A vital piece of text found and shown to me by my tutor Jamie; Something which makes the texts of Roland Barthes slightly easier to understand. Something which i also hope to quote parts of in my essay as my chosen question asks me to relate to Roland Barthes. Ive chose to present it here on my blog as it was an online link not something found from a book.
" Roland Barthes. 'TITLES' (by S N)
The ethnic reality of Spain is thus reduced to a vast classical ballet, a nice neat commedia dell Arte, whose improbable typology serves to mask the real spectacle of conditions, classes, and professions. For the Blue Guide, men exist as social entities - they constitute a charming and fanciful décor, meant to surround the essential part of the country: its collection of monuments. (Barthes. The Blue Guide )
According to Barthes, it is difficult to talk about the culture of a society, without talking about the people of that society: their classes, politics, socio-economics, and their way of life; or rather, their way of struggle. To select only monuments suppresses at one stroke the reality of the land and that of its people. (Barthes) Thus, a study of culture should ground itself in the understanding, of the everyday practices of the peoples of that society. This is by no means an exhaustive and straight forward approach. But it does outline a framework of the actual questions that a society asks about itself: questions of power, economics, and relations in the social space. But as for the Blue Guide, it still abides by a partly superseded bourgeois mythology, that which postulated (religious) art as the fundamental value of culture. (Barthes ) Such a narrow minded, and limited, approach to culture risks the danger of becoming a propaganda mouthpiece, for the bourgeoisie, that obscures the dynamic realities of a society: reducing geography to the description of an uninhabited world of monuments. (Barthes) The existence of the Blue Guide, as a cultural description of a society, attests to the uneven, and largely one sided, representations of culture in society. It is a commentary on the circumstances that govern its being: culture, like the Blue Guide, is a manufactured creation, and not necessarily natural, as the Blue Guide would try to present itself. Those that control the forces of production, and the culture industry, control the cultural product. In our readings of culture, we should thus be careful about the seemingly natural presentations of culture, that do not take into account the circumstances of their creation: as the view point from a specific social group, with particular interests and pursuits in greater society.
Plastic is a shaped substance: whatever its final state, plastic keeps a flocculent appearance, something powerless ever to achieve the triumphant smoothness of Nature. (Barthes. Plastic )
In our study and understanding of culture, we should keep in mind the economic, political, and social factors that may be involved in a particular description of culture. The word itself has an evolutionary, and revolutionary history, whose accounts can be mapped to changes in the social, economic, and political enviroments. A hegemony may use the cultural sphere to propagate its thoughts, tastes, and preferences, as the natural attitudes and patterns of behavior, for a largely unhomogenous cultural space. Barthes writes about seemingly mundane objects like, The Blue Guide and Plastic, to draw our attention to the underlying implications, and significance, of such items; whose very nature of being, we would otherwise treat with indifference, and without critical thought. It is in this sphere of consciousness, or unconsciousness, that the naturality of culture seeks to manifest itself: by presenting itself as nothing out of the ordinary; as something that is common and unconstructed. Just as hilliness is overstressed to such an extent as to eliminate all other types of scenery, the human life of a country disappears to the exclusive benefit of its monuments. ( Barthes, The Blue Guide)"
