Barthes says that everything is mythological, basically, even professional wrestling. There is a fakery about the sport that adds to its mythic nature by making the audience voluntarily participate in the game, which lends to the titanic quality of the wrestlers. But by analyzing the parts of the myth that aren't readily explained by the premise (he notices that the wrestlers are effeminately clad), one can understand the real purpose of the sport in the lives of the people who enjoy it.
He offers an interpretation that is complex and perhaps offensive to many. He says that wrestling is about working through the confusing nature of masculinity in the human experience, because there are combat modes within human masculinity, and without confidence, a person trying to be more masculine could easily become aggressive instead, leading to a twisted, violent identity. Wrestling demonstrates that risk within the domain of fun and game.
The narrative is an indication of the human animal, it would seem, then, because the biological response to the chaos of the human experience is to frame problems in mythological devices that allow people to process in joint ways the problems they experience on an individual level. This leads to a system of style assumptions, a meme currency, as Richard Dawkins might call it, which explains the cultural zeitgeist and its effect on people's own opinion of their identity.
