ABSTRACT
In his analysis of the ‘New Citroën’, Barthes observes that the car appears to have ‘fallen from the sky’. Licensed by the pun in French of its name, ‘DS’, signifying Déesse, or goddess, Barthes reflects on the supernatural appearance of the vehicle, its perfection of form seeming to deny its origins on the factory production line and to prepare consumers for a rapprochement between technology and nature. We take as our subject the mediatization of a Citroën model of more recent vintage, the Citroën Xsara Picasso, first launched in 1999. Like Barthes, we argue that one of the key aspects of the car’s representation was the obscuring of its origins in the social world of production. However, we also show that the marketing for the car sought to associate it with the qualities of artistic genius and individualism.
