Word: bourgeoise
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Thus Roland Barthes's essay on "The New Citroen" and the magic of its attraction, in Mythologies. A smooth, silent, seamless object, the modern automobile speaks the myth of a nature which is miraculous and benign. No longer does the automobile express mere speed, but speed with natural grace. Its...
THE MYTHS DISCUSSED here are myths of bourgeois culture, and particularly of petit-bourgeois popular culture. Myth, for Barthes, is "true" in the sense that it expresses a real intention or desire, but always distorts it in an effort to convert the intentional into natural fact. Barthes finds several specific...
Following the essays on specific myths is a longer piece called "Myth Today," which sets forth a theory of mythology far more complex and profound than the ideas Barthes applies to specific cases. Here, he describes myth as a form of speech whose particular function is to distort psychological intentions...
Political language belongs to the Revolution, of course, and is of a wholly different type from bourgeois language. A worker can say "I cut down this tree"--between him and the tree there is only the change which his labor has caused. But the bourgeois, separated from direct action, speaks...
THIS IS BRILLIANT intellectual acrobatics, but Barthes is simply incorrect in saying that "the speech of the oppressed" avoids myth. In fact, how could the oppressed ever bear their burdens without myth--and especially without the myth of the Revolution. Myth invades even the writing of the mythologist. The critic...