Barthes

In this essay as in the previous ones Barthes reveals a shift in meaning between signifiers apparently transparent, but which conceal a certain opacity. The starting point of this essay is the 1stWorld Detergents Congress held in Paris in September 1954.
The advertising at that time is one of Barthes’s favourite subject of analyse, especially when the advert tries to make the product to appearmore than it is.
Barthes makes what seems to be at a first sight a simple comparison between some of the products available at that time. So, some of them ‘kill’ the dirt while others ‘force out’ thedirt, insinuating that ‘Javel’ operates in a radical, uncompromising almost fanatical way while on the other side ‘Omo’ acts with more diplomacy.

Behind this discourse an entire dimension about‘bleaching’ weaves, a dimension which is linked to the social dimension of surface appearance, but which the publicity speech charges with an opposite depth and meaning , that the detergent actions onfabrics: ‘is to assume that linen is deep ,which no one had previously thought’
Analyzing the ads for wash- powders and detergents, Roland Barthes11 recommends a psychoanalytic study of thoseadvertising formula proposed by Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch group. Some detergents, Barthes notes, "kill" the dirt, others a "chasing away" while others "kill". Persil's action, for instance, makes an objectto be "whiter than" other, Omo "thoroughly cleaned" it is "whiter, cleaner, and brighter. In addition, foam produced by those detergents has a suggestive function. Not associated to that released thechampagne or the fluffiness of "clothing? Barthes thinks that foam is "the sign of certain spirituality," the pretext of a genuine environmental phenomenology.
He takes the example of Persil’scommercial which uses a comparison of 2 products one whiter than the other which in his opinion suggests that the society was ‘concern with appearances’ too much. Omo also bases its add on the result of...