How does myth function? What does myth do? How can we understand myth through a new lens and perhaps become aware of its influence and messages? Since myth can function through a kind of subliminal presentation Barthes's "Myth Today" provides a system of analysis that allows us to read myth consciously and critically rather than as passively subject to its very intentional messages.
[...] Of course, this advertisement is brought to us by Walmart and Myspace who are also grouped in this concept of “universal oneness” yet are also the harbingers, the agents of such “change.” The next image reads “This Month's Category: Social Justice” with a cartoon representation of the already myth-laden scales of justice encompassed in a purple circle reminiscent of the earth in the former picture. This image now brings the former implications of a kind of universal responsibility of to the “category” of “social justice.” The scales already robbed of their individual meaning to signify justice are now appropriated once more to signify specifically “social justice” in the formally established context of world impact through human agency and nourishment. [...]
[...] By taking bits and pieces of history from the meaning, the concept fragments the meaning's history and understandings only to reconstruct or “reconstitute” it for its own “intentions.” In this reconstructive act, concept and myth alike create an entirely history” not completely dissimilar to the meaning's, but new in arrangement, function and purpose. The Myspace advertisement consists of two images that alternate back and forth but keep consistent the background of a sparsely clouded, objectless sky, a bottom-right-hand-corner Walmart logo, and the font and image scheme of white lettering and stick-figures on each screen. [...]
[...] We can see that this particular myth expresses many things, but most importantly that by supporting Walmart the world itself (as a singular whole) cannot only “save money” and “live better” but can also worldly “social justice” into an actualization. The message is not only to buy from Walmart and visit Myspace for one's own personal benefit, but for the benefit of the world as a whole. Each companies explicit and controversial history in the field of nourishing social injustice makes the advertisement not only ironic and comical, but illustrates their motivation of rewriting themselves into a new historical perception of agents for “social justice.” By emptying the meaning of the myth's signs and appropriating them for these new meanings and a new history, both companies live parasitically off of [...]
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