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?
The song is composed in E-Flat in which it is more in the theme of "mood music" and how the soundtrack reflects and engenders anxiety.

2) What subcultures did 2 Tone emerge from in the late 1970s?
They originally came up from Mod and Punk subcultures.

3) What social contexts are discussed regarding the UK in 1981?
It reflects how England was hit with recessions and the riots that were caused by it. It also shows how young black and white people at the time were not seen as the same but the "other".

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

In the music video, the way that the singers look at the camera look like they are dead and pale, there are also some unusual events such as the car going out of control and the shadows on the wall which reflect the song name.

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?
The writer suggests it is a "cry out against justice" and how 

I agree with this as the song reflects how the people in the video have nothing to do as everything is empty and everyone is gone apart from them.

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 the song as having a haunted theme to it

2) What does the article say about the social context of the time – what was happening in Britain in 1981?
The rise of unemployment rates were at large in which it is linked in the song from the lyrics of ghost town and having nothing to do.

3) How did The Specials reflect an increasingly multicultural Britain?
Their band had a mix of both black and white people.

4) How can we link Paul Gilroy’s theories to The Specials and Ghost Town?
We can use Gilroy's theory of diaspora and black identity and double consciousness in the beginning as we can see that in the modern day people are looking at Lil nas X confused. we can also see at the end we can reject the idea of othering and how Lil nas x can seem to belong in the community at the end of the music video.

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?
It had a bunch of different instruments used that represent differen genres such as the wind instruments representing the middle Eastern music, there is also the brass instruments that represent jazz music and finally there is the reggae instruments.

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 is used to show the realism of British social realist films.

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

The lighting in the video is that the mix of the colours make it so that it looks like a mix of day and night, at the same the lack of lighting in some scene where shadows are most prominent and present they make it so that it seems more eerie.

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

Their clothing such as the black and white suits shows things that they would wear when they went out clubbing as working-class men, we can also link this to the band group and how they contain both black and white people to show diversity within the group.

4) What does the factsheet suggest regarding the editing and camerawork? Pick out three key points that are highlighted here.

The way that the video is edited and how it constantly cuts from day to night in some scene shows the chaotic distortion that is in the video. 

We can also see how the hand-held shots of the camera and how they are also going all over the place give a sense of chaos and a loss of control.

The low angle shots of the town shows how intimidating the actual scenery is and how it makes the audience feel vulnerable and small from the towering buildings and skyscrappers in London.

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

We can use Todorov's equilibrium theory and how the disequilibrium is how they are all in the car losing control and some fighting shown from the shadows on the wall. The new equilibrium is the ending and how they are stuck doing nothing by the river.

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

We can apply pastiche and how it is coming off the horror genre and the ska music genre.

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.

It shows "Thatcher's Britain" and how the urban youth were affected by this, we can also see the inclusion of a diverse band with a mix of both black and white memebers.

8) How can Gauntlett's work on collective identity be applied to the video?

We can point out how it finds the common things in the audience's lives and then tries to link all of our shared tastes in order to compare them to their own lives.

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

We can apply Butler's theory that gender is an act as she says that in the music video they "perform the structure of patriarchy"

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?

In this case we can reject Gilroy's theory of double consciousness as the group is comprised of both black and white band members, as the idea of a double consciousness is seeing black representations through a white perspective.