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?

Starting with a Hammond organ’s six ascending notes before a mournful flute solo, it paints a bleak aural and lyrical landscape. 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?

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?

Around 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 reasons why the Ghost Town video was seen as 'eerie' is because of the video being shot in a deserted East End of London, Blackwell Tunnel and a before-hours City of London. Opening with upshots of brutal grey tower blocks to the sound of those Hammond organ chords and flute, it seems as though there is no one in town but The Specials, who are all crowded into a 1962 Vauxhall Cresta, careering through the empty streets and lip syncing. Furthermore the use of the camera being placed on the car bonnet so we see The Specials feels like as if they are crashing into us giving us that uncomfortable and eerie effect and when they all sing “yah, ya ya, ya, yaah, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya…”, they seem like an insane Greek chorus. 

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 (one of the lead band members in The Specials), smiled manically and screeched. They joined the “ghastly chorus” and became, for a few minutes, part of that army of spectres. Because protests sometimes has no words.

I feel like how the whole music video was structured and placed especially with the setting they used to film this music video does make sense to why they would make a video like this because of everything that was going on at the time such as Margret Thatcher for example being elected and saying a hate speech of Britain is being "swamped" by non-white people and young people were being robbed of their futures and trying to make a living. Because of all these many great factors that happened during the time this music video fits in perfectly well to show and make a stand against racism and how young people should be treated more equally and fairly. 

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.

4) How can we link Paul Gilroy’s theories to The Specials and Ghost Town?

We can link Paul Gilroy's diasporic identity theory which is the feeling of never quite belonging or being accepted in societies to this day to The Specials and their music video Ghost Town because of the representations in the music video are racially diverse. This reflects its musical genre of Ska, a style which could be read politically in the contexts of a racially divided country.  

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?

"There's something frenzied and mad about that record," he says. "It has such a kaleidoscope of influences - jazz, (film score composer) John Barry, Middle Eastern music, a solid reggae undertone and stuff that sounds like nothing else.

John Barry was famous because of him being 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. The five-times Oscar winner was born in York on 3 November 1933.

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. In the car, the band is 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 film making technique suited to the aesthetic.

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.

Editing is used to control the pace of the video and camerawork distorts our sense of day and night. The band are generally shot as a group, emphasising the relationship between them. Most of the shots are on-board travelling shots and some are in the interior of the car which invites audience identification with the band. 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 an unsettling effect.

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

We can apply Todorvs equilibrium theory such as the normal equilibrium being The band setting off together looking for something to do, accompanied by the eerie diegetic sound and the green traffic light with the disruption being  bleakness and emptiness of the streets and then the restoration being  the shadowy figures and ghostly conflicts encountered in the car chase style scenes and then lastly the new equilibrium being their bleak arrival at the river, having found nothing else to do.

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

Preformative: The performer or band appears in the video performing it in some way – this could be a literal performance or just one band member lip-syncing.

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) 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. A preferred reading of the video would have seen the protest message at the heart of the video being accepted. In this sense, the video can be understood as intending to have a unifying effect on a sub-culture of British Youth – uniting them in anger at the establishment rather than ‘fighting amongst themselves' , particularly in the case of race riots.

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 share 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?

Judith Butler is a useful theorist to explore in relation to this text. 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. 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 fact sheet suggest regarding this?

Post-colonialists such as Paul Gilroy's theory of double consciousness here 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