Image-Music-Text

None.

Like so much of this author's work, I profit from it although I don't accept his premises. The writing is very hifalutin and abstract. It's not easy to figure out his meaning with all the abstract terms. Still he makes some great points.He uses a term - censorship through repletion - that I have never encountered elsewhere. I understand this to mean that there is so much worthless discourse that information has no audience. I find this an apt term for present US media. Our world is falling apart and the news is about Game of Thrones. The sea is rising and we worry about whether a favorite TV show will be canceled or which new toy is better, the a-phone or the b-phone.I prefer reading old books to new. Somehow Barthes seems like an old-timer in this equation. He's part of the tradition of making real points although he's not that ancient.

A note: these essays were not only translated, but also selected by Heath.A series of essays about the composition of images (aural, textual, and visual). A good collection for people interested in his thoughts on cinema and structuralist treatment of visual form. I'm a long way from my university infatuation with semiotics, but I still find this thought-provoking to return to and an ongoing pleasure to read.

Roland Barthes is a great writer, the various essays are concise, technical but without leaving the less technical reader lost. There is actually a lot to enjoy and I find as an artist Barthes insights inspire me to think about images in new ways while also giving insight into other arts like music and text. I would like to read more by Barthes in the future.

Barthes is mystifying, often verbose, often not exactly clear. Read it at your own risk. Not sure why he is such a big deal.