of the sign, Barthes describes myth as a second-order system of meaning: a complete sign, such as a magazine cover showing a young Black soldier saluting the French flag, becomes the signifier of a further message, here about French imperial loyalty. Myth turns history into nature, and in doing so serves the interests of the bourgeoisie.

It is a lively, short-chapter introduction to semiotics and to reading advertising, celebrity and popular culture as carriers of ideology.