The Eiffel Tower is probably my favorite of the collection of myths from Roland Barthes, since it’s a deduction of our sign system against a “resistant” object, to prove its limits as a means of communication and its paradoxical nature. 

There is a lot to unpack with the contradictory qualities of the “utterly useless monument”, which we actually learn is pretty useful (Barthes, 5). The point that stands out to me this most is that, physically, the tower is an uncontainable object that we try to domesticate. One way we do this is through “the installation of a restaurant […and other] means of leisure” (Barthes, 16). The fact that the tower is an open construction makes us uncomfortable when we are used to typical tourist hotspots (like the Louvre) being enclosed for us to feel like we entered, experienced, and “owned” some of it. The tower doesn’t do that for us. So we have to create a mini world surrounding the tower in order to make it feel normal. I never thought about that. It’s so weird for us in our conception of the order of the world (much like our syntax!) to have a monument that’s simultaneously a representation of the inside and outside. It’s too far outside of the social contract for the tower to be both sides of anything that usually presents itself as binary, and so we try to reduce the tower. But also, I think it’s interesting to see how maybe the tower makes us so uncomfortable because it’s become oddly more powerful than us. The tower can be a spectacle and an object, useless and useful, inside and outside. We cannot be those things. If we are looking at the tower, we can’t be in it. None of our relations to the tower can come together at the same time. We are perceiving it as one of its opposite meanings at a time, and we have to kind of deal with the impossibility of bringing together two things that are true and simultaneous but also cannot cooccur. I think one way we do this is by glossing over it all and pretending it can occur at the same time– a comforting thought facilitated by the constructed surrounding environment.

However, by doing this, what simultaneously happens is that the tower becomes a signifier of basically an infinite sight of projection. It is reduced to a symbol of Paris, of travel, of industrialism, of some kind of focal point in France. The tower being a signifier for everything really just makes it nothing. And when we come face-to-face with this (structural and symbolic) emptiness, we rush to find ways to create more perceived “somethingness”(we add restaurants, shops, carts of food, and other community experiences all around the tower) to fit into our schemas and orders. 

But we see that our efforts to reduce the Eiffel Tower from everything to just one thing also fail. The argument here would be similar to Nietzsche’s line of thought: the tower is immune to falling apart in this way because it is art. Much like Nietzsche’s argument that art is truth that allows you to live in a personal abstraction and intuition, the tower being art means it surpasses our rationalization, deconstruction, and assimilation of it into variations of speech/language or other binary schemas. It exists to emphasize its inability to be known by us and to serve mythical purposes–like the ones the Ancient Greeks lived by.

Barthes mentions that the Eiffel Tower is a spectacle. It is meant to be looked at amongst all the business and people it is there and it must be seen. It is the universal symbol of Paris. Whenever someone thinks of France or Paris they automatically think of the Eiffel Tower. It is a hotspot for tourists all around the world and it is quite a hotspot for Parisians. People can look at the tower because that’s the first thing everyone will do. People will spectate it. People will admire it’s beauty and its architecture. They will admire it from the base. Barthes states that the tower is “an utterly useless monument” (Barthes 5). When someone is looking at the tower they might even start to think about the engineering process that has been involved in its construction. Or they might think of the science behind it’s structure and how it is able to withstand so much pressure in the atmosphere without a lot of damage. One might even think about its tremendous stance from the base upwards. The height of the tower is over a thousand feet high. One of the main arguments that Barthes mentions is that the Tower looks at Paris. He mentions that the tower overlooks not the nature but the city. From the tower or a balcony people can see the natural landscape of Paris. People can see the people being a part of the natural landscape. People can have an essence to the vibe of the city. The culture, the imagination that were once in books have come alive. The imagination that comes alive in The Hunchback of Notre Dame that perceives Paris as a Birdseye view. So everything is being seen not only the thousand foot Tower.   Being at the tower also encompasses the surrounding neighborhoods and their historical background. You can look at from the tower the places, the people, the realness that makes up the space. It is not only an account of imagination but it is also the richness of the atmosphere that takes us to a place that can only be observed once someone goes to Paris and experiences it for themselves. Barthes argues that once there people can shop, walk, eat, and explore the area. There are vendors there and people are constantly buying and selling items or material goods. So the significance of both looking at the tower and then observing from the tower is that you can experience what it means to be in that place. It is an experience that is more like a travel destination now. More like a tourist invitation. However one can dream. One can dream that the experience is like a fairytale or a lovers destination. After all, Paris is the city of love.

