Mythologies by Roland Barthes
In "Mythologies", Roland Barthes examines the creation of modern myths by modern society through the use of a commonly accepted social value system. Barthes lays out the fundamental principles of semiotics by using a series of "mythologies" (presented in individual essays) that cover a wide range of cultural practices, events, and objects that are given meaning by a system of social signs that are widely accepted by all. These "Myths" are conveyed through a form of discourse, that is they are not defined by the object of their message, but by the method in which the message is conveyed. This discourse is not confined to oral speech, as Barthes describes it:
"It can consist of modes of writing or of representations; not only written discourse, but also photography, cinema, reporting, sport, shows, publicity, all these can serve as a support to mythical speech. Myth can be defined neither by its object nor by its material, for any material can be arbitrarily endowed with meaning...". (p. 110)
I think that these concepts are illustrated in the best way in Barthes essay on the phenomenon of wrestling entitled "The World of Wrestling". In it, Barthes distinguishes between judo or boxing (which Barthes categorizes as a sport with rules and systems of fair behavior) and wrestling (which Barthes would describe as falling into the realm of theatre). Barthes explains the emotional "story" of the wrestling match which dictates clearly how the audience should feel. The protagonist is typically fighting a salaud (French term for "Bastard"), and his looks betray his role in the fight. He is unquestionably ugly, and to quote Barthes:
"Not only is ugliness used here to signify baseness, but in addition ugliness is wholly gathered into a particularly repulsive quality of matter....so that the passionate condemnation of the crowd no longer stems from his judgement, but instead from the very depth of its humours". (p. 17)
Barthes seems to think that the role of the semiotician is to recognize these myths and to expose or point out to us the carefully constructed nature of the images to which we attribute meaning. I kept thinking of the cultural differences at play in his writings and also the way in which the evolution of social behavior over time has changed the examples that Barthes uses to illustrate his points.
For example, in the essay on stripping called "Striptease", Barthes contends that the act of removing clothing is the erotic part of the entire process. He states that when the stripper becomes totally naked, the eroticism is immediately removed and we are looking at something non-erotic. Barthes states:
"The end of the striptease is then no longer to drag into the light a hidden depth, but to signify, through the shedding of an incongruous and artificial clothing, nakedness as a natural vesture of woman, which amounts in the end to regaining a perfectly chaste state of the flesh". (p. 85)
I kept thinking about how the "accoutrements" of stripping have changed so much since the late 1950's when Barthes was writing this essay. Back then, the striptease was an art form, with eloaborate costumes designed to transport the men to places of fantasy while they admired the female form. Now, stripping is much more about the naked bodies of the dancers (aside from tiny underwear and/or high heel shoes), not about creating a theatrical fantasy through a dance which slowly exposed the dancer.
I am reminded of the legendary Bettie Page, who passed away a few months back. She was a model who became the undisputed pin-up queen of the 1950's and 1960's, taking thousands of photographs and making many short films in different costumes that were elaborate creations of imaginative fantasy. She possessed an innocence that I think embodies what Barthes is referring to as the myth of eroticism. R.I.P., Bettie Page.
Here is Bettie at her best:
Monday, March 30, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Thoughts on Readings 3/11/09
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society by Herbert Marcuse
"The most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence" (p. 4)
I found this week's reading to be a very interesting and critical deconstruction of a concept that I find fascinating: how the capitalist structure can manipulate through a system of wants and satisfactions that exists below the surface of awareness. In other words, how a free market society can manipulate the psyche of the American consumer so that basic critical human needs (food, water, sleep) are so commonly accepted that they are not even recognized. These "needs" are replaced by a hierarchy of products that are certainly not essential to life but almost accepted as though they are.
As Marcuse puts it:
"The only needs that have an unqualified claim for satisfaction are the vital ones-nourishment, clothing, lodging at the attainable level of culture. The satisfaction of these needs is the prerequisite for the realization of all needs, of the unsublimated as well as the sublimated ones". (p. 5)
The distinction between wants vs. needs is clouded by the trappings of the mass consumerist culture that we live in. And the media is not the culprit according to Marcuse, this indoctrination begins way before the media has an influence over it.
