Mythologies by R. Barthes

Abstract

Barthes’ Mythologies (1957) dissects post‑war French consumer culture, showing how everyday objects act as “myths” that transform historical, ideological meanings into seemingly natural, timeless signs.

Economic context

After World War II, between 1945 and 1975, the French economy lived through a period of prosperity named Les trente glorieuses (the thirty glorious years). These decades of economic growth combined high productivity with high average wages and high consumption, were also characterised by a developed system of social benefits. Over this thirty-year period, France's economy grew rapidly, like the economies of other developed countries within the framework of the Marshall Plan. The real purchasing power of the average French worker's salary went up by 170% between 1950 and 1975, while overall private consumption increased by 174% in the period 1950–1974.

In this French postwar period the consumer society was expanding, with the emergence of new products and new forms of entertainment. Barthes, as a semiotician and literary critic, was interested in the influence of this mass culture on society and how it shaped people's perception of the world.

Barthes critiqued the bourgeois values prevalent in mass culture, reflecting the tensions of a society grappling with its identity after World War II. He was influenced by the rise of the mass media and consumer culture. He examined how everyday objects and practices, such as food and entertainment, serve as vehicles for ideological messages.

Philosophical context

Ferdinand de Saussure’s ideas about language gave Roland Barthes tools to study culture. Saussure said a sign has two parts - the signifier (sound or image) and the signified (the idea). He also held that meaning comes from differences within a system, not from fixed links to reality. Barthes used this idea to look beyond words: he treated texts, pictures, and everyday things as systems of signs where meaning comes from their relationships.

Barthes expanded Saussure’s model to study myths, fashion, and media. In Mythologies he shows how ordinary images hide cultural beliefs: a picture says one thing on the surface (denotation) and another as a cultural message (myth). This adds an ideological layer to Saussure’s sign theory.

Barthes also extended Saussure's ideas by showing meaning is unstable. In S/Z (1970), he replaced a single system with multiple codes working together, meaning readers help create interpretations. So Barthes keeps Saussure’s core idea that meaning is relational, but uses it to reveal cultural power and the uncertainty of meaning.

Marxism

Roland Barthes engages Marxism but does not fully subscribe to its economic determinism. Instead he offers a semiotic account of how ideology circulates through signs, images, and everyday practices. In Mythologies Barthes shows how cultural objects, such as advertising, wrestling, food and fashion function as “myths” that transform historically specific meanings into commonsense truths.

This reframing complements Marxist concerns about consent and hegemony by showing how consent is produced in language and representation. However, Barthes rejects a strict base‑superstructure model. He focuses on the relative autonomy of cultural systems, the plurality and play of signification, and the textual practices that generate meaning, thereby resisting any single causal reduction of culture to economic structure.

His move from authorial intent to readerly/writerly roles (most famously in S/Z and “The Death of the Author”) shifts political attention from origins and ownership to how meanings are produced and contested. He thus opens possibilities for radical readings that can subvert dominant ideological interpretations. Marxist thinkers and cultural studies scholars have widely borrowed Barthesian tools to analyse popular culture and the manufacture of consent, but some Marxists critique him for insufficient attention to material struggle and class organisation.

Georges Bataille

Bataille’s thought significantly reshaped Barthes’ later writings by directing his attention to moments when meaning breaks down into affect, excess, and limit-experience. From Bataille Barthes borrows the idea that transgression and eroticism reveal something sacred in ordinary life. Where social codes and signifying systems fail, an intensity emerges that resists instrumental interpretation. This influence is visible in Barthes’ shift away from strict structuralist analysis toward a poetics that values rupture, waste, and non-productive expenditure. These concepts echo Bataille’s critique of utilitarian economies and his valorisation of surplus.

Bataille’s preoccupation with the ineffable, death, and the “limit-experience” also informs Barthes’ turn to the subjective, affective residues of texts and images. Where structural analysis maps codes and functions, Barthes begins to ask how a detail can wound or pierce the reader, which resembles Bataille’s insistence on experiences that overflow language. Methodologically, Barthes adopts Bataille’s fragmentary, hybrid essayistic mode in short aphoristic passages, mingled theory and confession and an ethical attention to specific rather than totalising systems.

