Toys have meanings and an investigation into their meaning will reveal how society and adults are providing children with objects that turn them into unquestioning and uncritical adults. What he means is that toys are not as innocent as we might think they are they are the products of the dominant belief systems in society. This sentence summarizes Barthes’s intellectual position.
According to Barthes the problem is that,įrench toys always mean something, and this something is always entirely socialized, constructed by the myths or techniques of modern adult life. He thinks that even a simple set of blocks will encourage the child to create new shapes and structures. He thinks that contemporary French toys are ‘a microcosm of the adult world’ and ‘reduced copies’ of human objects.īarthes states his preference for toys that do not deprive the child of the opportunity to be creative. Using a cluster of related metaphors, Barthes conveys his dislike of modern toys. He complains that the French people assume that the child is another ‘self’ who has to be provided with miniature versions of everyday objects. Barthes immediately, in the opening sentence, announces his disapproval of French toys.
0 kommentar(er)
