Roland Barthes: 21st Century Mythologies (2020)

[Music]

on a fading February afternoon in 1980

the French intellectural Roland B made

his way towards the imposing College de

France he was returning from lunch to an

unfinished seminar on PR and

photography Barts stepped into the road

hling towards him was a white laundry

Vamp he was struck

down for 4 weeks B hovered between life

and

[Music]

death it looked for all the world like

an unfortunate and utterly meaningless

accident a terrible irony because the

victim's life's work was all about

seeing the deeper meaning in everything

[Music]

Roland Bart was one of the 20th

Century's greatest

thinkers he questioned the assumptions

that underpin how we see our

world in 1957 he published a book he

called mythologies that look seriously

rigorously and in detail at popular

culture

a series of essays mythologies wrote

down the barrier between High art and

consumerism B saw Gothic cathedrals in

Citroen and fairy tales in washing

powder he decoded the theater at the

heart of wrestling the worship of

Einstein's brain and of Greta Garbo's

face the French patriotis in steak and

chips and the unsex of strip

teas the B these everyday things are

myths so common place we take them for

granted yet they're packed with deeper

meaning that idea may seem obvious to us

now but it was far less so until Bart

had popularized

it as a radical thinker Bart questioned

how myths are used to shore up

prevailing power and

money after mythologies the world never

looked or meant the

same this 1950s book and Bart's whole

way of deciphering the world is still

relevant in our digital

age in a world teeming with Relentless

messaging and ever growing complexity

myths have the ability to Hoodwink us

more than

ever in insired by Roland Bart I'm

exploring myths today with the help of

mythbusting and subversive modern

artists who are questioning the meaning

of everything from money to the

Madonna some of these myths Bart wrote

about others he would have recognized

and a few would have been totally alien

to

him I want to find out how far rolon

Bath's ideas have permeated our culture

and how they can help us to understand

today's

world so what might Roland Bart have

made of the 21st Century

[Music]

Roland Bart grew up looking for

meaning psychoanalysts might say he was

searching for his father a naval officer

he never knew killed in World War I when

baby Bart was just a few months

old his mother onette raised him as best

she could on a meager income living with

family in the southwest of France before

moving to Paris where Bart would first

be immersed in consumer culture

let's start with a mythology Bart also

wrote about in the 1950s it was a new

seemingly Miracle substance offering

luxury usefulness and it dead cheap what

can be made with plastics things as

varied as buttons and

batons cosmetic containers and cockpit

housings parachutes and refrigerators

radios and razors all contain Plastics

was to supply them polystyrene polyvinyl

polyethylene toart Plastics even sounded

like Greek mythological

Heroes he marveled at what he called the

stuff of

[Music]

