The Specials - Ghost Town: Blog tasks

The Specials - Ghost Town: Blog tasks
Background and historical contexts

Read this excellent analysis from The Conversation website of the impact Ghost Town had both musically and visually. Answer the following questions

1) Why does the writer link the song to cinematic soundtracks and music hall tradition?
"It’s an odd, eerie song, nodding to pop convention and sitting wilfully outside of it. It’s included, in passing, in Dorian Lynskey’s beautifully written book on protest songs, “33 Revolutions Per Minute”, but unlike the band’s “Free Nelson Mandela” does not merit its own chapter." 

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. Ska and the related Jamaican Rocksteady were its musical foundations."

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.  “Ghost Town” was the mournful sound of these riots, a poetic protest. It articulates anger at a state structure, an economic system and an entrenched animosity towards the young, black, white and poor. It asks, why must the youth fight against themselves."

4) Cultural critic Mark Fisher describes the video as ‘eerie’. What do you think is 'eerie' about the Ghost Town video?

"The hypnotic chanting of the line “this town is coming like a ghost town” expresses a nightmarish vision of the world and the wailing chorus suggests we should be incredibly frightened by the prospect of this dystopian future." 

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?

"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. Drive round an empty city at dawn. Look at the empty flats.  See the streets before the bankers get there and after the cleaning ladies have gone. And put young, poor, disadvantaged people in that car."

Now read this BBC website feature on the 30th anniversary of Ghost Town’s release. 

1) How does the article describe the song?
"It starts with a siren and those woozy, lurching organ chords. Then comes the haunted, spectral woodwind, punctuated by blaring brass. Over a sparse reggae bass line, a West Indian vocal mutters warnings of urban decay, unemployment and violence."

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?

"With a mix of black and white members, The Specials, too, encapsulated Britain's burgeoning multiculturalism. The band's 2 Tone record label gave its name to a genre which fused ska, reggae and new wave and, in turn, inspired a crisply attired youth movement.But, as a consequence, Specials gigs began to attract the hostile presence of groups like the National Front and the British Movement." 

4) How can we link Paul Gilroy’s theories to The Specials and Ghost Town?
"The song and video offers evidence of Gilroy's Black Atlantic diasporic identity theory – that black culture is forged through travel and hybridity, a “liquidity of culture"”.

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?
"John Barry was one of the all-time great masters of movie music. His career spanned some 50 years - from Midnight Cowboy and Born Free to Dances with Wolves and Out of Africa - taking in 11 James Bond films along the way."

Ghost Town - Media Factsheet

Watch the video several times before reading Factsheet #211 - Ghost Town. You'll need your GHS Google login to access the factsheet. Once you have analysed the video several times and read the whole factsheet, answer the following questions: 

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. This genre is characterised by sympathetic representations of working-class men, the highlighting of bleak (often urban) environments and a sense of hopelessness. 

2) How does the lighting create intertextual references? What else is notable about the lighting?

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. This is a highly effective low budget filmmaking technique suited to the aesthetic.The lighting design makes a virtue of available ‘natural’ sources, such as the harsh yellowy reflections of the lights in the tunnel on the windscreen as they pass over the band members, the grey skies and dark streets.

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. The band are generally shot as a group, emphasising the relationship between them. Most of the shots are on-board travelling shots. 

5) What narrative theories can be applied to the video? Give details from the video for each one.

To apply Todorov’s theory to the video, we need to reflect on the narrative of the lyrics as well as the visual content of the video. 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. This could be seen as the bleakness and emptiness of the streets because, ‘Bands don’t play no more – too much fighting.on the dance floor’. 

6) How can we apply genre theory to the video?

The video for Ghost Town is preformative because it features a ‘performance’ by the band – they are singing the song together in the car. It is also narrative in that it has a simple premise that the group are looking for somewhere to go out but are thwarted and end up throwing stones into the river. There is a secure concept to the video, which is the journey and the eeriness of the location, the zombie-like appearance of the band. Neale’s approach to theorising genre tells us that genres hybridise. Ghost Town is an example of how music videos often borrow from different cultural reference points. 

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.

The video represents a number of different ideas, locations and groups including ‘Thatcher’s Britain’, the city, urban youth, race and masculinity. 

Masculinity - in terms of their clothing, wearing suits

Race - mixed band members of black and white

Urban Youth - early twenties

City - London

8) How can Gauntlett's work on collective identity be applied 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. 

9) How can gender theorists such as Judith Butler be applied to Ghost Town?

Butler suggested that gender was not defined by the sex we are born with, but is a collection of behaviours by members of a biological sex often based on attitudes and expectations held by society. She referred to these as a ‘performance’. These musicians seem to be ‘performing’ the structures of patriarchy which include brotherhood, camaraderie and male solidarity.

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?

Gilroy's Double Consciousness 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.