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Roland Barthes Theory
- 2. Who? Roland Gérard Barthes born 12 November 1915, and died 26 March 1980 was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular culture. His ideas explored a diverse range of fields and influenced the development of many schools of theory, including structuralism, anthropology, literary theory, and post- structuralism.
- 3. What? Barthes main theory argued that seemingly innocent objects and images carry a literal – denotative – meaning, and a non-literal – connotative – meaning. By deconstructing the connotative meaning one can then expose the ideological structures on which consumer society is built and maintained. According to Barthes, anything in culture can be a sign and send a specific message. In his Mythologies Barthes describes some methods of “deciphering” these messages.
- 4. Symbolic Codes Symbolic codes are cultural symbols embedded in the mise-en-scène. The mise-en-scène is all the elements that constitute the visual representation of the media, such as settings, costumes, lighting. All these elements are used to convey meaning to the audience. For example, a green cross can be symbolic of health or medicine. Red hearts can also be symbolic of love.
- 5. Semantic Codes The semantic code refers to any element in a text that suggests a particular or additional meaning by way of connotation which the story suggests. For example, horror movies will often have red or black undertones as red can connote to blood and black connotes to darkness or evil.
- 6. Proairetic Code The proairetic code refers to mere actions—those plot events that simply lead to yet other actions. For example, a gunslinger draws his gun on an adversary and we wonder what the resolution of this action will be. We wait to see if he kills his opponent or is wounded himself.
- 7. Enigma/Hermeneutic Code This is a narrative technique that is used by mystery writers who want the reader to keep on guessing who committed the crime until the final reveal at the end of the story.
- 8. Cultural or Referential Code Cultural codes refer to parts of media products that will only be understood if the viewers is a part of that particular culture. For example, Beyonce’s formation will only be understood if the viewer has knowledge of black- American history or culture.