Background and historical contexts
1) Why does the writer link the song to cinematic soundtracks and music hall tradition?
- It reflects and engenders anxiety.
2) What subcultures did 2 Tone emerge from in the late 1970s?
- 2 Tone had emerged stylistically from the Mod and Punk subcultures and its musical roots and the people in it, audiences and bands, were both black and white.
3) What social contexts are discussed regarding the UK in 1981?
- England was hit by recession and away from rural Skinhead nights, riots were breaking out across its urban areas. Deprived, forgotten, run down and angry, these were places where young people, black and white, erupted. In these neglected parts of London, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool the young, the unemployed, and the disaffected fought pitch battles with the police.
4) Cultural critic Mark Fisher describes the video as ‘eerie’. What do you think is 'eerie' about the Ghost Town video?
- There is no one in the streets but The Specials.
5) Look at the final section (‘Not a dance track’). What does the writer suggest might be the meanings created in the video? Do you agree?
-When “Ghost Town” played, the Skinheads sang along with Terry Hall, smiled manically and screeched. They joined into to the “ghastly chorus” and became, for a few minutes, part of that army of spectres. Because protest sometimes has no words.
It’s just a cry out against injustice, against closed off opportunities by those who have pulled the ladder up and robbed the young, the poor, the white and black of their songs and their dancing, their futures.
1) How does the article describe the song?
- Few songs evoke their era like the Specials' classic Ghost Town, a depiction of social breakdown that provided the soundtrack to an explosion of civil unrest.
2) What does the article say about the social context of the time – what was happening in Britain in 1981?
- Released on 20 June 1981 against a backdrop of rising unemployment, its blend of melancholy, unease and menace took on an entirely new meaning when Britain's streets erupted into rioting almost three weeks later - the day before Ghost Town reached number one in the charts.
3) How did The Specials reflect an increasingly multicultural Britain?
- The future Specials grew up in the 1960s listening to a mixture of British and American pop and Jamaican ska.
4) How can we link Paul Gilroy’s theories to The Specials and Ghost Town?
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5) The article discusses how the song sounds like a John Barry composition. Why was John Barry a famous composer and what films did he work on?
- He provided the musical scores for more than 100 motion pictures and television programs.
- Somewhere in time, Out of Africa, Doctor No
Ghost Town - Media Factsheet
1) Focus on the Media Language section. What does the factsheet suggest regarding the mise-en-scene in the video?
- The mise-en-scene of the Ghost Town video uses the style
of British social realist films.
2) How does the lighting create intertextual references? What else is notable about the lighting?
- The mise-en-scene of Ghost Town also makes use of a visual style that borrows from expressionist cinema. (see example in image). In the car, the band are lit eerily by a limited interior light source and what looks like a handheld torch to light the faces of those in the back from a low angle.
3) What non-verbal codes help to communicate meanings in the video?
- The car is a Vauxhall Cresta, which signifies the importance of the 1960s to the two-tone culture that influenced both The Specials and other bands. This term was coined by a band member and described not just the multi-ethnic mix of band members but also the mixture of musical influences on them. The dress code reflects what working-class men both black and white might have worn on a night out clubbing. Non-verbal codes play a
memorable role in contributing to the atmosphere of the video. The singing of the song with expressionless faces and direct mode-of-address with zombie-like, stiff body movements are suddenly relaxed in the manic middle section.
4) What does the factsheet suggest regarding the editing and camerawork? Pick out three key points that are highlighted here.
- Editing is used to control the pace of the video and camerawork distorts our sense of day and night. One scene is cut like an action sequence of a car chase. Both its style and short shot duration give a frenetic feel. This is reinforced by handheld, disorienting camerawork with whip pans and canted angles.
5) What narrative theories can be applied to the video? Give details from the video for each one.
- Equilibrium: The band setting off together looking for something to do, accompanied by the eerie diegetic sound and the green traffic light, an arbitrary sign that things are being set in motion.
- Hermeneutic codes Whose car are we in? Where are the band going? Why does everything seem to be shutdown?
6) How can we apply genre theory to the video?
- Gauntlett suggests that media texts may offer us a sense of collective identity, by being an audience member and finding things in common with others via our shared tastes. In this sense the song and video nurture a sense of male collective identity, and shares the experience of trying to negotiate identity.
7) Now look at the Representations section. What are the different people, places and groups that are represented in the Ghost Town video? Look for the list on page 4 of the factsheet.
- ‘Thatcher’s Britain’, The City, Urban youth, Race Masculinity
8) How can Gauntlett's work on collective identity be applied to the video?
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9) How can gender theorists such as Judith Butler be applied to Ghost Town?
- The total absence of women is a significant point in itself. Feminist theorists might argue that the video eclipses women’s own feelings of hopelessness. Perhaps the effect of unemployment on their realities, etc. are ignored in this text which frames these as exclusively male issues.
10) Postcolonial theorists like Paul Gilroy can help us to understand the meanings in the Ghost Town music video. What does the factsheet suggest regarding this?
- Post-colonialists might argue that there is double consciousness (Gilroy) here. This term refers to the experience of being part of a black minority in a predominantly white culture, seeing black representations being constructed for white people from the outside with very little self-representation. Black musicians, as part of a music industry in the UK which was controlled by the white majority, had limited control in terms of self-representation and were often side-lined in bands which were multi-ethnic.
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