A powerpoint about Barthes' five codes using examples from a small clip from the TV Drama 'Hotel Babylon'

1. By George Hardy
BARTHES 5 CODES

2. Cultural (Referential) Code
By watching the scene and taking in
the characters hairstyle, the type of
language he uses and way he speaks,
we can tell that this character could
be a black gangster-esque character.
As he uses words such as ‘ganja’,
‘bro’ and ‘poontang’ which are all
slang word which stereotypically
words spoken by a ‘gangster’ which
gives this away.

3. Semantic Code
This scene connotes the
Italian and the English
man together, smiling
and joking around. This
connotes friendship and
respect, however later
on in the scene we find
out that they really do
not like each other and
are always trying to
outdo each other.

4. Symbolic Code
The pile of cash in this scene
connotes that something bad
was going on. This amount of
money wouldn’t have been paid
to the workers by a customer if
it wasn’t illegal.

5. Enigma Code
In this scene we know
that something is going
to happen between both
the English and the
Italian man through this
enigma code. We know
this because when the
Italian man is talking to
what seems the
managers the English
man is constantly
shaking his head and
disagreeing with the
Italian man without him
knowing which shows
that he doesn’t really like
them. We don’t really
know why he doesn’t like
the Italian man which
may be revealed later on.

6. Proairetic (Action) Code
This shows that something bad is
going to happen with the knife. We
don’t know what is going to happen,
however we know he will do
something bad because of the way he
holds it.