Myth Today: Truth and Triumph in a Trump World

Figure 1: Truth/Trump

“What is a myth, today” Roland Barthes asks in the opening line to his essay ‘Myth Today’ (2000: 109). Writing in the 1950s it seems questionable that he could have foreseen a presidential election result like that of the United States of America on 9 November 2016, however his essay presents us with its possibility in regards to how language operates: neatly explained in Barthes’ own second level of connotation, the myth: “myth is a type of speech” he answers (ibid.). For those studying the speech act, Donald Trump’s win has provided much food for thought in regards to truth (and reality), and the election campaign has renewed interest in the concept of post-truth, even spawning its own hashtag: #post-truth.

As for the election win itself, not that we can separate the win from the speech acts, in ‘Dominici, or the Triumph of Literature’ Barthes discusses the problems in regards to the lack of a commonality in a shared language when it comes to hierarchy. Reporting on the murder trial of Gaston Dominic in 1952, Barthes explains the difference between those in power (in this case the Presiding Judge), and ‘the other’ (the accused), when it comes to language (2000: 43-44). He also lists some of the ad hominem terms that were used in the trial to describe the accused and explains that this is how language triumphs in a system of inequality: “this ‘universal’ language comes just at the right time to lend a new strength to the psychology of the masters: it allows it always to take other men as objects, to describe and condemn at one stroke” (2000: 45).

Trump’s language has been thoroughly analysed in the media and in academic texts, well before the few months leading up to the election. I do not plan to include a discourse analysis of what he has said, since this has been well-covered elsewhere. What I would like to do is open a discussion on the idea of truth, as it sits within Barthes concept of myth, in an attempt to understand how the denigrating language Trump used towards particular groups had little negative effect on his popularity, nor the outcome of the election. To pick just three examples, Trump is well-quoted for his pride in “grabbing women by the pussy” (Fishwick 2016), for accusing Mexican immigrants of “bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists” (Neate 2015), and for his anti-Muslim/anti-immigration sentiment: "I'm putting the people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration, that if I win, if I win, they're going back" (Basu 2015).

Figure 2: Roland Barthes' Semiological Structure of the Myth

Explaining how the sign on the denotative level of signification (language) becomes the signifier on the connotative level (myth) (2000: 115), Barthes states that myth “is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utter its message…Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent, existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things” (2000: 109). Trump’s speech acts have been dispersed and devoured through what Barthes calls “a type of social usage” (ibid.) and I believe that what at one time we found unacceptable, is being given currency at a time when some groups in society feel that they have been failed by the government over a protracted time. Upon repeated use these messages become normalised, they become “filled with a situation” (Barthes 2000: 119). If today we look at the title ‘President-elect Trump’ as a sign, we cannot now separate this phrase from what he said, or from his triumphant win. This is what makes up the concept of the sign, it “reconstitutes a chain of causes and effects, motives and intentions” (ibid.). Value has been attached to what Trump said by some quarters (seemingly, mostly, the disenfranchised white working class), because, despite the content of his rhetoric he still won. This means the myth has been legitimised:

Myth is a value, truth is no guarantee for it; nothing prevents it from being a perpetual alibi: it is enough that its signifier has two sides for it always to have an 'elsewhere' at its disposal. The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning. And there never is any contradiction, conflict, or split between the meaning and the form: they are never at the same place (Barthes 2000: 123).

What I think many of us were amazed by was Trump’s blatant use of sexist and racist descriptors (what is known as “unapologetic racism”). He made no attempt to conceal the way he felt about his particular minority group du jour. Not only did he have a complete disregard to political correctness, but also felt no compunction in openly speaking his mind without the use of ‘filters’. He attached no importance to what is known as “preference falsification” (Timur Kuran): the act of not saying what you really think due to social pressure. This has the function of giving...

racists new heart by suggesting that many more people share their beliefs than they might hitherto have believed. Trump’s electoral success tells them that at the least racism is not a politically disqualifying problem for presidential candidates any more, and that perhaps for many voters it is a plus rather than a minus. Second, it tells them that if they themselves publicly express their racism, they are less likely to be socially punished than they previously believed (Farrell 2016).

It is in this way that the myth becomes codified: “the fundamental character of the mythical concept is to be appropriated” (Barthes 2000: 119). What Barthes means here, though, is how the first level of the sign is taken up into the second level, thus turning it into myth. However, it is also this shift that puts it into circulation and brings it to light: the myth does not conceal anything, rather “its function is to distort, not to make disappear” (2000: 121). The myth, once promulgated, becomes personalised by those who take it up and support Trump. They see themselves as the victim in a dynamic which can conveniently create a scapegoat of any number of minority groups. The supporters of Trump recognise themselves in the myth presented to them: “it is I whom it has come to seek. It is turned towards me, I am subjected to its intentional force” (Barthes 2000: 124).

