The World of Wrestling, an essay by Roland Barthes, excerpted from Mythologies, presented by Sensitive Skin magazine. Books by Roland Barthes. A Barthes Reader Camera Lucida. THE WORLD OF WRESTLING. As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is.
Roland Barthes Pdf
Roland Barthes’ Mythologies consists of two sections, one containing a series of short essays on different aspects of French daily life written in a humorous journalistic style, and the second containing a longer theoretical essay entitled “Myth Today” that explores the methods behind this deconstruction in greater detail. Barthes unravels the layers of meaning that lie behind everyday texts.
World Of Wrestling 2017
Here is a summary of the chapters: “The World of Wrestling” & “Soap-Powder & Detergents” from Barthes’ Mythologies. ————————————————————————————– One example of this method is the first essay, “ The World of Wrestling” in which he identifies pro-wrestling as the modern equivalent of ancient Greek drama performed in the amphitheater: “What is portrayed by wrestling is an ideal understanding of things; it is the euphoria of men raised for a while above the constitutive ambiguity of everyday situations and placed before the panoramic view of a univocal Nature, in which signs at last correspond to causes, without obstacle, without evasion, without contradiction” (Mythologies, 25). Barthes describes how wrestlers take on tragic or comic “stock” personas for the benefit of their fans and how their exaggerated gestures, drama, and Good vs. Evil conflicts perform a cathartic function for the audience, a venue through which frustrated emotion can find a release and the complexity of modern existence revert to black and white simplicity. As a result, “what is displayed for the public is the great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice” and it can be said that “wrestlers are gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good from Evil, and unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible” (Mythologies, 25). ————————————————————————————– Another section assigned titled, “Soap-Powder & Detergents”, is another method discussed by Barthes. These products have been in the last few years the object of such massive advertising that they now belong to a region of French daily life which the various types of psycho-analysis would do well to pay some attention to if they wish to keep up to date.
One could then usefully contrast the psycho-analysis of purifying fluids (chlorinated, for example) with that of soap-powders ( Lux, Persil) or that of detergents ( Omo). The relations between the evil and the cure, between dirt and a given product, are very different in each case. Chlorinated fluids, for instance, have always been experienced as a sort of liquid fire, the action which must be carefully estimated, otherwise the object itself would be affected, “burnt.” This type of product rests on the idea of a violent, abrasive modification of matter: the connotations are of a chemical or mutilating type: the product “kills” the dirt. Powders, on the other hand, are separating agents: their role is to liberate the object from its imperfection: dirt is “forced out” and no longer killed; in the Omo imagery, dirt is a diminutive enemy. Products based on chlorine and ammonia are without doubt the representatives of a kind of absolute fire, a savior but a blind one. Powders, on the contrary, are selective, they push, keeping public order not making war.