Marcuse sums it up:
"The preconditioning does not start with the mass production of radio and television and with the centralization of their control. The people enter this stage as preconditioned receptacles of long standing; the decisive difference is in the flattening out of the contrast (or conflict) between the given and the possible, between the satisfied and unsatisfied needs." (p. 8)
I have often thought about the ways in which the media can use fear (of some previously unseen threat) to "scare" us into consumerist behavior. When the nightly news tells us of some deadly bacteria the COULD be creeping all over our kitchen counters, we run right out and purchase some anti-bacterial spray to solve this potential danger.
After the attacks of September 11, I was living in NYC and I clearly remember the press conference that Mayor Giuliani made the morning after when he encouraged the people of NYC to get out and SPEND, patronize your local establishments. The underlying message seemed to be, "we all will feel better if we shop and purchase products that should meet our immediate needs, and the local economy will get a boost as well!". I remember thinking that his comment was insensitive in light of the massive loss of life that day, but what was even more upsetting was the lack of backlash in the press. This supports Marcuse's construct that we are living in a "one-dimensional" society, a society in which individuals become integrated into the capitalist structure of production and consumption and oppositional thought patterns and actions of oppositional behavior are eradicated. Consumerism is a form of social power used to control thought patterns.
The media stimulates a culture of fear of not belonging which is already established, and this fear creates consumerist behavior which stimulates the economy and dampens thoughts of a revolutionary nature. As Marcuse states: "the intellectual and emotional refusal "to go along" appears neurotic and impotent" (p. 9).
Interesting to read Marcuse background and to see that one of his most vocal disciples was 1960's Left Radical Abbie Hoffman (who studied under Marcuse at Brandeis). Hoffman was the founder of the Youth International Party (the "YIPPIES"), and was a major figure in the Chicago riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Marcuse elaborates that the consumerist culture gives way to a better way of life, and this leads to complacency and a lack of critical thought.
To quote Marcuse about what I see as a key idea:
"It is a good way of life-much better than before-and as a good way of life, it militates against qualitative change. Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe. They are redefined by the rationality of the given system and of its quantitative extension". (p. 12)
I am again left thinking about how this reading applies to the present, specifically how the current economic crisis is curbing or halting consumerist behaviors, and whether this time will represent a positive return to core ideas and values. A society where we are not "numbed" by the promise of happiness through shopping, but one in which we are organized around a common set of humanistic goals.
"The most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence" (p. 4)
I found this week's reading to be a very interesting and critical deconstruction of a concept that I find fascinating: how the capitalist structure can manipulate through a system of wants and satisfactions that exists below the surface of awareness. In other words, how a free market society can manipulate the psyche of the American consumer so that basic critical human needs (food, water, sleep) are so commonly accepted that they are not even recognized. These "needs" are replaced by a hierarchy of products that are certainly not essential to life but almost accepted as though they are.
As Marcuse puts it:
"The only needs that have an unqualified claim for satisfaction are the vital ones-nourishment, clothing, lodging at the attainable level of culture. The satisfaction of these needs is the prerequisite for the realization of all needs, of the unsublimated as well as the sublimated ones". (p. 5)
The distinction between wants vs. needs is clouded by the trappings of the mass consumerist culture that we live in. And the media is not the culprit according to Marcuse, this indoctrination begins way before the media has an influence over it.
Marcuse sums it up:
"The preconditioning does not start with the mass production of radio and television and with the centralization of their control. The people enter this stage as preconditioned receptacles of long standing; the decisive difference is in the flattening out of the contrast (or conflict) between the given and the possible, between the satisfied and unsatisfied needs." (p. 8)
I have often thought about the ways in which the media can use fear (of some previously unseen threat) to "scare" us into consumerist behavior. When the nightly news tells us of some deadly bacteria the COULD be creeping all over our kitchen counters, we run right out and purchase some anti-bacterial spray to solve this potential danger.
After the attacks of September 11, I was living in NYC and I clearly remember the press conference that Mayor Giuliani made the morning after when he encouraged the people of NYC to get out and SPEND, patronize your local establishments. The underlying message seemed to be, "we all will feel better if we shop and purchase products that should meet our immediate needs, and the local economy will get a boost as well!". I remember thinking that his comment was insensitive in light of the massive loss of life that day, but what was even more upsetting was the lack of backlash in the press. This supports Marcuse's construct that we are living in a "one-dimensional" society, a society in which individuals become integrated into the capitalist structure of production and consumption and oppositional thought patterns and actions of oppositional behavior are eradicated. Consumerism is a form of social power used to control thought patterns.