alchemy Plastics are really quite fun

they're quite childlike

that kind of malleability that

tactility polyurethane as it Foams is a

bit like baking you start to see it

rising and starting to see the gases

percolate through

it that sense of experimentation within

the laboratory is really

exciting and the point at which you

bring materials together that chain

reaction that occurs within the

materials can be really quite rapid so

the time scales of production are really

quite short relative to to the longevity

of the material they aren't static so

their color might change their physical

Integrity might change they might warp

they might start to crack so the

production can be kind of alchemical but

also the way in which they transform

over time is actually really very

interesting today the myth of plastic

has taken a full

U-turn from the Wonder material of the

1950s to the poisonous waste of the 21st

Century

now plastic is a myth that says

pollution everywhere in the oceans in

Arctic Ice Even in our

bodies yet we still use it every

day even in the 1950s Bart sensed that

mass production of plastic might one day

be a threat to Nature and to life itself

imagining that the whole world could be

plasticized as he put

it one artist is creating a whole

gallery of plastics to subvert the

myth I actually used to live past this

Cliff here this particular Beach was a

beach that I spent hours on as a kid

just wandering around picking up fossils

bits of Vault wood ships and things it

was a place where you'd come treasure

hunting and then after a while I became

fairly obsessed with the amount of

plastic that was down here and wondering

that someone should do something with

the plastic a few steps later on the

beach it was well if I pick it up I'll

do something with

it it has literally become an obsession

now of coming to these beaches and

collecting the plastic and utilizing in

my work 20 years ago I was picking

plastic up and there was a fair amount

but now I can come down here and I can

fill half a bucket an

hour this is a box of clean plastic

all off the

beach so many lighters to really it's

kind of like an archaeology of everyday

life this is the stuff of of Our Lives

you know I grew up in the' 70s ' 80s and

I was surrounded by plastic toys and I

didn't even think about what the

material was my parents certainly didn't

think that they were giving me something

that was a material

that should be considered even

considered oh there are was it it's a

small little figure a man sitting down

there look is he wearing a suit I think

he might

be the irony is that when it was

invented in the 19th century plastic was

hailed as the substance to save

endangered species it could imitate

luxuries like toris shell and

ivory plastic billyard balls might even

have SA saved the elephant so in some

ways it was a very democratizing

material this knife here one might think

that it was made of ivory and actually

it's not it's a cellulos based

derivative material and so the idea that

you could have luxurious Goods without

the actual price tag attached to it I

think was really very important these

glasses are solos acetate but these

would have been mimicking torture shell

I think they're superb materials but

there is a KnockOn effect for us using

them

and we have to be conscious of how we're

using them why we're using them and when

we're using them but we're still going

to want to use

them for me there's a material Paradox

when it comes to plastic as a sculpture

plastic is a fantastic material on the

other hand I know that it shouldn't be

here and you know and I'm disgusted

about the amount of plastics that are

here the Plastic industry are not

getting small which means that more of

that will end up in the ocean and then

subsequently more of it will probably

end up on my beaches it's going to keep

you

[Music]

busy

look

it this credit

card we got the full number and the

security code

[Music]

Parts developing thoughts about the

world's hidden meanings were almost lost

when as a stellar student of 18 he was

infected by

tuberculosis Exempted from military

service during World War II he spent War

years in isolation at a sanatorium near

the Swiss mountains yet this gave him an

extraordinary opportunity to think read

and write

furiously he immersed himself in the

classics in linguistics and Marxist

writings developing the critical

anti-establishment Outlook that would

later come to Define

[Music]

him the Marxist view of the world and

I'm no Marxist is that history is a

struggle between the classes and that

the masses the proletariat are being

oppressed by the OWN of capital the

bourjois yet the proletarian Revolution

that Marx predicted didn't come to pass

in the west the age- old question for

marxists is

why the rest is push button magic so

whether you bake or broil or stew the

Frid a kitchen does it all for you

don't's take was that the masses don't

rise up because they distracted fooled

into a false consciousness by the

consumer

Society Bart delighted in Charlie

chaplain's use of Cinema to shake up the

masses in his essay about chaplain's

film modern times he described how

chaplain seemed to portray the hungry

Factory workers as politically blind

mystified and alienated at the hands of

their pay masters money was the big myth

gulling us the one to which we are all

still

beholden nowadays it's almost impossible

to imagine a world without

money yet of course it's a myth

something so insistent as Bart put it

that we accept it without

question once money was worth it it's

weight in metal today it's flimsy paper

at

best an abstract idea with value only

because we've got so used to it as being

something

valuable to butress money's Authority

banknotes are adorned with symbols of

the nation state and the faces of

prestigious historical figures conveying

legitimacy and

stability everywhere you look the color

is red and no one it seems can stop the

[Music]

bleeding what happens if you subvert the

myth and protest Maybe by producing

[Applause]

[Music]