Commentary

Mythologies (1957) is divided into two parts:

The first part, entitled “Mythologies,” is made up of fifty-three short essays in which Barthes dissects various aspects of popular culture and everyday life. He explores subjects as diverse as advertising, fashion, sports, politics, and literature. Each essay is structured to deconstruct the myth behind the object or phenomenon under study, thus revealing the mechanisms of manipulation and mystification inherent in our consumer society.

The second part of the book, entitled “Mythologies Today,” is a more theoretical reflection on the nature of myth and its role in the construction of our social reality. Here Barthes develops his famous theory of the mythical sign, which analyses objects and discourses as signs carrying meaning and cultural values. He also explores the notion of “political mythology,” examining how ideologies and political discourses are constructed and disseminated through symbols and images.

Part 1: Mythologies 

Myths of the Consumer Society

Barthes demonstrates that the consumer society is a reservoir of myths, where every product, every brand and every advertisement is imbued with symbolic meaning. He highlights the fact that these myths are not simply stories or legends, but are in reality social constructs that serve to maintain the established order and reinforce dominant values.

The author thus analyses everyday objects such as cars, magazines, and food products, dissecting them to reveal the ideologies hidden behind them. For example, he describes how car advertising can convey the idea of ​​freedom and adventure, when in reality it only reinforces car dependency and conformity to social norms.

Barthes also emphasises the importance of language in constructing the myths of a consumer society. He shows how the words and expressions used in the media and advertising can be manipulated to create illusions and fantasies and thus influence our behaviour and consumption choices.

Myths of Advertising and Fashion

“The advertisement gives the impression that a way of life is simply the expression of a simple nature.”

Barthes argues that advertising presents culturally constructed signs as if they were natural facts. Ads convert products into timeless, universal values so consumers see them as self-evident needs rather than manufactured desires. They turn history into nature and mask the ideological work behind images.

Both advertising and fashion claim authenticity — of craftsmanship, heritage, or “real” taste — while often staging those origins. Barthes highlights how these myths retroject a pure origin to naturalise contemporary products:

"Everywhere the object is presented as the last link in a long, blameless tradition." 

This is an attempt to conceal production contexts and labour.

Advertising also frames consumer goods as necessary steps toward progress and personal improvement, implying that buying is the same as self-development. It creates a linear story where objects complete the subject. Barthes notes this tendency to moralise objects: 

“To buy is to be moral; the object is a moral offering."

So consumption becomes a sign of virtue rather than choice.

The author shows how ads copy and slogans present signifiers as if they transparently name realities, hiding the manipulative role of language. The advertisement’s phrasing treats words as natural labels for desires. He observes that 

“...words in advertising are always at the service of a connotation which escapes the language itself.” 

His intention is to expose how language masks ideology.

In fashion, Barthes describes how clothing ceases to be mere fabric and becomes a system of signs that confer identity and social value. Brands and styles promise a transferral of glamour to the wearer. So fashion sells not garments but identities.

“Clothes are always already clothed with messages.” 

Ads suggest that products will complete the consumer emotionally and socially, promising happiness, status, and belonging. This narrative masks structural inequalities and individualises social issues. Barthes writes that the myth:

 “... transforms history into nature, time into eternity, so the promised wholeness appears inevitable rather than constructed."

Barthes critiques photographic images used in ads and fashion for pretending to be objective records, while they actually stage meanings. He argues that photographs are not neutral and advertising exploits this supposed objectivity to give myths a realism they lack.

"The camera does not see; it fabricates.”

 Demythologising wrestling as entertainment 

Barthes argues that wrestling is not a contest of uncertain skill but a staged moral drama: 

"The success of wrestling comes from the fact that it shows an unequivocal Good and Evil." 

