Myths, Icons, Sacred Symbols and Semiotics
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Myths, Icons, Sacred Symbols and Semiotics Roland Barthes and Structuralism as a Tool for Understanding Global Culture
Transcript of Myths, Icons, Sacred Symbols and Semiotics
Myths, Icons, Sacred Symbols and Semiotics
Roland Barthes and Structuralism as a Tool for Understanding Global Culture
Roland Barthes Mythologies
•Mythologies is a book by Roland Barthes, published in 1957.
• Barthes examines “the tendency of contemporary social value systems to
fabricate/create modern myths about itself and its people and the
important prioritized cultural values.
• Barthes looks at the process of myth creationand the people or
organizations that are involved.
• He focuses on a second level semiotics where signs/symbols are
elevated to the level of myth through media and cultural repetition and
sociological propaganda
• Such a sign/symbol analysis is a key foundation of cultural studies and
STRUCTURALISM.
– Structuralism. Every social system has a structured order of signs/symbols which we use to derive meaning and
relationships. Whoever controls “meaning-making” structures or processes also tends has the POWER in our
society.
Structuralism + Semiotics Popular Culture
Studies
•Roland Barthe’s Mythologies (French) + Frankfurt School of
Theorists (German) Popular Culture Studies (USA)
•CONCEPTUAL BELIEFS: Pop culture as SOFT POWER
1. In the 20th & 21st Centuries, SOFT POWER has become equally as
important as traditional HARD POWER (Military, Nation, Resources)
2. The geo-politics of SOFT POWER MUST be more critically analyzed
in order to understand CULTURAL POWER within globalization.
3. Pop-culture studies are FUN!
Popular Culture studies
Focus: The systematic study and critique of …
1.CULTURE INDUSTRIES and Patterns of Behavior
associated with Music
Fashion
Celebrity
Fads/Trends
Popular books/fiction
Magazines
Movies
Sports
Video Games
Food
2.Media and Communication systems (both the Technologies
AND Techniques)
3.The “SACRED SYMBOLS” and trends of POPULAR
CULTURE
4.AUDIENCES and Identities (Mass and individuals)
5.ENCULTURATION & Socialization Processes
Celebrity as Global Symbol
Poltical & Economic Power
Global Logos
Important Terms & IdeasCultural/Media Anthropology
• Authenticity: refers to the truthfulness of origins, attributions, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.
• Aura/Original: a field of subtle, luminous radiation surrounding a person or object (like the halo or aureola in religious art). The depiction of such an aura often connotes a person of particular power, spirit, or even holiness.
• Meme--A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture or across cultures. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena.
• Interpretive Communities: Communities of people who share common cultural codes and ways of Interpretation
• Cultural Fusion is the mix of two or more cuMigrationCultural Fusion: ltures. Now apart from that there are to different types of fusion.
• Cultural Imperialism (exploitation): Utilization of another person or group for selfish purposes: exploitation of unwary consumers.
Pastiche• Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the
Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936)
PASTICHE--imitation, artificial, copy, derivative, hodge-podge, amalgam
•a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that
imitates the style of previous work; also, stylistic imitation
• LOSS of the “AURA”
– Aura = the spirit, magic, connectionof the truly original or authentic.
– With constant reproduction/copying what is lost
is AUTHENTICITY, the “aura” (spiritual magic) of the original.
Pastiche in People?The Precession of Simulacra
Borneo, Malaysia
Presession of Simulacra4 stages:
1. STAGE#1 the representation is a faithful image/copy
a) we believe itb) sign is a "reflection of a profound reality“c) a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the
sacramental order".
2. STAGE#2 is perversion of reality, a) we come to believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy
which "masks and denatures" reality
3. STAGE#3 masks the absence of a profound reality, where the sign pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is really a copy of a copy (the original is lost).
4. STAGE#4 is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever.
a) This is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naïve sense, because the experiences of consumers' lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, "hyperreal" terms.
