In his essay, The Rhetoric of Video Games, video game designer and cultural theorist Ian Bogost challenges the typical interpretation of the idea of “play”. While play is commonly regarded as an activity of leisure and the complete opposite of a serious task, Bogost thinks of it as a more laborious concept. He quotes Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen’s definition of play: “Play is the free space of movement within a more rigid structure” (2657). He introduces the image of children on a playground and explains how they can adapt to their environment and create new games and rules based on the limitations of that environment. The rigid structure is the playground and how the children interact with this environment is the play. In short, the children can work their way around the fixed rules of the playground. When playing, children can “renegotiate their relationship with a possibility space” (2657). In the context of a video game, the “possibility space” is the set of all possible outcomes from a fixed set of rules.

Bogost places this idea in the context of literature, where the “possibility space” can be the opportunities for expression formed by the rules of composition. Even if there is a rigid structure, such as that of a haiku, artists still explore different possible arrangements within the framework of that structure. They are simply playing within the restrictions of their form. Some artists have also changed the possibility space for literary expression by inventing or reworking concepts rather than adopting ones that were already in place (2657). This was seen in the artistic movement known as Oulipo in the mid-twentieth century, whose members are credited with the invention of new forms of literary expression such as the palindrome and the lipogram. Through their interactions with the rigid structure of literary expression, the members of this group created meaning by exercising free movement, similar to children inventing games on a playground.

This exercise of free movement can also be applied when playing video games. A player can produce a series of different arrangments within the system of a game, most likely to assign meaning. The nature of video games can be representative of real-world topics, and by utilizing the possibility space, players can discover new ways to explore these topics. This can be done for real-world issues and literary expression. By moving through the free space, or simply “playing”, we can learn to assign meaning.

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.”

Ferdinand de Saussure is known as the father of structural linguistics and he lays out his pretty revolutionary theories in the “Course in General Linguistics” in which he explains how language is structured not as a system of innate concepts but rather how language is exactly the opposite. As he says “There are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language”(Saussure 830). For Saussure, language is a constructed series of signs that are in a constant state of difference. The Sign is in a purely negative system, meaning that any sign lies in the expanse of other signs.

The way he formulates his arguments is he first identifies the characteristics of language. The first characteristic is that language as a system is fixed and words are different from each other. The second characteristic is that the study of language itself is the subject of a mostly independent study. The third characteristic is that language is arborescent in the sense that it “is a system of signs in which the only essential thing is the union of meanings and sound-images”(Saussure 824). The final characteristic is that language is constructed sum of the totality of other sound-images. 

He speaks a lot of sound-image which I, at the beginning of reading the text, was under the assumption of the sound-image being a term to describe the association speech and perception but as Saussure uses it is far more. Of the nature of the sound-image he says “The latter is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound” (Saussure 826). That is to say, at least how I understand it, that the sound image is psychological less than it is necessarily “material”.This then is opposed by the concept, which is simply the idea of whatever is being referred to. Saussure refers to these two as; the signified(concept) and the signifier (sound-image), which they come to be as a whole a sign. The relation of the two is solely abortuary, in that any succession of sounds is not linked to the idea. The sign then is not purposeful, it does not gravitate towards objects in the world, rather words come into being on a purely differential relationship. Saussure view on language gets translated into his epistemological view in which he says pretty definitively ;

“ Philosophers and linguists have always agreed in recognizing that without the help of signs we would be unable to make a clear-cut, consistent distinction between two ideas. Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. There are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language.”(Saussure 830)

 We see here how Saussure thinks any talk about “innate ideas” or “a priori knowledge” is naive. For him, reality is not fixed or “true”, reality is constructed with language, with signs. The ontological conclusion could be that being in the world is purely differential. For us to be things with names and conceptions of ourselves as being things, our condition in the world is defined by structures. A structure that is not necessarily positivistic, but solely negative. We are therefore constructed and not by any means whole of ourselves, but whole as a series of differentiating signs or in other words our being in the world is defined by other beings.

In The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies by Roland Barthes, he goes in depth about, predictably, the Eiffel Tower but not about how the tower is built or why it was built but about its significance to us who view it. When we think about the Eiffel tower, the immediate thought that comes after it would Paris, at least for most people, and Barthes would agree, he says in the passage “It’s simple primary shape confers upon it the vocation of an infinite cipher: in turn and according to the appeals of our imagination, the symbol of Paris, of modernity.” But why is that? Looking at it purely from a observational perspective the tower is nothing more than a huge pile of welded-together metal shaped like a pointy “A”, it has no purpose whatsoever, not like how a hospital is used for treating ill people, how train stations are used to travel from one place to another, or how a convenience store is used for, well, convenience. Nothing is really noteworthy about the tower, except for maybe its monumental size but it’s not really something different from other skyscrapers that are built in other cities. Yet the tower, as Barthes puts it, “Receives each year twice as many visitors as the Louvre and considerably more than the largest movie house in Paris.” So, an obvious question would be, well why is that the case? Well, it differs from people to people, it could be that someone might want to visit the tower because it’s a historical monument, others might do so because they believe that you haven’t really been to Paris if you haven’t visited the Eiffel tower at least once, or maybe because they want to make memories they’d want to remember for the rest of their lives there. But there is one thing all of these have in common, and it’s the feeling of sublimity and power over the world. The Eiffel Tower is a bastion of humanity, it represents what we as a species are capable of and what we can yet do if we put our collective minds into it. People visit it because they want to feel like they have the world under them and that they rule it absolutely (not in a literal sense but a metaphorical one). As Barthes says “The Tower ultimately reunites with the essential function of all major human sites: autarchy.” which is a word commonly linked with absolute power. Which makes sense, the tower represents an idea and a reality that those of us who want to visit want to be apart of as well.

            In “The Eiffel Tower” Roland Barthes draws into question the cultural and symbolic significance of the Eiffel Tower. Barthes notes that the tower has come to represent Paris itself as it has heavily engrained itself within pop culture and daily Parisian life. The Eiffel Tower, true to its nature, looms over the Paris skyline as its metal trusses solidify it as both a symbol of the past and the future, “The Tower is at once a symbol of Paris, of France, and of modernity itself”. The rawness of the tower serves as the perfect place to get a panoramic view of Paris, it is, of course, natural for us to want to see the “natural” landscape of the land. We see this here in New York City with the One World Trade Center Observatory and with the Empire State Building Observatory. While looking out of The Eiffel Tower people get an over-encompassing idealistic view of daily Parisian life as everything appears orderly and almost routine similar to ants in an ant hill performing their everyday tasks while they think no on was is watching, “The Tower seems to triumph over the disorder of the city, fixing it within a frame, organizing its elements into a coherent whole.”  

            I find it interesting how Barthes toys with the idea that we as a society flock to build these huge structures that give us some sort of an understanding of the world when the world isn’t thousands of feet up in the sky but, here on the ground level. Barthes does this by posing the idea that people are so excited to express the fact that they have been to Paris and been on the Eiffel tower but, what does that truly mean? Did you just stand there and take some pictures or videos of you looking out to Paris? How does going to Paris equate to looking at Paris from hundreds of feet in the air? Barthes expresses this idea by writing, “The Tower is both an object of fascination and a mirror reflecting the desires and anxieties of the society that produced it.” It is our constant struggle to understand the world around us that drives us to construct objects that provide us with some sort of dominion over a set area and therefore allow us to feel as though we have a sort of understanding of that set area. I believe Barthes’ commentary on The Eiffel Tower could be applied to many other facets of life as it allows for the critical analysis of our cultural symbols as being more than symbols as their importance seems to change as time passes.