The first 2/3rds of the book are brilliant short essays on semiotics and how the bourgeois abuse signs to keep everyone else under a spell. I particularly liked the one about the margarine advertisement which highlighted a marketing trope we still see today (this was written in the 50s).

The last third of this SUCKED. I feel as though people read Barthes for his beautifully lyrical prose… not academic jargon. I don’t think I would have minded it as much if the last footnote didn’t explicitly say ‘I wrote in a dense style to prove a point’. I understand a fear of not wanting to write for the philistine, but I don’t really understand switching your style (which people like) for the sake of obfuscation.