Response to Barthes

Being in the fast pace society of today, we are constantly bombarded by advertisements and other images by the media. It is our job as the viewer to digest each one of the messages and decide how we really feel about them. In “The Rhetoric of Image” by Roland Barthes, Barthes discussed how we as the audience go through our processes to break down these images. He broke down an image into three main parts: linguistic, coded iconic and finally non-coded iconic. Linguistic refers to the text attached to an image commonly used in captions. Coded iconic is the idea that each image has as cultural interpretation, this I commonly where the hidden message are developed. Finally, there is non-coded iconic images which are images that are what they are with no hidden messages or attached meanings.

Personally, Barthe’s ideas that each image has linguistic value, coded iconic and non-coded processes really spoke to me. Like I stated above, our society is so fast paced that it is almost impossible to not encounter some sort of image or advertisement in a day. Going into public relations/marketing it will be my job in the future to produce these images. I will eventually have to provoke some sort of response by an audience using these three concepts. I actually have a lot of fun breaking down an ad and trying to determine the hidden meanings behind it all. The funny thing is you can do it with almost any image, especially advertisements. Barthes’ made a good point about these hidden messages by saying, “…we never encounter (at least in advertising) a literal image in pure state” (38). I completely agree with this statement, it’s rare to find an advertisement without some sort of hidden meaning. This isn’t a bad thing either; it challenges us as consumers of an image to basically ask why did the producer use this and what are the hidden meanings. It actually makes us better consumers when we are able to interpret and find what is really being said in the image.

In conclusion, Barthes ideas behind the meaning of many images presented to us in our everyday life is really interesting. The idea the each image can be divided or more so defined by linguistic meanings, coded and non-coded iconic meanings really helps to understand some of the ideas and reasoning why some images are created.