The spectacle’s value lies in its clear moral signification: victory and defeat function as visible justice rather than athletic measurement. Spectators complete the myth. Their reactions are part of the performance and validate the moral reading. Barthes notes the crowd’s role in producing meaning — cheers and jeers function as communal judgment — making wrestling a ritual of public catharsis where social values are visibly enforced.

Wrestlers act as types rather than as athletes. Their bodies and gestures are a language that must be read by the audience. Moves and falls are codified signs whose purpose is communication, not mere competition. The author insists that the meaning of wrestling depends on enacted, legible meaning rather than real uncertainty: 

"The outcome does not depend on the competitors' superiority but on the story that must be told." 

The spectacle trades on a simulated authenticity that elicits genuine emotion while preserving clear moral messages.

Barthes situates wrestling within his broader theory that myth turns cultural history into nature by presenting constructed meanings as self-evident. As myth, the show naturalises social codes by making them appear obvious and inevitable.

Political and ideological myths

In political terms a dominant ideology masks power relations by presenting them as commonsense. He insists myth is not a lie but a message that “abolishes history” by stripping events of their specific time and class causes and presenting them as timeless truths. Barthes calls this process a transformation of the sign into a “mythical sign”. Myth is a type of speech and thus it operates through everyday language, images and objects to produce political consent.

Barthes uses concrete cultural examples to show how myths function. His discussion of the French soldier’s image demonstrates how nationalistic ideology is naturalised:

The soldier’s posture and uniform are made to signify “heroism” and “duty", concealing the specific political decisions and class interests behind war. Barthes observes that this image says more than it denotes. It says willingness to die for the country as if this were a pure, spontaneous sentiment. 

Similarly, in his reading of professional wrestling and bourgeois photography, he reveals how social roles and class hierarchies are staged as entertainment or aesthetic taste, thereby depoliticising them. He argues that mythic speech often uses an inoculation of the past. Objects are presented as carrying tradition so that critique becomes framed as disrespect for history.

Barthes also analyses language and stylistic devices that myths deploy. He notes myth favours a “synthetic” language (short, affirmative statements and images that close off complexity) and uses metaphors and metonymies that convert social relations into personal traits or natural laws. He writes that myth’s speech 

“abolishes the complexity of history in order to display a simple, natural truth."

For Barthes political and ideological myths are processes by which cultural signs are re-signified to present contested, historical power structures as timeless, natural, or moral. They function through everyday language, images and aesthetics, and their political effect is to conceal domination and manufacture consent. As Barthes puts it, myth is a way of signifying that turns the ideological into the self-evident.

Myths of literature and art

For Barthes, a literary or artistic sign has two layers: the first-order signifier/signified pair (the “language” that names something) and a second-order system in which that first sign becomes a mere signifier of a broader cultural message. He explains that myth “is a type of speech”, not a thing but “a mode of signification”, so that a simple image can be read as a statement about class, nation, or taste. In the realm of literature and art, Barthes shows how form and style are not neutral: a novelist’s voice or a painter’s compositional choices do ideological work by presenting a historically specific perspective as if it were universal. 

Barthes' critique produces two important consequences for art criticism: first, artworks become sites where social values are encoded and reproduced, and second, the critic’s task is to decode those latent messages so that the seemingly natural becomes visible as constructed. Mythologies thus reframes literary and artistic analysis away from isolated aesthetic judgement toward a sociopolitical reading of everyday signs. What seems merely expressive or decorative is revealed as invested with power. One of Barthes’s telling aphorisms captures this stance: myth “transforms history into nature” and in that transformation it quietly instructs and constrains how people think about class, gender, nation, and taste.

Part 2: Mythologies today

Barthes says "myth" is how everyday things (images, words, objects) are turned into messages that seem natural but actually hide ideas and power. First a thing has a simple meaning but myth gives that thing a second meaning so that it stands for a bigger idea. Myth makes history look like nature and makes choices and social facts feel normal and inevitable. Myth hides politics by making them seem obvious and timeless. To fight myth, we must unpack how signs get new meanings and show that what seems natural is actually made by people.

