It is possible to argue that `myth', as Barthes uses it in Mythologies, functions as a synonym of `ideology' (for a more detailed discussion of this complex issue see Brown: 1994 pp.24-38). As a theoretical construct `ideology' is notoriously hard to define. However, one of the most pervasive definitions of the term holds that it refers to the body of beliefs and representations that sustain and legitimate current power relationships. Ideology promotes the values and interests of dominant groups within society. I like the explanation Terry Eagleton comes up with in his book Ideology: An Introduction:
A dominant power may legitimate itself by promoting beliefs and values congenial to it; naturalizing and universalizing such beliefs so as to render them self-evident and apparently inevitable; denigrating ideas which might challenge it; excluding rival forms of thought, perhaps by some unspoken but systematic logic; and obscuring social reality in ways convenient to itself. Such `mystification', as it is commonly known, frequently takes the form of masking or suppressing social conflicts, from which arises the conception of ideology as an imaginary resolution of real contradictions. (Eagleton: 1991 pp.5-6)
This particular definition of the workings of ideology is particularly relevant to Mythologies. Common to both Eagleton's definition of ideology and Barthes's understanding of myth is the notion of a socially constructed reality which is passed of as `natural'. The opinions and values of a historically and socially specific class are held up as `universal truths'. Attempts to challenge this naturalization and universalization of a socially constructed reality (what Barthes calls le cela-va-de-soi) are dismissed for lacking `bon sens', and therefore excluded from serious consideration. The real power relations in society (between classes, between coloniser and colonised, between men and women etc.) are obscured, reference to all tensions and difficulties blocked out, glossed over, their political threat defused.
Let me try to clarify these points with an example from Mythologies. In `Le vin et le lait' (Barthes: 1970 pp.74-77) Barthes explores the significance of wine to the French. Wine is clearly an important symbolic substance to the French expressive of conviviality, of virility and, more importantly, of national identity. Nothing could be more expressive of an `essential Frenchness' than a ballon de rouge. The uproar caused at the beginning of Monsieur Coty's presidential term of office by being photographed at home next to a bottle of beer, rather than the obligatory bottle of red, captures this perfectly. Barthes unsettles the mythological associations of wine by making explicit wine's real status as just another commodity produced for profit. He draws attention to wine-makers' exploitation of the Third World, citing Algeria as an example of a poor Muslim country forced to use its land for the cultivation of a product - `le produit d'une expropriation (Barthes: 1970 p.77) - which they are forbidden to drink on religious grounds and which could be better used for cultivating food crops. Barthes makes explicit the connections between wine and the socio-economics of its production. And this is an integral part of his aim as a mythologist: he must expose the artificiality of those signs which disguise their historical and social origins.
