Mythologies
Roland Barthes · 1957
Short essays on wrestling, steak-frites, the face of Garbo, the Citroen DS. Barthes showed that semiotics could be deployed as pleasure, that critical analysis could be funny and precise. The template for every cultural-criticism essay written since.
The case against
Most of the targets need footnotes now: Poujadism, the Abbé Pierre's beard, a mid-1950s Tour de France. Then the playful essays stop and 'Myth Today' arrives, fifty pages of semiological theory that reads like a sterner book stapled to the back. Barthes's method outlived his examples; expect to do some archaeology before you watch it work.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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