Brands
“In a single day, how many really nonsignifying fields do we cross?” Roland Barthes, the French semiotician, parlayed everything from Greta Garbo’s face to laundry soap through his prism. But brands, those all-important names we covet, consume and then consume some more, remain among modern society’s most prevalent signifiers, writes Louise Lucas.
Brands are everywhere: shouting from the television (through adverts and product placements), billboards and the moment you enter a shop. Not for nothing is an early signifier in The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel and now a Baz Luhrmann-directed film, the enormous yellow spectacles advertising the all-seeing optician TJ Eckleburg.