Barthes calls this process a shift from the first-order sign (signifier + signified) to a second-order sign where the whole first-order sign becomes the signifier of a new concept. Mythic language works by making culture appear "natural, obvious, eternal".

For example, in his analysis of an advertising photograph, the object depicted retains its primary meaning (a rifle, a car, a garment), but myth attributes a cultural value to it (power, modernity, elegance) that masks its social and historical background: 

"myth makes the historical and social appear natural".

Thus mythical signification operates by metaphorisation and allegorisation, transforming a fact into a symbol and neutralising conflict by inscribing it into the 'natural' order of things.

Barthes analyses myth’s mechanics: it functions by depoliticising. It presents a contingent, historically produced reality as timeless and necessary. Myth operates through tone and form (images, captions, stereotyped styles) rather than through explicit argument. Its effect is to make ideology seem like common sense. Barthes writes that myth abolishes history by turning history into nature. 

Mythic speech 

"destroys the complexity of things by giving them an apparently simple form."

He sketches the structural move in semiological terms: a sign (signifier + signified) from the social world is taken up and re-signified so that the sign itself becomes a pure signifier of a new, broader meaning (the myth). Barthes explains that myth is always ideological. It "is a depoliticised speech" that masks relations of power by naturalising them.

Finally, Barthes insists that myth is not merely a collection of falsehoods but a language to be read and analysed. Its critique requires exposing the semiological operations that convert culture into myth so that the supposedly natural world can be shown as historically produced and politically charged. He concludes the critic’s task is to show how myth makes the given world "acceptable" by turning history into nature.

Themes

Myth

Roland Barthes says myth is “a type of speech.” This means everyday images and objects are turned into messages that speak for a culture. A simple sign (like a photo or word) becomes the signifier of a bigger idea, so the ordinary starts to look meaningful and obvious.

Myth "...makes of contingent, historical speech an eternal truth.” 

In other words, myth strips away the specific history and choices behind something and presents it as natural or timeless. That’s how culture hides its origins: by pretending a constructed meaning is just the way things are.

Barthes argues that myth attaches “not a concept but a value” to things. Instead of explaining how something came to be, myth gives it a moral or social weight that supports certain interests. This depoliticises issues because people accept the value as 'natural', without seeing the power relations behind it.

Barthes believes myths should be analysed in order to uncover their history. By decoding myths and showing their historical roots, we reveal the ideologies they serve and stop taking them as self-evident truths.

Démystification

Roland Barthes' démystification aims to strip cultural myths of their naturalised authority so we can see how signs and language produce ideological meanings rather than reflect pure reality. For Barthes, a myth "transforms history into nature". It makes contingent social constructs seem inevitable and universal. Démystification is the critical act that reveals this transformation. 

By analysing everyday language, images, and rituals, Barthes shows how meaning is constructed: myth functions to depoliticise ideas by presenting them as common sense. The critic's task, he writes, is to:

"expose the political value hidden in the semantic neutrality." 

This implies turning what appears self-evident into a problem for examination. In doing so, démystification does not simply negate, it "gives back to language its full history," recovering the social and historical processes that myths erase.

Limitations of Mythologies

Barthes’ Mythologies offers sharp, provocative readings of everyday culture, but its critique has several notable limits. 

Barthes’ focus is narrowly situated in postwar France since his essays concentrate on “French mass culture (1950s–60s)”. This makes many examples historically and culturally specific and limits how easily his claims generalise to non‑Western or contemporary digital contexts. Yet, the consumer society is prevalent in all Western cultures.

His method is largely rhetorical and interpretive rather than empirical. While he persuasively shows how signs carry connotations, he supplies little systematic data, so assertions about effects on popular consciousness remain plausible interpretations rather than demonstrable causal claims. 

Barthes tends toward a top‑down model of ideology, treating myth as an imposition that “naturalises” social meanings and thereby understating audience agency, resistance, and the possibility of divergent readings.

Mythologies analyses signification with great subtlety but pays comparatively less attention to the production side: institutional, economic, and political conditions (ownership, labour, censorship) that shape how myths are made receive limited treatment.