Music Video: The Specials - Ghost Town CSP

 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?
Starting with a Hammond organ’s six ascending notes before a mournful flute solo, it paints a bleak aural and lyrical landscape. Written in E♭, more attuned to “mood music”, with nods to cinematic soundtracks and music hall tradition, it reflects and engenders anxiety.
2) What subcultures did 2 Tone emerge from in the late 1970s?
Punk and mod
3) What social contexts are discussed regarding the UK in 1981?
Riots were breaking out across its urban areas. Deprived, forgotten, run down and angry, these were places where young people, black and white, erupted.
4) Cultural critic Mark Fisher describes the video as ‘eerie’. What do you think is 'eerie' about the Ghost Town video?
The location of London being cmpletely empty, which isn normal at all for a place like london.
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. 

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.
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.
3) How did The Specials reflect an increasingly multicultural Britain?
They had black and white members.
4) How can we link Paul Gilroy’s theories to The Specials and Ghost Town?
The idea that through through diaspora and having members that are black in a time where racism and discrimination against black people was a high show of Britain’s emerging multiculturalism.
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?
Mystery Men (1999), SLC Punk! (1998) and Sus (2010)

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 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. 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. 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?

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.

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. Three key points are travelling shots, cross-dissolve and low angle shots.

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

Barthes: Hermeneutic codes Whose car are we in? Where are the band going? Why does everything seem to be shut down?

Todorov: 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.

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

Performative The performer or band appear in the video

performing it in some way – this could be a

literal performance or just one band member

lip-synching.

Narrative The video has an identifiable story, usually

connected in some way with the lyrics

(although not always).

Concept-based There is a motif or idea that defines the visual

style of the video – it may be abstract or more

obviously connected with a symbolic code

defined by the lyrics.

7) 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.

8) 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.

9) 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-colonial theorists also use the idea of in-groups, who are the people who have power and influence in society and are often the greater number. Out-groups tend to have less power – they are perhaps fewer and/or more marginalised (made to feel powerless). The video challenges the notion of in-groups and out-groups by mixing ethnicities and focusing more on social class and the bonding potential of music. Post-colonialists might argue that there is double consciousness (Gilroy) here.