The media stimulates a culture of fear of not belonging which is already established, and this fear creates consumerist behavior which stimulates the economy and dampens thoughts of a revolutionary nature. As Marcuse states: "the intellectual and emotional refusal "to go along" appears neurotic and impotent" (p. 9).
Interesting to read Marcuse background and to see that one of his most vocal disciples was 1960's Left Radical Abbie Hoffman (who studied under Marcuse at Brandeis). Hoffman was the founder of the Youth International Party (the "YIPPIES"), and was a major figure in the Chicago riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Marcuse elaborates that the consumerist culture gives way to a better way of life, and this leads to complacency and a lack of critical thought.
To quote Marcuse about what I see as a key idea:
"It is a good way of life-much better than before-and as a good way of life, it militates against qualitative change. Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe. They are redefined by the rationality of the given system and of its quantitative extension". (p. 12)
I am again left thinking about how this reading applies to the present, specifically how the current economic crisis is curbing or halting consumerist behaviors, and whether this time will represent a positive return to core ideas and values. A society where we are not "numbed" by the promise of happiness through shopping, but one in which we are organized around a common set of humanistic goals.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Thoughts on Readings 3/4/09
The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills
"The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern". (p. 3)
Written in 1956, this book explores the social structure and wide span of control of the so-called "power elite", a relatively small group of people who disproportionately control a large percentage of this country's wealth, privilege, political power and access to policy making that has major global consequences. It again is a reading that has many applications to what is happening in the U.S. of today, over 50 years after it was written.
Mills (a former Columbia University professor) delves into developing a theoretical framework for exactly WHO these elite are and how they are structured so differently in the United States because of the lack of an aristocracy and the historical lack of social organization around a feudal system.
"The Higher Circles" (Chapter 1) discussed the "triangle of power" in America among the economy, politics, and the military. Each member of the power elite makes individual decisions, but those decisions are influenced by the military, politics and/or big corporations. No member of this class has absolute unilateral power that is not impacted by the big institutions within which he operates. To quote Mills:
"The decisions of a handful of corporations bear upon military and political as well as upon economic developments around the world. The decisions of the military establishment rest upon and grievously affect political life as well as the very level of economic activity. The decisions made within the political domain determine economic activities and military programs". (p. 7)
He goes on to discuss how the political institutions (government) sometimes will use their wealth and power to regulate a faltering economy. This jumped out at me as being complete foresight of the current government "bailout" of banks and mortgage lenders to stave of a complete collapse of our economy.
To quote Mills again:
"Can they afford to allow key units of the private corporate economy to break down in a slump? Increasingly, they do intervene in economic affairs, and as they do so, the controlling decisions in each order are inspected by agents of the other two, and economic, military, and political structures are interlocked". (p. 8)
This "interconnectedness" relates back to Dewey and his concepts of individual actions having ramifications for the larger public, sort of the ripple effect. Although Mills is writing in a different time, there are some parallel modes of thinking at work here.
I particularly enjoyed Mills discussion of the psychological concept of natural superiority within the elite (which he attributes to the natural course of ideas in a society in which some people possess more than others). He states:
"People with advantages loath to believe that just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves". (p.14)
I loved that quote and couldn't help but thinking of a few cable television reality shows on Bravo that I have unsuccessfully attempted to avoid: "The Real Housewives of Orange County" and "The Real Housewives of New York City". Most of the women who represent the "real" housewives are anything but real in a sense of being a middle-class working citizen. As a matter of fact, most of them came into wealth by marrying a wealthy man or operating their businesses in extremely wealthy areas of the country where they can charge exorbitant fees.
But what I find most compelling about these shows is the sense of entitlement that this new wealth brings with it...you never see an episode when one is not complaining about poor service, demanding an upgrade, criticizing someone's home that they don't feel is up to their standards, crying because they weren't allowed into an A list event. These women seem to truly believe that they are part of the "natural" elite and that being wealthy was their destiny.
