Concept Analysis - Mythologies

I think a useful way to examine myths is to analyse the work of Roland Barthes, who began deconstructing some of the myths that he observed at work in French society in the 1950s. He published 'Mythologies' in 1957. In it he examines the tendency of contemporary social value systems to create modern myths.

In the first section of the book, Barthes describes a selection of myths. For instance, red wine; specifically, how red wine has been adopted as the national French drink; how it is seen as a social equaliser and the drink of the proletariat, partly due to the fact that it is seen as blood-like, yet nobody pays much attention to red wine's harmful side-effects.

In the second section of the book, Barthes addresses the question "what is a myth today?". He extends Ferdinand de Saussure's notion of the sign: with a word, the meaning and the sound together to make a sign. To make a myth, the sign itself is used as a signifier, and a new meaning is added, which is the signified. This addition is not arbitrary though; mythologies are formed to perpetuate an idea of society that adheres to the current ideologies of the ruling class and its media.

'Mythologies' constituted a significant milestone in cultural critique, not just as a proto-structuralist analysis, but also as a mode of practicing cultural studies before its more recent forms of actualisation.

For Lefebvre, mystification is not a process by which the innocent are duped by the devious, but rather a collective process by which social relations, including power relations are acted out in everyday life in the domain of ideology.

Lefebvre believed that mystification (or ideology) could be transcended by knowledge and action; and that Marxist philosophy provided the necessary critical knowledge to secure this transcendence.

It is possible to see processes of demythologising and re-mythologising occurring everyday. It is within this realm that I think we can see a connection to genre. Films and television programmes vary their formulae to make such genres as romantic comedies seem new. This can also be seen with schools, which attempt to include relevant curricula, and in reaction, conservative critics call for a return to older myths as eternal truths.