Mythologies
by Roland Barthes
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Book Summary Information
Author: Roland BarthesTranslator: Annette Lavers
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1972-01-01
ISBN: 0374521506
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book Reviews of Mythologies
Book Review: "The very principle of myth, it transforms history into nature"
Summary: 5 Stars
First, this is a very political book, even for Barthes. If your idea of a good read is Ann Coulter or Glenn Beck, do not bother with this one. But if your political leanings are left of center and if you are dismayed at what passes for journalism nowadays, then check it out.
There are so many good lines in this book, like the one I quote in the title of this review. It is one of my favorite non fiction reads, along with "The Rights of Man" by Tom Paine and "St.Francis, A model for Human Liberation" by Leonardo Boff. With the rise of the corporate media, we have been subjected to an onslaught of propaganda that would have made Goebbels proud. We saw a lot of it in the run up to the unprovoked invasion of Iraq. Call a man a member of the Axis of Evil---Axis being linked in all minds with Nazi Germany---and a fair number of people will exclaim "He must be stopped!" On the principle that Hitler had to be stopped and if the correct way to do it back then was with war, then war must be the answer now.
The press is especially fond of playing this game when it comes to oppressed minorities. Every perp becomes a Black Man (dark skinned) and every victim becomes a white woman (blonde) through selective reporting and the use of color photos. This lays the groundwork for discrimination against Blacks by framing it as "self-defense". The myth of the "Dead Man Voting" is another popular bit of propaganda which the press rolls out every election cycle. Yes, some dead men once voted in Texas. But the real story is the widespread disenfranchisement of the nation's poor, elderly and minorities---a story which is seldom covered. Or take the so called "Bradley effect". That bit of "history" to "nature" silliness has been used to cover up right wing election fraud for years.
The chapter entitled "Deaf and Dumb Criticism" always cracks me up. "I don't understand, therefore you are idiots." We see this kind of attack a lot in the U.S., where a major presidential candidate (Gore) could be denounced as "too smart" while another candidate used his Village Idiot rep to disarm the public, which decided that he was too straightforward to ever lie or cheat. The right wing pundits (shouters) on what passes for news programming are especially fond of denouncing "intellectuals" as somehow anti-American. So, when are we going to institute a maximum IQ for the rocket scientists at NASA, on the grounds that the nation's space program is too important to trust to a lot of (sinister) intellectuals?
"For the very end of myth is to immobilize the world".
If we want to progress, we need to decipher and debunk the myths which keep us in mental chains. As readers of the news, it is our job to analyze and criticize, not absorb and digest. Roland Barthes show us how to do so in this book.
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