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Barthes: Semiotics Excerpts (text and images from Prifysgol Aberystwyth University)

Excerpt from Roland Barthes. 1977. “Rhetoric of the Image” in Image-Music- Text. London: Fontana. (30):

Here we have a Panzani

advertisement: some packets of pasta,

a tin, a sachet, some tomatoes, onions,

peppers, a mushroom, all emerging

from a half-open string bag, in

yellows and greens on a red

background. Let us try to 'skim off'

the different messages it contains.

The image immediately yields a first

message, whose substance is

linguistic; its supports are the caption,

which is marginal, and the labels,

these being inserted into the natural

disposition of the scene, 'en abyme'.

The code from which this message

has been taken is none other than that

of the French language; the only

knowledge required to decipher it is a

knowledge of writing and of French.

In fact, this message can itself be

further broken down, for the sign

Panzani gives not simply the name of

the firm but also, by its assonance, a additional signified, that of 'Italianicity'. The

linguistic message is therefore twofold (at least in this particular image):

denotational and connotational. Since, however, we have here only a single typical

sign, namely that of articulated (written) language, it will be counted as one

message.

Putting aside the linguistic message, we are left with the pure image (even if the

labels are part of it, anecdotally). This image straightaway provides a series of

discontinuous signs. First (the order is unimportant as these signs are not linear),

the idea that what we have in the scene represented is a return from the market. A

signified which itself implies two euphoric values: that of the freshness of the

products and that of the essentially domestic preparation for which they are

destined. Its signifier is the half-open bag which lets the provisions spill out over

the table, 'unpacked'. To read this first sign requires only a knowledge which is in

some sort implanted as part of the habits of a very widespread culture where

'shopping around for oneself' is opposed to the hasty stocking up (preserves,

refrigerators) of a more 'mechanical' civilization. A second sign is more or less

equally evident; its signifier is the bringing together of the tomato, the pepper and

the tricoloured hues (yellow, green, red) of the poster; its signified is Italy, or

Barthes: Semiotics Excerpts (text and images from Prifysgol Aberystwyth University)

rather Italianicity. This sign stands in a relation of redundancy with the connoted

sign of the linguistic message (the Italian assonance of the name Panzani) and the

knowledge it draws upon is already more particular; it is a specifically 'French'

knowledge (an Italian would barely perceive the connotation of the name, no more

probably than he would the Italianicity of tomato and pepper), based on a

familiarity with certain tourist stereotypes. Continuing to explore the image

(which is not to say that it is not entirely clear at the first glance), there is no

difficulty in discovering at least two other signs: in the first, the serried collection

of different objects transmits the idea of a total culinary service, on the one hand

as though Panzani furnished everything necessary for a carefully balanced dish

and on the other as though the concentrate in the tin were equivalent to the natural

produce surrounding it; in the other sign, the composition of the image, evoking

the memory of innumerable alimentary paintings, sends us to an aesthetic

signified: the 'nature morte' or, as it is better expressed in other languages, the 'still

life'; the knowledge on which this sign depends is heavily cultural. (33)

Excerpt from Roland Barthes. 1987. “Myth Today” in Mythologies. New York. Hill & Wang:

I am at the barber's, and a copy

of Paris-Match is offered to me.

On the cover, a young Negro* in

a French uniform is saluting,

with his eyes uplifted, probably

fixed on a fold of the tricolour.

All this is the meaning of the

picture. But, whether naively or

not, I see very well what it

signifies to me: that France is a

great Empire, that all her sons,

without any colour

discrimination, faithfully serve

under her flag, and that there is

no better answer to the

detractors of an alleged

colonialism than the zeal shown

by this Negro* in serving his so-

called oppressors. I am therefore

again faced with a greater

semiological system: there is a

signifier, itself already formed

with a previous system (a black

soldier is giving the French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful

mixture of Frenchness and militariness); finally, there is a presence of the signified

Barthes: Semiotics Excerpts (text and images from Prifysgol Aberystwyth University)

through the signifier... In myth (and this is the chief peculiarity of the latter), the

signifier is already formed by the signs of the language... Myth has in fact a double

function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it

imposes it on us...

One must put the biography of the Negro* in parentheses if one wants to free the

picture, and prepare it to receive its signified... The form does not suppress the

meaning, it only impoverishes it, it puts it at a distance... It is this constant game of

hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which defines myth. The form of

myth is not a symbol: the Negro* who salutes is not the symbol of the French

Empire: he has too much presence, he appears as a rich, fully experienced,

spontaneous, innocent, indisputable image. But at the same time this presence is

tamed, put at a distance, made almost transparent; it recedes a little, it becomes the

accomplice of a concept which comes to it fully armed, French imperiality...

Myth is... defined by its intention... much more than by its literal sense... In spite

of this, its intention is somehow frozen, purified, eternalized, made absent by this

literal sense (The French Empire? It's just a fact: look at this good Negro* who

salutes like one of our own boys). This constituent ambiguity... has two

consequences for the signification, which henceforth appears both like a

notification and like a statement of fact... French imperiality condemns the

saluting Negro* to be nothing more than an instrumental signifier, the Negro*

suddenly hails me in the name of French imperiality; but at the same moment the

Negro's* salute thickens, becomes vitrified, freezes into an eternal reference meant

to establish French imperiality...

We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature... In the

case of the soldier-Negro*... what is got rid of is certainly not French imperiality

(on the contrary, since what must be actualized is its presence); it is the contingent,

historical, in one word: fabricated, quality of colonialism. Myth does not deny

things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them,

it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives

them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact. If

I state the fact of French imperiality without explaining it, I am very near to

finding that it is natural and goes without saying: I am reassured. In passing from

history to nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human

acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away with all dialectics, with

any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it organizes a world which is

without contradictions... Things appear to mean something by themselves...

*Translator's term - not the choice of this author