art when you think about how prevalent

the object of money is across the world

and when you think about the myths that

it also facilitates it's a continual

visual reminder of the nation states I

think it's one of these things that we

use it so often that it's so common in

our everyday lives that we don't

actually pay a proper attention and

that's why it's so powerful is because

people don't question it they just

accept

it well thanks all of you for coming

along we're going to be def faceing

currency today what you're about to do

is not unique it's been going on pretty

much as long as currency has been

around I've never had so much fun with

money

I'm quite critical of structures and

systems that we find ourselves having to

operate within as individuals be that

nationality sexuality or the capitalist

system I became fascinated in the kind

of object of money and I started this

work where in the runup to the European

referendum I just decided to start

taking money out of my bank and I

started just simply stamp stay in the EU

on hundreds and hundreds of pounds worth

of Sterling and then put a back into

circulation it's a form of social

communication like today this could be

in your pocket and you go buy coffee and

then it ends up in a cash register

that's given as change to somebody else

so that message or that object is passed

from you to another person to another

person as far as I'm concerned these

things they're a public space um and we

own them as much as a central bank or

government does because we use

them since the dawn of money groups from

the suffragettes to the Occupy Movement

have defaced banknotes and coins in

order to slip a political message into

circulation a piece of lowbudget popular

propaganda and a challenge to the myth

of

money you talk about money as being a

public space and you're contributing to

a public debate isn't it illegal in the

US it's not illegal as long as the notes

can be

continue to be used do you think in the

UK more people should be intervening in

this public space as part of the public

debate uh completely it's a side of

protest it's something that it's in all

of our pockets we're all familiar with

it it passes from one person to the next

it's a really effective way of getting a

message

into kind of a wider

[Music]

demographic to deepen his analysis of

myths Bart broke down the language of

signs and symbols which give myths like

money power and

legitimacy Bart would become a leading

figure in the study of

semiotics before we continue as

semiotics

101 it's the study of science systems of

the roles that signs play in shaping our

understanding of the world it's a key

part of any 21st century survival

[Music]

kit we tend to think that signs have a

universal meaning but do they take the

most basic example street signs humans

have this amazing ability to create and

follow conventions and no entry sign

doesn't look anything like not entering

you have to learn the conven mention the

rule that this red circle with this

white bar means don't enter here

according to Bart our brains are

constantly processing signifiers like

the no entry

symbol and recognizing what he called

signifies in other words the meanings

they point to which in this case is

don't drive down

here signifiers trigger meanings for us

and these meanings are called signifies

take the hi's vest one signifier two

signified two

meanings once it symbolized Authority

and Municipal work for the common good

now after the protest of the jileon in

France the new signified is

[Music]

Revolution things get interesting when

you hack the

signifier one acclaimed artist a true

citizen of the Baran Universe uses

street signs as a satirical canvas to

mock

[Music]

Authority it was perhaps the best moment

of my life when I begin to put sticker

on street sign because it was a moment

in my life when I feel to be more free

than ever and to do something good

for the

world so do you think that there's

actually a myth of Public Authority and

all these signs are out there asserting

that there is Authority and you must

follow it but actually there isn't any

real Public Authority yes it's a Miss

yes the sign are a symbol of of visual

symbol of authority everywhere in the

public space the sense of my message is

um trying to discuss the law because the

law is today more than like a religion

my work is trying to to to say at people

that before to obey before to accept it

like the um the true try to think it's

like Authority grabbing the C is it

right the response of

authority so you work a lot in Florence

how do the authorities here see your

work of course at the beginning they

tried to remove everything but I was

more quick than them to put it

again when police arrest me I say I give

more sense I give more um interest so

people pay more attention at Street side

than before it's good for security it's

good for safety on policeman perhaps

it's true but people love this kind of

work immediately and it's PL in people

will protect me so do you think the

authorities are more worried about the

street signs or about the bigger issues

that you're exploring I think it's like

a barometer my work is like a barometers

of open mind or of

democracy in Europe I was arrested in in

England in Dutchland in France in Italy

they give me some fine perhaps because

sometimes just to show at other people

like an example they can't accept it

they give me a fine but I never pay but

I think it's it's the it's a goal of an

artist to break this limit to to trying

to show that you can think and do

different so are you asking these

members of the public who see your signs

to join you in asking questions about

Authority yes of course I'm trying to to

be an example you have to think that you

can do something different you don't

have to obey all the time and just

[Music]

obey for Bart it was the sheer scale of

the repetition of things like street

signs that helps normalize a myth

discouraging us from questioning saying

this is just the way it is accept aey

move

on here's a signifier Bart would never

have seen but he might have recognized

its Mythic power to enchant the

masses WiFi a myth symbolized everywhere

by a fan of black

[Music]

bars the internet has come to signify

our empowerment how quickly we can reach

information the latest slug of news

crazy meme or social media rumor yet

there's a deeper

meaning this connectivity runs two ways

the fan symbol also says your

potentially under surveillance your

location and consumer spending are being

harvested your emails and apps are

tracking

[Music]

