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Diane Court's List: McLuhan-Barthes

      • "It may be as Curtis suggests, that the 'medium is the message'entails the study of langue rather than parole. McLuhan approached figure through ground in order to understand their interplay or Gestalt.  The medium may be the figure of the message's ground or vice versa. This makes McLuhan's 'structuralism' Barthesean to the degree that Barthes' particular brand of semiology taught a related lesson with regard to the langue/parole distinction. In 'Eléments de sémiologie' Barthes' semiological extension of the linguistic distinction between langue and parole led him to reflect upon the 'reciprocal comprehensiveness' of the terms in the dialectic of social object and individual act. Barthes was interested in the semiological prospects of such a distinction, and they were for him brightest in the case of the garment system, as he would show in detail with regard to the written systems of fashion in Système de la mode (1967). McLuhan's interest in figure/ground interplay allowed him to take many labels since his work was neither trapped in the study of pure form nor merely a registry of disconnected effects, although he certainly collected effects.

  • Sep 06, 10

    that the signifier chez Barthes equals the technology chez McLuhan, since "the signifier is empty, the sign is full, it is a meaning" (Barthes, p. 113); 2) that a medium is a technology defined by its use, much like myth is defined by its intention; and 3) that the signified equals the social usage which defines a given medium.

    • Given this differentiation, one plausible hypothesis about the interplay between myth, technology and media is that "cool media" attract myth. McLuhan defined "cool media" as stimulating all of the senses simultaneously but in low intensity, and "hot media" as being information-rich and thus extending or stimulating one sense in high intensity. Interestingly enough, Barthes himself seems to confirm that it is the fill-in-the-blanks characteristic of cool media that attracts myth:

       

      True, as far as perception is concerned, writing and pictures, for instance, do not call upon the same type of consciousness; and even with pictures, one can use many kinds of reading: a diagram lends itself to signification more than a drawing, a copy more than an original, and a caricature more than a portrait (p.110)

    • McLuhan argued, "any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary" (p. 15). Barthes went further: he believed in myth-controlled technology since "myth sees in them only the same raw material; their unity is that they all come down to the status of a mere language... a sum of signs, a global sign, the final term of a first semiological chain" (p. 114). These assertions suggest that both myth and media can be embodied in any technology. It also means that media are qualitatively richer than technology and quantitatively poorer, a relationship which also takes place between the signifier and the signified of myth, as Barthes observes:

       

      A signified can have several signifiers: this is indeed the case in linguistics and psycho-analysis. It is also the case in the mythical concept: it has at its disposal an unlimited mass of signifiers... This means that quantitatively, the concept is much poorer than the signifier, it often does nothing but re-present itself (p. 120).

       

      When Barthes states, first, that myth is a sign which belongs to and emerges from a secondary semiological chain, and second that the sign (signifier + signified) in the first semiological chain becomes the signifier of myth in the second, whose signified stands alone, independently, he is basically saying that the content or message of a medium is always another medium. The content of a sign is another sign, for myth is after all a sign that appropriates another sign: "we can say that the fundamental character of the mythical concept is to be appropriated" (Barthes, p. 119). This phenomenon also happens between media through hybridization or compounding because, as McLuhan argues, "[media] do interact and spawn new progeny has been a source of wonder over the ages" (p. 49). Furthermore, while the second semiological system or "metalanguage" (what Barthes calls "myth" or "signification") corrupts the first semiological system or "langue-object," something similar happens between media: "Except for light, all other media come in pairs, with one acting as the content of the other, obscuring the operation of both" (McLuhan, 1964, p. 52). It is a dual, ambiguous effect, however, for it also happens that "the effect of the medium is made strong and intense just because it is given another medium as 'content'" (McLuhan, 1964, p. 18).

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