Figure 3: What Did Trump Say? What Words Are Associated With Him?

Barthes explains how this works in a similar way to how Louis Althusser describes interpellation: “it comes and seeks me out in order to oblige me to acknowledge the body of intentions which have motivated it and arranged it there as the signal of an individual history, as a confidence and complicity: it is a real call” (2000: 125). The Trump supporter has recognised the call and is interpellated as subject to the cause. The message is received as a kind of obviousness, presented as the natural order of things: “A conjuring trick has taken place; it has turned reality inside out, it has emptied it of history and has filled it with nature” (2000: 142).

In regards to what most of us would see as lies from Trump, for the myth this is not quite the whole story: “Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion” (Barthes 2000: 129). Barthes sees the myth as a type of “compromise” that has the ability to escape any kind of linguistic contradiction that could result from its exposure, any attempt to “liquidate the concept” will simply “naturalize it” (2000: 125). Myth “transforms history into nature” (ibid.) and we know this is how it operates as history is our evidence of this, because myth “is not read as a motive, but as a reason” (ibid.). Barthes goes on to explain that it does not even matter if later on people realise that something is a myth, because “its action is assumed to be stronger than the rational explanations which may later belie it” (2000: 130) and we saw this when female Trump supporters were interviewed about his sexist comments: most did not change their minds about supporting him. Nevertheless what is important to remember is that “We are all potential Dominicis”, even those who voted for Trump, because we can all be “deprived of language, or worse, rigged out in that of our accusers, humiliated and condemned by it. To rob a man of his language in the very name of language: this is the first step in all legal murders” (2000: 46).

Donald Trump won the election because of what he said, not despite it – this much is true. For those that voted for him, and for his other supporters and soon-to-be presidential ‘team’, the content of Trump’s speech-acts operated on them through connotation, the second-level of semiology, the myth. Trump utilised the myth to set himself up as the cult leader par excellence. His self-appointed place as saviour of the side-lined has made him a ‘perfect’ leader in a post-truth world.

Bibliography:
Barthes, Roland. 2000. Mythologies, trans. by Annette Lavers (London: Vintage).
Basu, Tanya, ‘Trump Says He’ll Send Refugees back to Syria if Elected’, Time, (30 September 2015), < http://time.com/4056951/trump-syria-refugees/> [accessed 23 November 2016]
Farrell, Henry, ‘Trump’s Election Has Undermined ‘Political Correctness’. That Might Actually Be a Problem’, The Washington Post, (19 November 2016), [accessed 23 November 2016]
Fishwick, Carmen, ‘Can You Be a Feminist and Vote for Donald Trump? Yes You Can’, The Guardian, (17 November 2016), [accessed 21 November 2016]
Neate, Rupert, ‘Donald Trump Doubles Down on Mexico ‘rapists’ Comment Despite Outrage’, The Guardian, (2 July 2015), [accessed 21 November 2016]

Image Credits:
1 Designed by the author.
2 Created by the author based on Roland Barthes own model in Myth Today.
3 Compiled and designed by the author.

Kitsch and the Danger of Guilty Pleasures – Pt 2

Please see part 1 of the blog.

Adorno's main concern in regard to kitsch is with the social aspect of history, and more importantly with the lives people are living in the present. He explains how, when kitsch is employed, the “social moment” becomes formed through it: "by serving up past formal entities as contemporary, [kitsch] has a social function – to deceive people about their true situation, to transfigure their existence, to allow intentions that suit some powers or other to appear to them in a fairy-tale glow" (2002b: 502). When we are listening to the nostalgic kitsch of Guilty Pleasures we are not addressing the real everyday politico-social issues that matter and that could improve our lives, we are instead, according to Adorno, “tormented individuals” because we are proffered something in the music that we can never have (ibid.). In Guilty Pleasures this might be a harking back to a time when things were, supposedly, more 'innocent' and 'free': our childhood, for instance. And because Guilty Pleasures cleverly serves up music from every decade, all our childhoods are represented.

Adorno explains that “All kitsch is essentially ideology” (2002b: 502). In Guilty Pleasures this could be perceived as undisguised nostalgia (I will return to this 'undisguised' factor). This ideology appears as a momentary revisiting of the past in the form of what Adorno calls “musical small change” (2002b: 503) - fetishised elements that get circulated, in the case of Guilty Pleasures these elements are the old songs themselves. The tracks become uprooted, re-contextualised and re-circulated. They are dished up to the music fan of the day, without their historical roots being made apparent. This is the “forgotten secret” (2002b: 501) to which Adorno refers. Richard Leppert puts this particular point well in his commentary in Essays on Music:

Kitsch invokes a past which is nostalgically remembered; as such kitsch is a means by which to forget – but less to forget the past than the present. Kitsch offers consolation, not so as to change everything but to make the anything of the here and now slightly more tolerable. (2002: 361).