you behind the cloud of streaming

content of our everyday Internet is real

but largely Anonymous physical

infrastructure connected to massive data

centers through a network made

maintained by faceless

corporations so what does the internet

actually look

like under the paving stones the Beach

perisian protesters scrolled across the

city in

1968 in 21st century New York under

these paving stones the

internet artist ingred Burrington has

created a myth busting book that Maps

the signifies of the network

infrastructure on Manhattan

street so we are outside 32 Avenue of

the Americas and it was was built for

AT&T for a very long time this building

had lots and lots of mostly women

operating switchboards to manage

long-distance Communications out of New

York City in the late 1990s it got

turned into what's called a carrier

hotel and a carrier hotel is basically

where different parts of the internet

meet each

other and this building also it has

these mosaics in the lobby which are all

about The Wonder of communications and

how the the radio Telegraph are like

bringing the world

together and there's something from the

earlier periods of the 20th century when

people still were kind of in awe of this

technology that's sort of still alive in

a building like this but there is a kind

of irony that there these marvelous

murals celebrating communication and we

can't go in and see it does that say

something about how transparent the

internet is their private infrastructure

are maintained by a private company

there is no kind of obligation for the

public to have access to or understand

what that technology does means that

it's really hard to hold companies

accountable or have a meaningful

conversation about what it is we're

we're building here well I guess most

users just care about is the Wi-Fi free

and working

yeah much as we might analyze the cave

paintings of early humans the symbols of

the internet reveal a physical objects

that make up a Brave New

World they speak to the myth that the

technology is an empowering virtual

playground in which we are liberated to

have fun connect share explore and do

business why is all this stuff these

spray paint markings indicate varied

utilities all of them are color coded so

orange in the United States usually

indicates buried Telecom cable so what's

with the yellow in the red yellow is uh

gas lines and red is electric yeah once

you sort of not

one little bit of spray paint on the

sidewalk you kind of can't stop seeing

it it's kind of everywhere in the UK

Telecom is actually green not orange

which is quite funny because in the

United States green is sewage and the

relationship between internet and sewage

I can I'll let you think about that

one this is a link it is a Wi-Fi keos

that is run by a company called link NYC

so you can make phone calls free Wi-Fi

um um so these are free to access how

are they paid for advertisements kind of

help pay for it they claim that they

don't collect personal information but

like anything that is wireless access if

they don't know who you are they

certainly know what someone with your

phone is doing and what with their

accessing which is like very useful

consume our

data one thing I do kind of love is as

kind of like corporate and Bland as

these things are they still kind of

become these sites of like Urban

improvisation so like I've never seen

one of these without a little overturn

news stand because it makes this like

wonderful little little seat you know

you can just you can just sit charge

your phone it's sort of this like

inevitable repurposing those used to

have browsers on them so people could

just like go online but they took them

off because too many people were using

them to look at porn in the street in

the

[Music]

street so so given the internet is

actually physical who owns the internet

so most of the internet runs on on

privately owned networks that are owned

by different companies this is sort of

how the internet got set up in the late

1990s for the internet to continue to

exist people have to keep being able to

make a profit off of it so companies

need to find more and more ways to kind

of

monetize people's activities and

behaviors online so who does the

internet actually serve it serves the

people who own most of its parts right

it serves companies and it serves um you

know depending on the country it serves

government agencies when new

technologies emerge they tend to inherit

the power structures around them and I

don't want to say that people don't

benefit from the internet I don't think

I would spend so much time thinking

about it if I didn't love it but it is

kind of increasingly kind of used

against people who are supposed to be

getting something out of it

[Music]

today the myth of the internet is meshed

with the myth of money creating a new

currency enabling Anonymous users to

make vast and hidden

transactions cryptocurrency is a form of

decentralized digital exchange that

avoids the traditional banking

system mined on powerful private

computers and recorded on digital

ledgers called blockchain Libertarians

proclaim a new myth the people's

currency its very value lies in its

unfathomable Mystique it doesn't need

the nation's State unlike the banknote

it's

faceless how apt the Satoshi Nakamoto

who created a blueprint for the top

cryptocurrency Bitcoin in his celebrated

2008 white paper remains unknown and

unmasked

[Music]