In the chapter entitled "The Power Elite", Mills attempts to further define the characteristics of this small class. He mentions that there currently is no formal "program of recruitment and training", because despite what many people believe the prep school, Ivy League undergrad and law school training is NOT up to the demands made upon members of the power elite. This, of course, made me immediately think of our former President and Leader of the Free World, George W. Bush. Clearly, his elite upbringing and top-notch education did not instill in him the leadership qualities to keep this country on course for his 8 years in office.
He says there exists "the unstated need to transcend recruitment on the sole basis of economic success, especially since it is suspect as often involving the higher immorality" (p. 298).
The power elite does indeed exist in America. However, we remain unclear on exactly who or what really represents the nadir of power. The important thing to remember, is that the power triangle (economy, politics, and the military) are all the power elite and they all rule with overlapping and interconnected powers.
"The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern". (p. 3)
Written in 1956, this book explores the social structure and wide span of control of the so-called "power elite", a relatively small group of people who disproportionately control a large percentage of this country's wealth, privilege, political power and access to policy making that has major global consequences. It again is a reading that has many applications to what is happening in the U.S. of today, over 50 years after it was written.
Mills (a former Columbia University professor) delves into developing a theoretical framework for exactly WHO these elite are and how they are structured so differently in the United States because of the lack of an aristocracy and the historical lack of social organization around a feudal system.
"The Higher Circles" (Chapter 1) discussed the "triangle of power" in America among the economy, politics, and the military. Each member of the power elite makes individual decisions, but those decisions are influenced by the military, politics and/or big corporations. No member of this class has absolute unilateral power that is not impacted by the big institutions within which he operates. To quote Mills:
"The decisions of a handful of corporations bear upon military and political as well as upon economic developments around the world. The decisions of the military establishment rest upon and grievously affect political life as well as the very level of economic activity. The decisions made within the political domain determine economic activities and military programs". (p. 7)
He goes on to discuss how the political institutions (government) sometimes will use their wealth and power to regulate a faltering economy. This jumped out at me as being complete foresight of the current government "bailout" of banks and mortgage lenders to stave of a complete collapse of our economy.
To quote Mills again:
"Can they afford to allow key units of the private corporate economy to break down in a slump? Increasingly, they do intervene in economic affairs, and as they do so, the controlling decisions in each order are inspected by agents of the other two, and economic, military, and political structures are interlocked". (p. 8)
This "interconnectedness" relates back to Dewey and his concepts of individual actions having ramifications for the larger public, sort of the ripple effect. Although Mills is writing in a different time, there are some parallel modes of thinking at work here.
I particularly enjoyed Mills discussion of the psychological concept of natural superiority within the elite (which he attributes to the natural course of ideas in a society in which some people possess more than others). He states:
"People with advantages loath to believe that just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves". (p.14)
I loved that quote and couldn't help but thinking of a few cable television reality shows on Bravo that I have unsuccessfully attempted to avoid: "The Real Housewives of Orange County" and "The Real Housewives of New York City". Most of the women who represent the "real" housewives are anything but real in a sense of being a middle-class working citizen. As a matter of fact, most of them came into wealth by marrying a wealthy man or operating their businesses in extremely wealthy areas of the country where they can charge exorbitant fees.
But what I find most compelling about these shows is the sense of entitlement that this new wealth brings with it...you never see an episode when one is not complaining about poor service, demanding an upgrade, criticizing someone's home that they don't feel is up to their standards, crying because they weren't allowed into an A list event. These women seem to truly believe that they are part of the "natural" elite and that being wealthy was their destiny.
In the chapter entitled "The Power Elite", Mills attempts to further define the characteristics of this small class. He mentions that there currently is no formal "program of recruitment and training", because despite what many people believe the prep school, Ivy League undergrad and law school training is NOT up to the demands made upon members of the power elite. This, of course, made me immediately think of our former President and Leader of the Free World, George W. Bush. Clearly, his elite upbringing and top-notch education did not instill in him the leadership qualities to keep this country on course for his 8 years in office.
He says there exists "the unstated need to transcend recruitment on the sole basis of economic success, especially since it is suspect as often involving the higher immorality" (p. 298).
The power elite does indeed exist in America. However, we remain unclear on exactly who or what really represents the nadir of power. The important thing to remember, is that the power triangle (economy, politics, and the military) are all the power elite and they all rule with overlapping and interconnected powers.
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