Thursday, 20 October 2011

Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes was a well respected philosopher, who comes up with many theories which have been constantly looked at. He died at the age of 64 in 1980.

One of his main theories which he developed with Claude Levi Strauss was the Binary opposition, they came up with the idea that opposites where victims of Binary opposition and that they text is used to describe so. For example there is always going to be a superior and an inferior when he comes to describing opposites in text.

 There is so many ideas and evidence in media which makes this theory reliable for example: the colour black v the superior white, the disabled v the superior able. The weak v the superior strong. The binary opposition is used to show the effect of opposites and that one will have to suffer all the time, also to show that there is always one with a disadvantage which is normally used to show sympathy to the inferior and hate towards the superior, usually when binary opposition is used in the text or media it is used to a substantial amount to help convey the message.

The message being is also to the public that the opposites only cause problems for society, that it causes a lot of controversy for example that the Nazis fort they were superior over the Jews and that ended up in a 6 year world war. So therefore the binary opposition is not just used in media but used in modern day society and that as soon as you fell you are superior there is someone inferior to you, you are binary opposites and that this causes chaos towards society because it makes competition and competition can lead to suffering.

This theory can be used in many situations, so therefore is extremely reliable and would be a good theory to use when comparing media because you can link to nearly every text or bit of media because it is so effective.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Ben. Just to confirm I've been through the whole blog. Please make sure you've checked all comments left and action any you have time for. Please make sure that it is that you have time for - you have also got to revise for Media and English Lit on Tuesday and I do not want to make you spend a huge amount of hours on what is worth comparatively small marks. I have to have the marks to the board by the 15th so if you are going to make any changes they need to be made asap. But only if you have time. Okay?