Martin malloon was a founding member of

the rock band prefab Sprout now he's an

artist whose workers explored the myth

of

Satoshi I love the way it's sort really

detailed and resolved at the top and

then it just disappears and dissipates

into pixels it was trying to capture um

a memorial somebody who's Anonymous

blanking out the actual image of the

person almost like a death mask I had

been reading about the Bitcoin years and

years ago before it actually took off in

a large way but it was the idea that

this white paper had been written by

satachi Nakamoto who was a fictional

character who all presumed a combination

of two or three people and then after

seeing the extreme unction by pan his

anonymity

and the sacrament of the last rights

kind of came together and how do you

memorialize somebody who doesn't

actually

exist I want him to be anonymous and I

like the idea that he isn't exposed he's

far better existing in our imaginations

than in real reality isn't there

something amazing about yakamoto that

it's not like Robin Hood trying to

outrun the sheriff's men this is a

character where hundreds of people if

not thousands across the world have C

tried to identify who he or they are the

authorities have tried and nobody can

find yeah I think that's amazing how

they've done it I'm not too sure but it

is brilliant well anyway we know what he

looks like now exactly go out and find

him there he is

wanted unlike Satoshi Nakamoto Bart in

the 1960s became ever more visible as

his Fame

grew his academic career was

flying he was appointed director of

studies at

theud later chair of semiology at the

college def France across the road from

the

sbon he became the very symbol of the

swaave leftbank intellectual

immaculately dressed cigar smoking gay a

Maverick thinker on the up feuding with

renowned literary figures they attacked

him for being anti-establishment and an

impostor Bart traveled extensively

lecturing and drawing increasingly

focusing on questions about

authenticity and like most people coming

to Florence he probably visited

Michelangelo's beautiful marble

sculpture David which brings us to our

next

myth David is way out of copyright

anyone can photograph

it most of the visitors seem to have

come to the Academia for solely that

purpose but copyright can lead to some

pretty strange rules we were able to

film the original

Statue yet the museum was less obliging

amongst their own gift shop replicas and

we were moved

[Music]

on David this quintessential bit of

florentine masculinity is everywhere Now

new Mass Production Technologies me new

Mass produc David David is an industry

in his own

right this myth is about ownership what

happens when creativity meets

Commerce copyright gives legal

protection to the owner of a piece of

creative work and that owner then has

the right to monetize alter and

reproduce that work and prevent anybody

else from doing

so copyright seemed a necessary and

useful new myth as the currency of ideas

G so actually copyright comes from the

United Kingdom it's the beginning of the

18th century when we see the first

copyright law which was the 1710 statute

of Anne initially it only protected

Publishers and literary authors but as

other artists started to see that there

are these benefits to be obtained

through securing a copyright they began

to advocate for their rights as well so

copyright eventually expanded to include

engravers and then photographers

the purpose of copyright is to protect

the expression itself and then when you

die your rights will pass to your heirs

and your heirs will exercise them for 70

years that's a really long time so what

it started with and what it now exists

as today um has turned into something of

Great Value the upside creative people

should in principle get paid for their

work the downside other creative people

can't mash it Up remix it or sample it

Mash

remix without risking being

charged Michelangelo didn't live in a

world of copyright but did he lose out

what are the copyright implications here

well this is a one toone exact copy of

David and while it may have taken hours

weeks maybe even months to construct um

there would be no copyright in this back

in the late 19th century institutions

all over the world collected casts and

there were even weight list with the

institutions that had some of the more

popular pieces of course this is

probably one of the reasons why David is

so popular and so well known today is

because it was so well reproduced during

its time so we have to ask that question

about copying itself being something

that brings value back to the original

work cultural Treasures like Dracula and

Sherlock enjoyed a rich afterlife have

you precisely because other authors were

able to use and reinterpret them

[Music]

in 2024 images of a particularly

well-known Mouse will become copyright

free if the law stays as it is they will

pass into public ownership to be used by

anyone so Disney's Mouse will be a porn

in a much bigger game between the forces

of digital and copyright between the

freedom of individuals to get creative

and the power of Corporations to use law

to make money

protected by the signifier of a sea in a

circle digital technologies have

definitely made copyright a lot harder

to enforce and I think digital has

really accelerated the questions around

whether this myth of copyright is

something that we should take head on um

but I also am not sure that we are yet

well equipped to really be thinking

about what should replace it so it's

beware what might follow if you bust the

myth

back in the 20th century this film

photography and advertising began to

dominate popular

culture B became increasingly

preoccupied with the power of the

replicated image

[Music]