In his literary piece, “The World of Wrestling,” Barthes points out the many characteristics and features that structure wrestling as more than just an “ignoble sport” (13) or a spectacle or a form of entertainment. It is like a play, a performance, in the sense that it shares many of the dramatic aspects that make a play a play. Barthes defines wrestling as, “a sum of spectacles, of which no single one is a fiction: each moment imposes the total knowledge of a passion which rises erect and alone, without ever extending to the crowning moment of a result” (14). When watching wrestling, fans/spectators do not care for who wins or loses in a fair fight; they care about getting a story with meanings that they do not necessarily acknowledge or realize. All they know is that they derive pleasure from one side, a wrestler worth cheering on, beating and overcoming their opponent, a wrestler designed to be worth antagonizing.

A wrestling match serves a necessary purpose and brings about satisfaction by adhering to a particular rule: “to portray…a purely moral concept: that of justice” (19). Barthes explains this further in, “it is the pattern of Justice [an abstraction] which matters here, much more than its content: wrestling is above all a quantitative sequence of compensations…This explains why sudden changes of circumstances have in the eyes of wrestling habitudes a sort of moral beauty: they enjoy them as they would enjoy an inspired episode in a novel…Justice is therefore the embodiment of a possible transgression: it is from the fact that there is a Law that the spectacle of the passions which infringe it derives its value” (20)

There are characters. There are archetypes. There are stories. There are gestures, movements, and words that get used by the wresters, the “actors” of their matches (their “stage”), to convey meaning and signify abstractions. All of these characteristics and features of wrestling serve a purpose and have intent. That’s what makes wrestling more than just a simple spectacle or a base form of entertainment. There are structures, concepts, and rules to wrestling. Like how a narrative must include actors, conflicts, and settings to be successful, wrestling has features that it needs and maintains to produce “meaning.”

Rather than say it out loud, something complex like “Justice” is conveyed by having a hero headlock or body slam the villain. If an opponent says something bad or mean to another one, it’s obvious that the other must get “payback” by talking back or fighting. These gestures with intent establish the “signified” and “signifiers” of wrestling.

Procedural rhetoric it’s something that interacts with video games. It’s important because it makes video games to be created and it is a “theorist” work of “philosophy and technology” as both “persuasion” and “expression” being a goal of “high intensity medium” where video games can be something that is significant and a study of procedural rhetoric. The study of procedural rhetoric reveals that it makes claims on how things will be working. Based on how it makes a tick where it’s something that doesn’t make you distract or entertain but instead it makes a claim about the word it doesn’t show you nor speak. Instead video games put together an argument that processes Procedural rhetoric that puts rules together where it describes how its function is a  system that characterizes it.  Thinking about this mode of rhetoric makes us understand why videogames are doing on the deeper levels of the set of rules that are code through the “programming” and “motivates” its a visual rhetoric as well as its “ procedural”. The role that he imagined for educators, Parents and students was that video games are a “kind of literacy” Where there are two types of literacy that “doesn’t help read” and a “critique system” that is a “political system”. It’s “The kind of technology literacy that procedural rhetoric offers is becoming increasingly necessary for kids and adults alike.” As well, “This process starts at home where parents can help their kids play games critically, just as they might help their kids understand novels or films by virtue of their own familiarity with those media.” One part of what he mentioned was how some of his parents grew up with video games. The next generation will do the same “Parents of all kinds can learn to play video games, but those who grew up with video games themselves are already raising the next generation of children”. On the understanding of video games and how they function, what set of rules it has based on how he thought of educators was that video games are the same as reading and writing where it’s something being teached and takes practice.  “Educators should consider adopting video games as artifacts to be discussed alongside traditional media in subjects like literature, language arts, history, and art, teaching game playing as an argumentative and expressive practice alongside read-ing, writing, and debating”(2671). Based on how Bogost relies on both Procedure rhetoric terms on how he images. Video games are arguments that seek and change how its thoughts were. One part of the reading that fits with this was on how he thought “ When we play video games, we can interpret these arguments and consider their place in our lives. In this way, playing video games is a kind of literacy. Not the literacy that helps us read books or write term papers, but the kind of literacy that helps us make or critique the systems we live in. By system”(Pg# 2671). Do to how it makes you change, thinks and believe in the type of rules, it has a similarity with what is being learned in schools or on how the set of rules in video games is. The teaching of this mode of literacy is different and how it will benefit students is by the function of systems are “accurately-for” and these models can be examples as to procedural rhetoric. On one hand it makes students know of the use of video games in a specific way which is to “model how the mechanical and professional rules of aviation work.” Shows them “arguments about how social, cultural, and political processes work as well.”