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Food: Roland Barthes – Extracts from Mythologies

For the topic of food I chose to read some extracts from the book ‘Mythologies’ by the French writer Roland Barthes. Barthes is a literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic and semiotician who has explored many subjects including social theory, design theory and anthropology.

The three short essays are extracts from the 1957 book ‘Mythologies’ which consists of a series of essays examining our modern tendencies to make ‘modern myths’

These essays connect to the terms of the lecture in the sense that they highlight and discuss the deification and idealisation of food. This is both through a symbolic, patriotic and idealistic sense. This is most clearly seen in the last essay about ‘ornamentary cooking’, where the discussion of how food is photographed in magazines mirrors how we in the modern day photograph our food. The main points that about food that these essays focus on our devised relationships with food. For example how the French (this being a Franco centric piece of writing) have made wine this great symbol of patriotism disregarding its effects or its history. In this case how the French made the Muslim Algerians make a substance they did not require in order to fuel their obsessions. Similarly he makes a point with steak, and how this was again seen as some form of primal, masculine food with how raw and bloody it can appear. However the underlying theme, which is then emphasised in the last essay, shows how all of this comes from a capitalisation of food on the basis of how it looks and subsequently how we then give it meaning to project our ideals.

It thinks that is an interesting piece of writing because it illustrates how people can be obsessed with food. Even a Barthes tries to provide commentary on those obsessed with the meanings of food, he too becomes obsessed with his perceptions as well.

As far a changing opinions is concerned I am don’t really think I had formed one prior to reading this. I do feel as though it has caused me to draw several parallels between my own upbringing and perceptions of food with those discussed. I have never been 100% sold on the modern ideals of aesthetic food and the extravagancy of fancy restaurants or dinner parties. For me and my family, we have been raised on simpler foods. Foods that I’m sure to the people obsessed with crayfish and wines as mentioned would consider ‘rustic’. My parents and my grandparents on both sides were raised on basic foods like stew, lentils and beans. This passed down to my siblings, who also don’t eat ‘fine foods’, like red meat or game. So although I haven’t created an opinion on which is better, I have definitely noticed the contrast between the two.

I would recommend this reading to the class since it provides an interesting commentary on the frivolity of food and how people like to project more than is perceptible onto the stuff that essentially keeps us alive.

“This is an openly dream-like cookery, as proved in fact by the photographs in Elle, which never show the dishes except from a high angle, as objects at once near and inaccessible, whose consumption can perfectly well be accomplished simply by looking.” - pg 79

Patisserie Illustration by Tom Hovey for BBC  

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Play: Brett Martin – Should Videogames Be Viewed as Art?

I decided to read the ‘Should Videogames Be Viewed as Art?’ from the book ‘Videogames & Art’ which is a collection of essays on the subject. However this book was published in 2007, which is one of the issues with this reading as its arguments and observations about the videogame industry are now highly inaccurate.

This reading does link back to the themes of the lecture as it, in the process of discussing the fate of videogames, discusses how other artists played with new technologies. For example how the photographer Oscar Rejlander played with exposures and different negative to produce the first experimental photography. This only came about through him playing with a camera in a way it was not intended for initially.

This essay also looks at the idea of play in the context of a videogame. Not just how a game plays and provides escapism but also how the mechanics of gameplay can, in the opinion of the author, limits it’s ways in which it can develop into an art form.

I think what I found not necessarily interesting but rather exasperating about this reading is how, either due to the writers ignorance or the outdated nature of the text, it completely ignores a multitude of games that fulfil the criteria of that the writer sets out for videogames to become and art form in his view (despite the writer not being consistent on these boundaries).

One of the criteria that is mentioned early on is the idea of videogames being aesthetically beautiful and become artwork in the most traditional sense. For this he does suggest the Final Fantasy franchise (which further dates this writing). His argument that not many games are ‘pretty enough’ since they rely on textures and polygons is a rather absurd statement to make. Some examples of game that knows for their visual prowess include ‘Bloodborne’, ‘Cuphead’, ‘Monument Valley’ and ‘No Man’s Sky’.