in mythologies he's foreen how images of

everything from margarine to marriage

were carefully confected myths

persuading women to Aspire to be perfect

beings but representations of feminine

Perfection are rooted centuries earlier

not least in religion

[Music]

the Virgin Mary was never depicted from

reality in her own lifetime yet her

image is recognized pretty much

everywhere a blue Shaw a way of holding

outter arms or cradling baby Jesus

signified that this is the mother of

God an image of perfection symbol of

virginity innocence and immortality gold

Fleck and un ably

[Music]

beautiful well I'm like a Catholic in a

candy shop it's absolutely amazing look

at these dozens and dozens and dozens of

little plastic virgin Marys and only

three

Euros the mass production of the perfect

image of

femininity in Catholic churches across

the world miraculous statues have been a

focus of cult Adoration of the Virgin

for centuries inspiring the production

of huge numbers of images to ornament

the homes of the

faithful the virgin's image was every

day in every home a Mythic symbol

encouraging more prayers more offerings

more

images the Madonna established a pattern

of agulation of the female figure women

to be venerated with offerings

in today's world are # cute girl #

sugarbaby # life gooddess online

versions of the

myth hey

everyone it's Molly I'm uh just hanging

out at my house some new medeor artists

have responded by becoming the subjects

of their own

work using online personas to vert the

myth of the perfect

self I grew up on the internet I started

really documenting myself uh and my life

at a really early age started posting

pictures of myself online when I was 13

14 I think we're all sort of in

conversation with self-portraiture now

in a really interesting way just because

how the cell phone camera has become so

ubiquitous and and thinking about the

word selfie and how it didn't exist you

know 10 years ago

I so who is Molly

soda she's me is she

yeah we're constantly performing whether

it's online or whether it's offline I

think there is no distinction honestly

between being online and offline at this

point you know we're performing when I

go to the grocery store and I speak to

the cashier and I'm performing when I'm

you know speaking to my mother but if

I'm online I'm thinking of a much

broader audience so you're really just

thinking about yourself being watched

and you're sort of watching yourself

being

watched Instagram has a live feature

where you can sort of like live

broadcast and people can come in and

it'll show you how many people are in

the room and people can comment as

they're watching you it's really

interesting because everyone sort of

rushes in at the

beginning he's already in me

but then as time goes on it just starts

to wne and people start to leave the

room and you're trying to keep your

composure and not feel upset that people

are no longer interested in this song

and dance you're doing for

them I feel really guilty sitting here

laughing at that because but there's

something deliberately tragic comedy

about it it is a little heartbreaking my

work is deceptively very cute looking or

very sweet looking in someone is but

when you really get to the root of it

it's actually quite

sad no matter what you do you're still

like subconsciously trying to portray a

certain image because you're only really

showing such a small sliver of your life

so it's completely impossible I think to

really get to that authenticity and I

think that we're starting to realize

that but I think we're also kind of

obsessed with striving for it in a lot

of

ways you could say that social media is

often about projecting the perfect self

on technology platforms built by

powerful and largely faceless male

creators Cadence Kinsey is a new media

art historian his work critiques the

mythologies at play

online the whole business model of

social media is based on data capture

and this is something that I'm always

trying to tell my students that you are

not the cons consumer of social media

you are the product you are what is

being sold to third party advertisers so

they need you to behave in a certain way

they need you to fit that

template when we're talking about social

media and we're talking about the

representation of women we are of course

talking about how women are choosing to

represent themselves I mean but this is

really one of the myths of social media

that it is a vehicle for self-expression

so you have to think about who is

developing technology and when you look

at the developers of the technology of

course it is predominantly young white

male straight individuals and this

raises all sorts of problems it's

absolutely bound up with ideas about the

individual of competition and ultimately

of trying to sell

something the Mythic ideal has to be a

perfect type that can never be reached

so people are always striving to reach

it but all I need to do is consumer is

just buy some more stuff by the next

product and maybe one day I will become

this ideal male yeah how's that working

out for you really badly it's very

expensive Bart's own ideal construction

of femininity had been his mother to

whom he was utterly

devoted in

1977 he suffered a terrible loss when

she died he Liv with her all his life he

griefed her

deeply he wrote in the corner of my room

where she'd been bedridden I hanged an

icon and I always put some flowers on

the table I don't wish to travel anymore

so that I may stay here and prevent the

flowers from withering

away and so we come to a myth all about

death in mythologies B Wily

deconstructed the 1950s film craze for

sword and sandal epics friends Romans

countrymen lend me your

[Applause]

