Myths in the Third Cinema

I kept thinking that it seemed like the Third Cinema-makers were forming their own myths, which they then hoped to indoctrinate their nation with. And isn’t this as bad as the nasty myth made of the black soldier? I think in some ways it is—it’s impossible to deny the nationalist myth of unity put forth by revolutionaries—but it seems like myth-creation, or at least myth-perpetuation, is part of the ownership of identity that is central to creating a Third discourse. Myth is the vehicle through which collective memory can be analyzed. Myth lends memory gravity.
For example, the Goddess of the Sea, mentioned by Gabriel, “signifies the African people’s return to identity and dignity” (57). Instead of the mistrust and irony with which Barthes analyzes the black soldier’s image as “…zeal[ously] serving his so-called oppressors,” Gabriel describes the Goddess of the Sea as “marking a place of meaning” that “stimulates the hushed memories of the homeland” (116, 57). Both men are talking about similar processes, through which the signifier becomes laden with the signified concept. To Barthes, myth-making is a process of thievery and brainwashing. To Gabriel and the makers of Third Cinema, it seems that engaging in myth-making does not necessarily perpetuate a lie but expresses an experience.