Art - A Culturally Constructed Myth :: American Culture Essays

Art - A Culturally Constructed Myth The development of semiotics in the 20th century revealed much about ideology in mass culture. Structuralist Roland Barthes' texts on the matter are very much products of their times, yet many still have a troubling modern-day relevance. Barthes' Mythologies demonstrates the possibilty to find meaning through the 'trivia' of everyday life. He claims to want to challenge the 'innoncence' and 'naturalness' of cultural texts and practices, as they are capable of producing a multitude of supplementary meanings, or 'connotations'. Although objects, gestures and practices have a certain utilitarian function, they are not resistant to the imposition of meaning. Barthes wants to suspend consideration of function, and concentrate rather on what things mean and how they function as signs. Mythologies is a study of the ways in which mass culture constructs this mythological reality and encourages conformity to its own values. Barthes' analysis of signs reveals that there are very few 'innoncent' objects, that almost everything is 'coded' (assigned meaning). Barthes arrives at this conclusion based on his theory of myth: that a form (expanded from Saussure's sound-image, which was limited to linguistics) and a concept create mythologies: sign systems that render one dominant meaning (or 'signification'). For the receiver, this signification arrives automatically and smoothly, thus seemingly denying the intentional re-coding. Barthes believes that this constant creation of myth is how a culture invents its beliefs and narratives, and is able to find meaning in the world. This premise draws a particular parallel in our contemporary society: for it is my hypothesis that our culture now locates meaning through mythological art (whether fine, commercial, popular, industrial etc.). Has art truly become myth? In order to 'read' or deconstruct myth, Barthes suggests, one must (1) accept the myth as a cultural construction, thus emptying its meaning; (2) rear the myth as full, identifying all possible signs and significations; and finally (3) recognize the signifier as both empty and full, capable of signifying many things, yet with only one clear, dominant meaning. It is my argument that such a deconstruction can render art as myth. Having realized art as a structured cultural phenomenon, and having emptied its direct and apparent meaning, it is possible to identify all its possible significations. Interestingly enough, I find that art reveals many diametrically opposed significations: expression and oppression, bias and acceptance, individual and society, creativity and confinement, and freedom and convention, among others. Art signifies the de-politicization of our culture, for even the most political of pieces cease to cause a stir among the masses.