Roland Barthes – Mythologies - soundenvironments

All this would be commonplace if we were dealing with thetraditional hero, whose whole value was to fly without forgoing hishumanity (like Saint-Exupéry who was a writer, or Lindbergh whoflew in a lounge-suit). But the mythological peculiarity of the jetmanis that he keeps none of the romantic and individualisticelements of the sacred role, without nevertheless forsaking the roleitself. Assimilated by his name to pure passivity (what is moreinert and more dispossessed than an object expelled in jet form?),he reintegrates the ritual nevertheless, thanks to the myth of afictitious, celestial race, which is said to derive its peculiaritiesfrom its ascetic life, and which effects a kind of anthropologicalcompromise between humans and Martians. The jet-man is areified hero, as if even today men could conceive the heavens onlyas populated with semi-objects.73The Blue GuideThe Blue Guide * hardly knows the existence of scenery exceptunder the guise of the picturesque. The picturesque is found anytime the ground is uneven. We find again here this bourgeoispromoting of the mountains, this old Alpine myth (since it datesback to the nineteenth century) which Gide rightly associated withHelvetico-Protestant morality and which has always functioned asa hybrid compound of the cult of nature and of puritanism(regeneration through clean air, moral ideas at the sight ofmountain-tops, summit-climbing as civic virtue, etc.). Among theviews elevated by the Blue Guide to aesthetic existence, we rarelyfind plains (redeemed only when they can be described as fertile),never plateaux. Only mountains, gorges, defiles and torrents canhave access to the pantheon of travel, inasmuch, probably, as theyseem to encourage a morality of effort and solitude. Travelaccording to the Blue Guide is thus revealed as a labour-savingadjustment, the easy substitute for the morally uplifting walk. Thisin itself means that the mythology of the Blue Guide dates back tothe last century, to that phase in history when the bourgeoisie wasenjoying a kind of new-born euphoria in buying effort, in keepingits image and essence without feeling any of its ill-effects. It istherefore in the last analysis, quite logically and quite stupidly, thegracelessness of a landscape, its lack of spaciousness or humanappeal, its verticality, so contrary to the bliss of travel, whichaccount for its interest. Ultimately, the Guide will coolly write:'The road becomes very picturesque (tunnels)': it matters little thatone no longer sees anything, since the tunnel here has become thesufficient sign of the mountain; it is a financial security stableenough for one to have no further worry about its value over thecounter.Just as hilliness is overstressed to such an extent as to eliminate allother types of scenery, the human life of a country disappears tothe exclusive benefit of its monuments. For the Blue Guide, men74