The Specials - 'Ghost Town'

 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?
 Because the music creates a really dramatic and film-like dystopian atmosphere with eerie instruments, slow tempo and sound effects make it feel like a soundtrack.

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. 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?
The whispered chorus of “This Town/ is coming like a Ghost town”.

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.

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

1) How does the article describe the song?

It describes Ghost Town as a haunting and powerful song that captured the mood of Britain in 1981, the track sounded different from most pop music at the time because of its slow rhythm, eerie keyboard sounds and dark atmosphere, becoming almost like an anthem for the problems in British society.

2) What does the article say about the social context of the time – what was happening in Britain in 1981?
By 1981, industrial decline had left the city suffering badly. Unemployment was among the highest in the UK.

3) How did The Specials reflect an increasingly multicultural Britain?
The band included 2-tone music showing the effect Jamaican culture had on British working-class areas youth culture ,promoting anti-racism and equality.

4) How can we link Paul Gilroy’s theories to The Specials and Ghost Town?
Paul Gilroy suggests there is a "liquidity of culture" which can be seen through the hybridity of cultures in the band and 2-tone genre. 

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 worked on films such as 'out of Africa' and 'somewhere in time'. 

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?

The 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. 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. It isn’t black and white, but it sometimes feels as though it is since the colours are so bleak and desaturated.

3) What non-verbal codes help to communicate meanings in the video?

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.

-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 sequence near the start consists of a series of establishing shots and low angle shots which make the

scenery loom in an intimidating way. 

-The video ends with superimposition of a long cross-dissolve of the tunnel lights to the stone-throwing shot, to unsettling effect.

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.

Disequilibrium- 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’.

New Equilibrium- Their bleak arrival at the river, having found nothing else to do.

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

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.

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. This means that the text offers a place for men to see their problems being enacted and perhaps compare them with their own lives in what was a time of economic deprivation for many when many traditionally masculine jobs were disappearing.

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

She referred to gender 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?

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.