This past/present that is forgotten Leppert describes as “selectively (mis)remembered”, and explains that kitsch, for Adorno, is problematic because its relationship to history is not direct and therefore the truth of history is not spoken (2002: 363). The nostalgic element contained in Guilty Pleasures produces a sentimental moment, but not in a positive sense, because “Sentimentality is robbed of its implausible character, of that touching but impotent Utopian moment which for an instant might soften the hearts of those who have been hardened and take them beyond the reach of their even harder masters.” (ibid.). Thus, the momentarty and naive fleeting thought that life could be better, is just that, naive and fleeting, it has no power to do anything about concretely making life better. It does not last beyond the moment.

Whilst it may appear relatively easy to argue that Guilty Pleasures recuperates itself because it is not pretending to be something it is not (it is not pretending to be anything other than kitsch), there is a subtle but effective illusion existing in this very modelling of itself as 'innocent'. On one level it is undisguised nostalgia – everybody knows what they are getting with Guilty Pleasures – but this straight-forwardeness is itself part of the disguise. I do not believe that Adorno would see Guilty Pleasures as the worst kind of kitsch - he does grade kitsch in relation to severity, with “kitsch with 'class'” being the very worst (2002b: 504) - but I believe in its supposed openness Guilty Pleasures lulls the listener/participator into a false sense of security. As Leppert says: “Adorno is eliciting the reality of the truth in the lie, that is, that the truth of kitsch is its falseness [...]” (2002: 362). But, while Guilty Pleasures could be described as authentic kitsch, like painted chalk seaside ornaments, this just hides another type of lie. It is important to analyse what this falseness means in relation to Guilty Pleasures and what it is hiding from the individual, because in an ideological sense the songs are speaking to the individual and represent, at least on a subjective level, their own past.

Hermann Broch, in his essay 'Notes on the Problem of Kitsch' (which appears in the oft-cited edition by Gillo Dorfles Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste), addresses this falseness thus:

[...] if kitsch represents falsehood (it is often so defined, and rightly so), this falsehood falls back on the person in need of it, on the person who uses this highly considerate mirror so as to be able to recognize himself in the counterfeit image it throws back of him [...] (1973: 49).

These kitsch objects, whilst they are really only generic objects, are imbued with a power that appears to speak to you. We see a reflection of ourselves in that old song. But that reflection is not a true one. The nostalgic song presented to us as a guilty pleasure “appears itself as reality, which is supposed to stand in for the reality out there” (Adorno 2001: 65). And, as Adorno explains of kitsch, it helps maintain a memory of the past which is deformed, illusory and of another time (2002: 501). The past of the guilty pleasure cannot really be reconstituted, but the image that has been set up for me is particularly compelling in its personalised nature. I believe that song is for me. It is directed at me and I engage with it instantly. As Broch emphasised, the individual actually connects with this distorted element within the object because it shows something of themselves. This personalised hook then becomes the whole of the object in its transportation of the individual to a past time. The 'real' history tied up in the song is obfuscated by the nostalgic, but ideologically engineered, past that I impose on it with the help of the Guilty Pleasures machine; whether that 'real' history is mine or socio-historic, neither are readily made available to me. I do not recognise the praxis occurring here and instead think the song is calling to me. This is the myth of Guilty Pleasures.

In his own discussion on myth in 'Myth Today' Barthes sets out his model of the myth in its semiological format whereby the sign (the meaning) at the first level of semiology becomes the signifier of the second and as such becomes its “form” (2000: 115). This “form” becomes attached to a “concept” (the second level signified) and produces another sign (ibid.). Barthes calls this “a second-order semiological system” (2000: 114). He explains that this is how myth uses “raw materials” (signs in the form of existing language and images), takes them into its own system and creates what he calls “metalanguage” (2000, pp.114-115). Barthes pays particular attention to some examples that he provides the reader with in order to demonstrate how this process works. But, rather than getting caught up with using one of his own examples to further explain how myth works for Barthes, I should like to go straight to what he says about memory in relation to the “concept” in order to remain focused on the theme of my thesis on Guilty Pleasures: how the myth speaks to the individual through a misrepresentation of the past. Where necessary, I shall work backwards through Barthes text.

