Bernard Gauthier

Anybody who works in the communications business can’t help but stand in awe of the historic and sweeping campaign that unfolded over the last 18 months or so. Like a crowd watching one of those incredible Chinese circus balancing acts, we stare, shake our head, blink a time or two, and try to figure out what exactly just happened. How did he do that?

Truth be told I’m still not certain what exactly just happened. But a thought occurred to me the other night as I taught a lecture on semiotics and advertising to my students at Carleton University. The topic was Roland Barthes and the notion of the “mythical supersign” that he proposed in his classic “Mythologies“ (1957). The more I explained the concept, the more it seemed to me that this was precisely what Obama had become.

In a nutshell, mythical supersigns are a second order of signs — a higher level of meaning. Take a humble cowboy hat. On one level, it’s a hat that cowboys wear on their heads. On a higher, mythical level, that hat the cowboys wear on their heads become the raw materials for a powerful symbol of masculinity, America, justice and a host of other concepts.

Here’s the neat part that Barthes figured out. Before a first-order sign can make this quantum leap from a first order of meaning to a mythical supersign, it has to be emptied of its precise meaning. The historical, political, geographic baggage has to be cast off. After all, if we get too specific about where the hat was made, who made it, how much they got paid and what type of fabric was used, we can’t make the jump to American masculinity and justice. Or, to use Barthes’ more elegant language, when a sign makes the jump to super sign, “the meaning leaves its contingency behind; it empties itself, it becomes impoverished, history evaporates, only the letter remains.”

Obama’s campaign was all about mythical moments: a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin, a legendary speech on race in Philadelphia, a Democratic convention acceptance speech backed by Roman columns, and a victory speech in windy Grant Park in Chicago. The rhetoric, of course, was beautiful - flowing, musical, lush and poetic. The themes were big - mythical, even.

Through it all, there was the well-polished shell of a real story — an improbable story about modest beginnings, a mixed-race upbringing, Harvard and community organizing in Chicago. That is the first-order Obama, the raw materials of the mythical supersign. Through brilliant staging and powerful advertising, the meaning of Obama leaves its contingency behind; it empties itself, it becomes impoverished, history evaporates, only the polished shell remains. A mythical supersign emerges and wins the election against a John McCain who could never quite escape the weight of his first-order meaning.

Barthes’ other great insight is that the first-order meaning is never lost entirely. The first-order, improbable story Obama becomes an “instantaneous reserve of history, a tamed richness” whose meaning dances with the mythical Obama “in a sort of rapid alternation.” The mythical supersign feeds off the improbable story without being weighed down by it.

So… where does all of this leave us? We stand in awe. We blink a time or two. And we hope that when it comes time for Obama to do the heavy work of a President, he can handle the weight of contingency, details and history every bit as well as he can handle mythical speeches and presidential campaigns.