Ugh. I mean it's cool that he wrote about margarine, soap, plastic, steak, and stuff but really. I don't really care all that much. I appreciate that this way of thinking about pop culture and advertisting was part of a larger shift in the 40s/50s in which criticism took up these sites of everyday and 'low' culture as objects of study. I just don't know if Barthes really takes up these objects in a way that acknowledges more than his white male privileged position. Did learn, though, that he died by getting hit by a laundry delivery truck...