Barthes states that the concept's “mode of presence is memorial” (2000: 122). His use of the word “memorial” is important on two levels in relation to Guilty Pleasures: one, the meaning of the first sign is drained of its history by the concept on the second semiological level (ibid.); and, two, the word 'memorial' signifies death. It is death that Adorno is referring to when he alludes to the danger of kitsch. It is what he demonstrates when he gives the example of the Titanic in his discussion on musical kitsch in 'Motifs'. He explains how the music played out in the background is being merrily danced to by the voyagers and underneath them, in the boiler-room, their future destiny is already being played out in a whole other and horrific way - and they have no knowledge of this impending tragic event (1998: 16).

Whilst Adorno's metaphor is for a particular type of death (the death of a history), and not the death of the individuals he is referring to in his example, this death is nevertheless real because of the partiality of ideology. Barthes demonstrates that in its historical selectivity the concept works on the meaning of the first sign such that it becomes “half-amputated” and “deprived of memory” (2000: 122). In Guilty Pleasures I would like to suggest that how the myth operates is by amputating social - and to a large extent personal - history. In its supplanting of a (partial) subjective history that pertains to the individual listener, the guilty pleasure - in its representation of a cultural past that has little relevance to the interpellated listener - distances (abstracts) history. Barthes describes how this works, thus: “Through the concept, it is a whole new history which is implanted in the myth.” (2000: 119). And for Guilty Pleasures this is 'my' history, because, as Barthes states, it is “made of yielding, shapeless associations” (ibid.), and can be subjectively appropriated because of this.

Barthes, when providing the example of the Basque architecture which is taken out of its context and placed in a street in Paris, says that “it is I whom it has come to seek.” (2000: 124). This is the power of the Guilty Pleasures myth. It is communicating to me, it forms a union with me. And its secret is that it can disguise itself such that I do not see that actually I am seeking it, I am “the person in need of it”, as Broch said. Adorno also acknowledges this function of kitsch when he says kitsch “lurks in art, awaiting ever recurring opportunities to spring forth.” (1997: 239). Guilty Pleasures appears to call the individual dancer/listener, but this is its falsity: it is pretending to call them – although in a sense it is calling them, but in a very generalised and interpellant way - by disguising their own need to be transported back to the past. It lifts that need from their psyche, repackages it and places it 'out there'.

In order to see what effect the myth has on the Guilty Pleasures participant, and how it might attach itself to them via the mythological sign, I will re-visit Independent Women vs. Dreadlock Holiday, which I introduced in part 1 of the blog, in the next part of the blog. This particular song demonstrates how generality works in relation to the myth and how this makes it appropriable. It is this that Barthes describes as its “intentional force”, how it is directed at 'me': “[...] it summons me to receive its expansive ambiguity.” (2000: 124). It is also what Witkin refers to when discussing Adorno and reification: the song becomes “the 'property' of the listener.” (2003: 59).

Please click here for part 3.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Books and Articles
Adorno, Theodor W. 1997. Aesthetic Theory, trans. by Gretel Adorno and Tiedmann (London: The Athlone Press).
----- 1998. 'Motifs', Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, trans. by Rodney Livingstone (London and New York: Verso) pp. 9-36.
----- 2000. ‘Extracts from Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life’, The Continental Aesthetics Reader, ed. by Clive Cazeaux (London and New York: Routledge) pp. 234-256.
----- 2001. 'The Schema of Mass Culture', The Culture Industry, ed. by J. M. Bernstein (London and New York: Routledge) pp. 61-97.
----- 2002a. 'On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening', Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 288-317.
----- 2002b. 'Kitsch', Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 501-505.
Barthes, Roland. 2000. 'Myth Today', Mythologies, trans. by Annette Lavers (London: Vintage) pp. 109-159.
Broch, Hermann. 1973. ‘Notes on the Problem of Kitsch’, Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste, ed. by Gillo Dorfles (London: Studio Vista) pp. 49-76.
Jenkins, Jennifer, ‘The Kitsch Collections and “The Spirit in the Furniture”: Cultural Reform and National Culture in Germany’, Social History, 21, 2 (1996), 123-141.
Leppert, Richard. 2002. ‘Commentary’, Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 327-372.
Witkin, Robert W. 2003. Adorno on Popular Culture (London and New York: Routledge).

Music
10cc, The Very Best of 10cc (Mercury Records Ltd, 534 612-2, 1997).
2 many djs, as heard on radio soulwax pt.2 (PIAS Recordings, plasb 065 cd, 2002).
Brian Protheroe, Pinball and Other Stories (EMI Records Ltd, 0946 3 60718 2 4, 2006).

Online Resources
Sean Rowley, ‘The Gospel According to Guilty Pleasures’, Guilty Pleasures, (2007),  (para. 2 of 6).