"And there is never any contradiction, conflict, or split between the meaning and the form: they are never at the same place. In the same way if I am in the car and I looked at the scenery through the window-pane. At one moment I grasp the the presence of the glass and the distance of the landscape; at another, on the contrary, the transparence of the glass and the depth of the landscape; but the result of this alternation is constant: the glass is at once present and empty to me, and the landscape unreal and full...its form is empty but present, its meaning absent but full."
I love this passage because Barthes illustrates the illusory trap of the myth to the reader. As I interpret it, the form is the window to the meaning while at the same time the two blur/mask each other's presence by forcing the reader to focus on one aspect at a time, allowing the myth to be in a constant state of variable interpretation. Thus the two can only be put together by recognizing the myth as a whole, or by becoming the "mythologist" as Barthes puts it. I found the whole glass landscape thing to be a perfect segue into film as a visual myth which controls the focus of itself by manipulation of the lens focal depth and angle :D
Along the lines of what miz stone said about myth being countered by another myth, I get the gist of the concept but I need some clarification on Barthe's whole bouvard-and-pecuchet-ity thing on page 136...Forgive me if I'm being an idiot but I think the main issue was cultural references to which I'm oblivious like Viollet-le-Duc...
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