ears I come to bury Cesar not to praise

him he was struck by the symmetrical

fringes and good hair care that' always

used to suggest romanness and order in

movies like The Hollywood adaption of

Julius

Caesar but if Bart went to the multiplex

today what myth would

spot what would strike him as repeated

and normalized in popular

[Music]

movies is it true there are no bad guns

only bad people I mean take the Tommy

Gun wielded by gangsters a symbol of

criminal Violence by Winston Churchill a

symbol of bulldog defiance

what's so disconcerting about the myth

of the gun is that it's a signifier of

death and destruction yet the signifi is

more commonly aspirational it's one of

authority and

resolution popular culture mythologizes

it as an object of desire and

fantasy got to ask yourself one question

do I feel

lucky well do you punk

I think you have to see Clint Eastwood's

character in this film as one of the

original Vigilantes he's somebody who

takes Justice and morality into his own

hands somebody who looks really cool

wielding a weapon I think that's a

massive part of Dirty Harry's appeal so

it's more that he makes the gun cool

rather than the gun makes him cool oh

exactly completely can I see it oh you

want to see my

gun uh yes and no for me this scene is a

a kind of classic example of the gun is

as a fallace and the gun is kind of very

symbolic of masculinity and very

aggressive Macho peace as it were

there's a moment when the villain

character says do you want to see my gun

and Denzel Washington says yes and no as

if almost to say no homo and then later

he he points the gun at at the man's

crotch and it's all it's all about it's

all about the penis

[Music]

yeah that's so weird that's almost like

Captain Marvel has been turned into a

bullet I wonder if it's a bit of a

stretch to think of her as as the gun

itself but she's definitely a kind of

weapon and I guess it says something

about our kind of collective imagination

that the only way we can imagine extreme

power is as a bullet

I think that's the first clip that we've

seen where you actually see the exit

wound that so it's not just shot problem

solved it's shot absolute physical

Carnage yeah and that's really important

um in the context of this movie which is

a rape Revenge film I do think it's

significant that the filmmaker of

Revenge K FIA is a woman and so all of

the costuming the perspective the fact

that it is a woman carrying a gun all of

that is is more

loaded so ultimately is the gun's place

in cinema as a narrative device for

resolving very complex situations very

simply I think you could definitely see

it that way there's good there's evil

and one of them has to be eliminated and

it's a very quick and efficient way to

do it with an automatic rifle myths say

this is just the way things are

naturally guns are order women can be

perfect plastic is useful Wi-Fi is

free the devil's greatest trick was to

persuade the world he didn't exist which

leads us to the biggest most pernicious

and dangerous of modern myths

[Music]

race in the late 1950s as France's

bloody and bitter colonial war in

Algeria raged Bart decoded a par match

cover of a young African French soldier

saluting the French flag for Bart the

photo was troubling mythologizing the

idea of a French Empire that claimed to

treat all citizens

[Music]

equally most people still think of race

as a natural phenomenon a biological

reality and for more than 300 years

since white Europeans began colonizing

countries populated by people with skins

that appear different to their own

racial difference and hierarchies of

race have been used to justify

[Music]

exploitation we now know that less than

1% of 1% of the human genome differs

between people who are categorized as

belonging to different

races race is a myth but one that has

aing real world consequences speed up

that day when all of God's children

black men and white men Jews and

Gentiles Protestants and Catholics will

be able to join hands and sing in the

words of the all Negro spiritual free at

last free at last thank God Almighty we

are free at last

[Applause]

