The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event. – Roland Barthes
The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition… always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning. – Roland Barthes
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object. – Roland Barthes
There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque. – Roland Barthes