Roland Barthes: Semiotics

Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes is one of the leading theorists in studying semiotics, the study of the signs. In this context, a sign is something that conveys meaning. One of Barthes main themes was the importance of stopping confusion between culture and nature or the naturalisation of social phenomena. Another important theme he studied was the significance of being careful with how we use words and symbols.

Barthes commonly expresses his work by using a lot of words to explain a few. He gives a detailed analysis of single images, passages and short texts to look into how they work. His work was also known to be in a constant systemisation. He would draw up something similar to a blue print of the areas he’s studying and show how the different parts link together.

In Barthes work he commonly uses the Saussurean analysis; the difference between signifier and signified and how important it is. The signified sometimes makes an appearance outside language and social construction whereas he signifier does not. The relationship between them is arbitrary and there are numerous ways a signified could be shown in different objects divided up and or language.

Barthe is an anti-essentialist and is strongly opposed to the view that there is anything contained in a particular signifier that makes it correspond to a signified. He is best known for showing the social structure of language by daily experiences.

Barthe does not fully apply Saussure’s theory and he replaces the term ‘arbitrary’ with motivated due to the relationship between the two only being arbitrary from a language point of view. Barthes believed signs are mediated by language and he normally reads non-linguistic signs through linguistic signs.

Fatboy Slim- Ya Mama

Ya Mama by Fatboy Slim

About Fatboy Slim

Norman Quentin Cook or alternatively known as Fatboy Slim, is an English musician, record producer and DJ. He massively helped popularise the big beat genre in the 90s. He was brought up in Redhill, Surrey and he then went on to live in Brighton where he studied English, Politics and Sociology. This is also when he started to DJ. Originally, he started his career with " Caravan Of Love" in 1985. However, he left the group 3 years later and topped the charts as part of a number of dance acts. Previously he has won the MTV Music Awards and two Brit Awards. Not only this but he also placed in the Guinness Book Of Records for achieving the most UK Top 40 hits under different names.

Ya Mama
The very first scene you see in the video is a Red Neck Hill Billy, painting an ornament of a bird, holding a post card of a beach and watching Tom&Jerry. this automatically gives the audience a very unserious, almost jokey sense, not unlike how Fatboy Slim is. The rednecks are going against the stereotypes people give them, you wouldn't expect them to be painting a bird ornament, they would be more likely to be drinking, smoking and fixing old cars. This is like Fatboy Slim because unlike most artists he is very relaxed and abnormal, sees all his videos as fun rather then making serious videos like many other artists. This promotes Fatboy Slim because it shows his uniqueness which is desirable because people get bored of seeing the same sort of things all the time so to have a different type of music, video and artist in general it makes it much more interesting.

The video is a cyclical story narrative, it is about Hill Billy's who have a tape delivered and when it is heard people break out into uncontrollable dancing. They thought they could make money from this and decided to go to the market to get people to pay and listen to the tape advertising it with a sign that says "push the tempo" very scruffily written on a piece of cardboard. A black gangsta then is seen to come and take the tape from them and put it in a juke box. This causes havoc across the whole market because everyone breaks out in dancing, wrecking stalls and even a car is seen driving into them. Throughout the video there is a very unserious atmosphere and it could almost be seen as a joke, for example the spelling of police station is 'Polis Stazion' mocking the correct spelling.