Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?
Roland BarthesRead
The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Mass culture often repeats the same themes and ideas, despite presenting new forms and formats.
In this quote, Roland Barthes critiques the phenomenon of mass culture, highlighting how it continually generates new content—such as books, films, and news—yet fails to deliver fresh ideas or meanings. This cycle of 'humiliated repetition' reflects a lack of true creativity and depth, as audiences are bombarded with familiar concepts recycled in different packages, leading to a sense of disenchantment with cultural consumption.
Themes
Mass CultureRepetitionMediaCultureArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about modern media, one might quote Barthes to illustrate the superficiality of contemporary entertainment.
More from Roland Barthes
All quotes →If I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a "weakness" or an "absurdity": it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.)
Roland BarthesRead
The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other.
Roland BarthesRead
The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.
Roland BarthesRead
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.
Roland BarthesRead
All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.
Roland BarthesRead
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