Monument Valley

Another unfair judgement made was that videogames are not effective at telling emotional and challenging stories (using the comparison of Schindler’s list, which I feel is a drastic comparison). This apparently is not only due to the fact that games have to have gameplay that breaks up storytelling but also because games are commercial enterprises. However there are a multitude of modern and classic games that illicit emotions as strong as any film (the authors main comparison) including ‘That Dragon, Cancer’, ‘Valient Hearts: The Great War’, ‘Unravel’ and ‘To the Moon’.

There was also the argument that you cannot make a cohesive plot in the way film can. However I feel that videogames have developed their own form of narratives that can be adjusted in real time by the players actions, can have multiple endings and can even break the 4th Wall and make changes in the players own files, e.g. ‘Doki Doki Literature Club’, in which the main character actively destroys the game by tampering the files and deleting characters. The idea that a videogame is limited to shooting and jumping is a shallow perception of what games are. Examples here also include ‘Emily Is Away’, ‘Until Dawn’, ‘The Static Speaks My Name’ and ‘Misao’.

As I mentioned earlier, I would not recommend this reading on the basis of a clear bias, lack of knowledge and lack of relevance in this era of videogames. While I agree that not all videogames are art, there are definitely many videogames that can be considered as such on the merits mentioned above and many more. In my opinion, videogames are the latest form of storytelling and as impactful as any other form.

 “why should pixels be different?” - pg 206

Yharnam Concept Art, Blooborne: Official Artwork (Book), 2016

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Home: Georges Perec – Penser Classer/ Thoughts of Sorts

For home, I chose the chapter ‘Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books’ form the book ‘Penser Classer’ (English title ‘Thoughts of Sorts’). Georges Perec was a French novelist, film maker, documentalist and essayist whose work focused on the themes of absence, loss and identity.  In this book Perec looks at the ways in which we define our place in the world.

This chapter relates to the theme of home via the idea of object of significance that fill a home. In this case, books. In this passage, Perec explores if there is an effective way to organise a library and how inevitably, due to the human nature, these systems always devolve into ‘good natured anarchy’.

Perec gives us a sense that it is not only the type of books that we have that gives us a sense of identity but also how they are organised and displayed within a space also allows us a way to make a personal mark on a space. As a result, no two people’s libraries are the same. For example, Perec explains how a book case or shelf has become a necessary part of a ‘living room’, along other furniture such as television sets and drinks cabinets. However there are a multitude of way in which a person may keep books in a living room. Some people may pile them in boxes, some of horizontal shelves or some in an organised case; how you display these is an example of your character being input into a room.

More importantly for Perec though, is the way in which books are organised. He goes into great depth into methods and theories on how one should curate their own personal library. He began with an equation but as he delved further into his habits he realised that he had to keep manipulating the formula until it simply had too many variables to be viable. Furthermore, when he then turned his attention to the task of trying to organise his books he filters through several ideas and processes but ultimately realised that you will always regress back to organised chaos. But he also expresses that the chaos leads to interesting events all of their own, for example, not being able to find a book you are looking for but in the process you find other books that you forgot you had and therefore your library becomes somewhat littered with surprise.

I think this was an interesting reading if a touch difficult to read at first, possibly because it is a translation. It is a more theoretical text that is exploring more of a cause and effect of a thought pattern as opposed to an organised flowing piece of prose (thus the use of the words ‘brief notes’).  I think that it is a good text for the subject of home as it looks more at once of the intricacies that make a home as opposed to home in the broader sense.

‘One of the chief problems encountered by the man who keeps the books he has read or promises himself that he will one day read is that of the increase in his library’ - pg 149 

My Library, Tom Gauld, 2014

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Mobility: Alain de Botton - The Art of Travel

The piece I chose for the theme of Mobility was an excerpt from the book ‘The Art of Travel’ by Alain de Botton. Botton is a Swiss-born English author who has wrote a multitude of books ranging from love to architecture in an essayist style. This particular excerpt is chapter 2, titled ‘On the Exotic’ which discusses the ideas around what causes exoticism through the lenses of his experience in Amsterdam and of the 19th Century writer Gustave Flaubert in Egypt.

This passage relates to the themes of this lecture since is it based on mobility but even more specifically on exoticism and our perceptions of travel. For example, how people travel to the place that they dream about to fulfil some deep desire. Flaubert is so incredibly bored by France that he developed a fantasy of the ‘orient’. What it meant in terms of travel is it was a form of hyper tourism. Almost like a pilgrimage. It was a form of travel that became romanticised, even if some of it was disappointing for him.

