Advertisements for soap. The image of a film star. The sight of a car as beautiful as a goddess. We accept all these common objects and experiences as a normal part of our life, and as timeless and universal as myth. But they are also carrying hidden messages that none of us even suspect, as Barthes demonstrates with a unique analysis of the signs that generate meanings and assumptions we all take for granted. These things have been “taken out of history” so that their hidden cultural meanings can be accepted without question. And those hidden cultural meanings just so happen to reflect and promote the values of the people who just so happen to be benefitting the most from the economic and social system of capitalism. Mythologies is a playful, readable analysis of culture and of the way that meaning itself is constructed and perceived, from the agile mind of a deeply influential scholar.