McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Roland Barthes Reviews Pac-Man.

Two hierarchies enmesh themselves in the routine of consuming pellets and hunting phantoms, producing a single myth. The first is familial, the patrilineal logic that tells us Pac-Man and his partner, who we know only by her relation to Pac-Man, should bear a son in the image of themselves and in the image of modern France. The sign of Jr. Pac-Man communicates by way of exclusion that the future France will, too, descend from Charlemagne. Our magazines advertise that France abides “three colors, [but] one empire,” while silently assuring the Gaulois bourgeoisie that the face of Pac will be the singular face of the multivalent state. –via McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Roland Barthes Reviews Pac-Man..

This is satire, by the way. See also What to Say When Friends are Discussing Video Games That You Have Not Played