it took nearly 100 Years of lobbying in

Washington before a museum representing

African-American history and culture was

finally given a place amongst the great

monuments of the

city when it opened in 2016 Dr lony

Bunch became its first

director on the one hand race is

something we know is a social construct

but on the other hand it is something

that has socially destroyed so many

people so many communities so many

situations so it really is a myth but

it's the most painful myth of the 21st

century the myths that survive for

centuries are myths that give people

either Comfort or give them a way to

hate or give them a way to offer control

and so in a way race gives people that

sense of being able to feel Superior to

some people it gives people the sense to

justify mistreatment and discrimination

and yet the scientific evidence is

simple that less than 1% of 1% of DNA is

different between people of supposedly

different races but we are mainly a

people that are visual we are people

that need to organize and make sense of

our lives and to ask people to look

beyond that one% when the most obvious

thing is the color of skin texture of

hair um it's very hard for people to get

beyond that myth so I'm 25% Irish do I

look Irish um and so in a way what's so

powerful is that even

1% of a myth trumps 99% of the

truth when I built the national museum

of African-American history and culture

I built it in part not to point blame

not to find guilt but to say that look

at how a country can be made better by

people who on the surface didn't have

the influence didn't have the

power I believe so strongly that

whenever there was a moment that

American Notions of Liberty um

Independence Freedom fairness um were

enlarged they were enlarged in part by

an African-American community and their

supporters so for me it's not about

saying we'll transcend race it's

recognizing that that road will always

be there but we have an ability to make

that road the way we want

it race is such a huge part of everyday

conversation it's rarely

challenged today perhaps myths of race

are beginning to

unravel a process partly led by young

artists with new challenging and radical

representations of Blackness and

identity so this work is called this all

belongs to you it's just filmed on an

iPhone by my wife who I gave strict

instructions to press play and then I

just danced In the Heat of Southeast

London

air the song is Nina Simone's little

girl blue but Nina Simone's a really big

part of my work because of her

discomfort with the world um I think she

taught me to be

uncomfortable um and to do something

about

it it's about a quering of Blackness I

suppose the obviously queer thing is

that I'm voguing for some of it which is

a really important part of queer Black

Culture then I'm also in head to toe

skin head and that's confusing for

people who don't know the roots of skin

head culture and to see a black person

wearing those clothes is really

confusing and contradicting and I think

that that is what I'm trying to say is

that you cannot make sense of Blackness

if you try and make sense of it then you

are restricting it and not let and it

grow I'm attracted to skin heads cuz

it's my culture my dad's a black skin

head I suppose it's almost just like a

religion really you know the ethos

behind the early

1969 skins before it got corrupted by

white supremacy do you think that by

being very clear about your own work

your own identity that it kind of

expects of audiences that they raised

their game people's expectation of

Blackness is so limited that any kind of

portrayal of it is really important to

pay attention to because it kind of

embarrasses that gaze just by being

myself I produce an image of Blackness

that is confronting to the white gays

and perhaps makes them question what

they thought of Blackness in the first

place 30 years ago I'm not the secretary

of the Smithsonian um so there's no

doubt that there's been profound change

but there's not been profound eraser

when President Obama was elected there

was this notion we were in a post-racial

world that we were going to be able to

look Beyond color we were going to be

able to see beyond that one% and what

we've learned is that that'll never

happen that there will always be a need

for people to transcend fairness so I am

optimistic that we as societies will

grapple with race will improve our race

relations but it will always be a

struggle for

me that myth means that the price of

fairness is eternal vigilance and

eternal struggle for me to live honestly

is to give that problem this is like a

James Balden quote to give that problem

back to the oppressor and say this is

not my problem you're the one who's

upset it feels kind of powerful and

lovely to think that you know I always

say like you're looking at me but I can

look right back and let me tell you like

it's more embarrassing for you not

[Music]

me for the philosopher of meaning a

meaningless

end four weeks after his collision with

the laundry van Bart died

why the accident happened is shrouded in

mystery friends suggested he'd simply

given up on living brokenhearted after

the death of his mother 3 years

earlier at his funeral buried beside his

mother a small group of renowned writers

Publishers and philosophers gathered to

mourn the loss of their

friend in his own lifetime he'd stoked

controversy and been denounced by fellow

philosophers and

theorists but in death Bart like s

became a kind of

Icon maybe even a myth of his

[Music]

own Roland Bart opened our eyes to the

system of signs and myths that shape our

perceptions but can we become post myth

do we even want

to some myths keep the world as we know

it running others are deeply

problematic many myths appear

intractable we see them we surrender to

them they can help us to Define our

place in a complex and contested world

but to realize they shape our thinking

and our behaviors is

perhaps a kind of freedom

[Music]