Foam
One of the most famous uses of imagery—as well as one of the most effective for delineating what Barthes means by semiotics—is his description of foam. Most people even at the time probably never stopped to make the association that Barthes makes completely logical. Today, it seems even less likely that this connection is routinely made:
“As for foam, it is well known that it signifies luxury. To begin with, it appears to lack any usefulness; then, its abundant, easy, almost infinite proliferation allows one to suppose there is in the substance from which it issues a vigorous germ, a healthy and powerful essence, a great wealth of active elements in a small original volume. Finally, it gratifies in the consumer a tendency to imagine matter as something airy, with which contact is effected in a mode both light and vertical, which is sought after like that of happiness either in the gustatory category (foie gras, entremets, wines), in that of clothing (muslin, tulle), or that of soaps (filmstar in her bath).”
Really? Citroéns? Really?
Keep in mind that Barthes is French and most of what he refers to when he refers to pop cultural artifacts of the time are French. That means the following bit of imagery making a direct connection to the aesthetic perfection of gothic cathedrals is not just to cars as Americans know them, but cars as the French knew them. Or, in other words, Citroéns. More specifically, the Citroén DS. Really, that is not a joke, nor does Barthes himself appear to be engaging in irony:
“I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object. It is obvious that the new Citroén has fallen from the sky inasmuch as it appears at first sight as a superlative object.”
One Word: Plastics
After opening the section with a joke about how the names of plastics are derived from the names of Greek shepherds (don’t bother looking it up, Polystyrene and Polyethylene were not ancient Greeks of any sort), Barthes proceeds to put his majestic literary abilities to use constructing imagery that describes the process of creating plastic in, well, truly impressive language:
“An ideally-shaped machine, tubulated and oblong (a shape well suited to suggest the secret of an itinerary) effortlessly draws, out of a heap of greenish crystals, shiny and fluted dressing-room tidies. At one end, raw, telluric matter, at the other, the finished, human object; and between these two extremes, nothing; nothing but a transit, hardly watched over by an attendant in a cloth cap, half-god, half-robot.”
This particular example truly illustrates one of the reasons why Mythologies remains so popular: it is one of the few philosophical texts of the 20th century that is just plain enjoyable to read.
Wrestling with Illegitimate Cephalapods
Unconvinced about that assertion? Okay, try this on for size. In this example, Barthes fixes his symbol-locating heat vision upon the lowly wrestler. In particular, a fifty-year old obese wrestler (if that description is not itself redundant) named Thauvin:
“I know from the start that all of Thauvin's actions, his treacheries, cruelties and acts of cowardice, will not fail to measure up to the first image of ignobility he gave me…the most repugnant bastard there is: the bastard-octopus. Wrestlers therefore have a physique as peremptory as those of the characters of the Commedia dell'Arte, who display in advance, in their costumes and attitudes, the future contents of their parts: just as Pantaloon can never be anything but a ridiculous cuckold, Harlequin an astute servant and the Doctor a stupid pedant, in the same way Thauvin will never be anything but an ignoble traitor”
