Mythologies

Starred review from January 9, 2012
This new edition brings into English for the first time all of the essays in the groundbreaking Mythologies by French semiotician and critic Barthes, translated by the redoubtable Howard (Flowers of Evil), and joins them with Lavers’s earlier translation of Barthes’s accompanying analytical essay, “Myth Today.” Barthes examined mass culture, its ads and hidden or disguised messages, its icons and politics, its desperate speed in the mid-1950s. With several exceptions, these pensées are in delectable, bite-sized pieces. Though very much of their time, these essays tell us a lot about how we might intellectually navigate our own century. When the specifics are unfamiliar to a non-French reader, unobtrusive and cogent notes identify the individuals and issues. By framing the mythic in the quotidian, Barthes examines everything from detergent (“dirt is a sickly little enemy which flees from good clean linens at the first sign of Omo’s judgment”) to professional wrestling (“Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle”), Garbo’s face (“virtually sexless, without being at all ‘dubious’ ”), Billy Graham, the Tour de France, a French striptease, plastics, and onward. With so much new material now included, this volume is not an unabridged reissue so much as a celebration anew. 16 pages of b&w illus.

May 28, 2012
Barthes’s classic tome on symbolism—an essential text in cultural studies—is given fresh life with a new translation from Richard Howard and Annette Lavers and this audio edition. Exploring how films, advertisements, sports, and other aspects of popular culture reinforce cultural mythologies, Barthes’s essays still prove relevant today. John Lee provides superb narration. He recognizes the subtleties of the author’s arguments, placing the right amount of emphasis on key points while moving smoothly over the less important details. And while the production could have provided more distinct breaks between essays, Lee manages—as best as possible—to demarcate the end of each section vocally. As a narrator, he is one of the most intriguing elements of this audiobook. Given that the text focuses on the ways mainstream culture reinforce particular myths as a means of supporting the power structure, what will listeners think about a French book performed by a British narrator for a largely American audience? A Hill and Wang hardcover.