September Blog Post

Baily Coy

            Throughout the past month in Comm 160, the reading I found the most interesting was Mythologies by Roland Barthes. The reason I found this reading particularly compelling was because it showed me a new way to think about myths. This quote stuck out to me during the reading, “Right from the start, the notion of myth seemed to me to explain these examples of the falsely obvious. At that time, I still used the word 'myth' in its traditional sense. But I was already certain of a fact from which I later tried to draw all the consequences: myth is a language” (Barthes 10). The first time I went through this reading I was confused do to the fact that I didn’t have an understanding of myths other than what Barthes describes are the traditional sense of the word. But in class that week we talked more about what a myth is and it started to make more sense. I began to understand that a myth is when someone tries to sell the connotative meaning of something as its denotative meaning. After learning more about what a myth was in class, I went back to this reading and really related to this quote from Bathes. I had a much better understanding of the reading after looking at it a second time, and I was able to get a lot more out of his essays.

            This reading stood out to me mainly because of our myth projects that are due at the end of the semester. This reading was important because it was a good way to get us introduced to looking at myths in a different way than what we may be used to, and it gave us examples for what we should be trying to model our final paper off of. I am glad we got this reading and learned about myths so early in the semester because this gives us plenty of time to fully wrap our hands around and grasp the concept as well as think of ideas we could potentially use in our final projects. I can also see why it is so important to be able to point out myths in our day to day lives. It will help us in the long run if we can identify when people are using myths to try and change how things look. There is a significant difference between something connotative and denotative meaning, and if someone is trying to pass something off for the wrong meaning they can persuade things in an unfair way. This reading was a great introduction to myths that will not only help us on our final project, but to recognize when myths are used in our day to day lives.