What I found most interesting about the reading was actually how we project ourselves on to the place we travel to. How we find the things we are missing in foreign places. There was an interesting passage in which Botton describes how he fell in love with a small house in Amsterdam because the life he imagined with it seemed to provide him with all the life and aesthetic fulfillment he wanted. I think it challenged my view of exoticism, as something I experience a lot growing up and how the line becomes blurred the longer someone stays in one place as opposed to moving around. That actually the line of where exoticism ends and cultural appreciation begins. This was especially the case with Flaubert as he even was given an Arabic name, wore Nubian clothes and spoke Arabic. He not only appreciated but he revelled in it and became so appreciative of it he fully assimilated into it.

I really found this text fascinating and would highly recommend this text given the fact that it helps to explain exoticism in the modern day in a more subtle way by creating parallels of the overt exoticism of the colonial era with the modern European traveler.

‘what we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.’  - pg 78

Eugene Delacroix, Doors and Windows of the Moorish house, 1832

Sketchbook and Watercolour

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Street: Lauren Elkin - Flâneuse-ing

For the topic of street I chose this chapter from Flâneuse-ing by Laura Elkin titled ‘Tokyo : Inside’ Laura Elkin is an American author and essayist has now moved to Paris. She writes about a range of subjects, including visual culture (mainly photography) but also women’s writing. This chapter of the book as a memoir of Elkins time living in Tokyo after being forcibly ripped from her only recently assimilated home of Paris. It explores how Tokyo and specifically the Roppongi district left her overwhelmed with a sense of isolation and intimidation due to its unfamiliarity and even more so by the fact that, unlike in Paris, she could not walk her way around the city to familiarise herself. She was hostage to it.

This passage is connected to the theme of street by showing what happens when there is a lack of open streets to walk around. Elkin constantly compares the open boulevards of Paris to the flyovers, crowded streets and dual carriageways of the mega-city. She also ties back to the flâneur from the confines of her tower block or the coffee shop in her complex, observing the cultural fabric of Japan from the perspective of an outsider. What I found were the strongest link to the lecture however related to the ideas of signage and familiarity. In the book, Elkin explains the arbitrary system of street-naming based on the order in which each building was built, meaning if you didn’t know the order of the buildings, you would not understand the system. Also the axis of the whole chapter is how she cannot feel at home. In the lecture, there was a discussion of how you attach yourself to a place to give it significance. Elkin explains how, because it is impossible to walk and explore this sprawling concrete city-scape, she cannot make any meaningful attachments and as a result feels miserable. This is particularly emphasised when she finally and with great difficulty, leaves the house once to find and English bookshop. She feels such a sense of achievement but after so much effort.   This is emphasised at the end when she documents her later trip to Kyoto, an older and smaller town, in which she is finally free to walk and get lost, to notice the small details like cobwebs and generally be more at peace than she was in Tokyo.

I found many aspects of Elkins account very interesting. For example, how she could dress in a ‘kawaii’ fashion with short skirts in Japan, but not back in Paris because of the image projection you need when walking in the street. This chapter also highlights the struggles of an expat but also the exclusive perspective of the outsider, who questions parts of native life that have just become assimilated. I also like how it highlights the differences between occidental-style cities and modern Eastern cities. That Tokyo is based on functionality and control, but in a different way to Paris.

I would recommend this text as it has greatly changed my perspective on this topic. I had recognised the usefulness of the street as a creative asset and a point of reference. However I had taken for granted how liberating streets and walking are and how they can affect us mentally. I would also recommend this to the rest of the class since it not only provides a rare female perspective on the street (particularly so in a testosterone charged society like Japan) but also because it reminds you of the significance of language and familiarity when it comes to our comfort with streets and urban life.

“what bothered me most was the certainty I felt that there was a great city out there, full of places I wanted to discover, but I didn’t know where to look for them. I didn’t know what there was out there. I didn’t know where to go, where to walk.” - pg 164

Akira Yamaguchi, Tokei (Tokyo): Hiroo and Roppongi, 2005

Inkjet Print 30 × 26 in 76.2 × 66 cm