GHOST TOWN

•  I  N  T  R  O  D  U  C  T  I  O  N

  Ghost Town is an iconic 80's pop song and music video and is a product which possesses cultural, social and historical significance relating to the time and place that it was made which in this case was Britain experiencing high unemployment, racial tensions and social unrest in 1981.
• I  D  E  O  L  O  G  Y

  The different modes and language associated with different media forms which in this case a music video communicate multiple meanings.

  B R I T A I N - 1 9 8 1

  The combination of elements of media language influence meaning. The filmmaker and the music artist(The Specials) are using Media language to incorporate their own viewpoints and ideologies based on what it was like to live in Britain and experience inequalities in the distribution of wealth in the early 1980’s when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.  
• "Ghost Town" is a song by the British two-tone band the Specials, released in June 1981.The song spent three weeks at number one and 10 weeks in total in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart. 

  Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party were in power in Britain in 1981and the song was interpreted as a response to the political, social and economic policies of this government.
• The video and song lyrics promote and communicate an ideological message from the filmmaker and songwriter of early 80’s UK social unrest,high unemployment and racial tension.
• In 1981 Britain was led by a Conservative Government under the leadership of a controversial Prime Minister called Margaret Thatcher. Her policies were harsh and led to high unemployment and social unrest. The mining community in the North of England were in uproar at the government closure of coal mines cutting thousands of jobs. This led to violent protests with the police.
• Towns-and cities all over the country were suffering from urban decay and high unemployment as result of the government’s aggressive economic policies of increasing interest rates and taxes.The reality was that there were changes to the distribution of wealth, generally to the detriment of the working classes under the new government. So effectively the rich appeared to be getting richer and the poor appeared to be getting poorer.
• The Afro Caribbean community in Britain were disaffected and felt forgotten, deprived and discriminated against. Racism was a big issue and affected job prospects and investment in the community.
• The black community also felt that they were unfairly targeted by the police by a controversial stop and search law(SUS)that appeared to discriminate against their community.
• Over a sparse reggae bass line, a West Indian vocal mutters warnings of urban decay, unemployment and violence. "No job to be found in this country," one voice cries out. "The people getting angry," booms another, ominously. The song's much-celebrated video - in which the band, crammed into a Vauxhall Cresta car, patrol empty, crumbling streets - seems unlikely promotional material for a hit single.
• As their popularity grew, the band's tours of the UK took them around a country shaken by rising joblessness. Keyboardist Jerry Dammers has cited the sight of elderly women in Glasgow selling their household possessions on the street as the song's inspiration.
• 2 Tone Records was an English record label that mostly released SKA and reggae-influenced music with a punk rock and pop music overtone. It was founded by Jerry Dammers,the keyboardist of the Specials in 1979 and backed by Chrysalis Records who had wanted to sign the Specials.
• The label spawned the 2 Tone music and cultural movement, which was popular among skinheads, rudies and some mod revivalists. The label stopped operating in 1986, though "2 Tone" is still used as an imprint for back catalogue issues. 
• 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, sharpened further by punk attitude and anger.
• The single was undoubtedly The Specials’ most successful single, gaining some recognition abroad. It reached number 3 in Ireland, number 7 in Norway and number 12 in the Netherlands. In fact, Ghost Town was the first 2Tone record to sell of a million copies, a record for the label that was not broken by any subsequent 2Tone release.
• Released in 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.
• “a l l  t h e  c l u b s  h a v e  b e e n  c l o s e  d o w n”

  “t o o  m u c h  f i g h t i n g o n  t h e d a n c e f l o o r”

  One of the clubs referred to in the song was The Locarno in Coventry, the Midlands UK city where the 2 Tone record label started in the late 1970s.
• One of the clubs referred to in the song was The Locarno in Coventry, the Midlands UK city where the 2 Tone record label started in the late 1970s.
• 1981 - Unemployment in Coventry was among the highest in the UK.
• "I saw it develop from a boom town, my family doing very well, through to the collapse of the industry and the bottom falling out of family life." - Drummer John Bradbury on how Ghost Town epitomises Coventry.
• The newly arrived Afro-Caribbean community in Britain came up against racism and discrimination which eventually led to the racial tensions and ultimately race riots in the 1980’s. The most famous racist murder involved the stabbing of innocent teenager Stephen Lawrence...
• Truly a testament to the rugged early days of studio tinkering and doing the best with what you got, “Ghost Town” sounds enormous and lush with atmosphere. The decision to make the song sound both eerie lyrically (the chant "This town is coming like a ghost town”“ is repeated many times throughout the entirety) and instrumentally (a synthesizer was used to create the ghostly fade in and fade out) was a genius move despite some members backlashing against the style Dammers and Collins wanted.
• H Y B R I D  S T Y L E

  The mise-en-scene and cinematography seem to reference a range of different film styles including the British social realism, thriller and horror genres. With the lighting and shadows, with the expressionist dark lighting and shadows drawing attention to the different meanings of the lyric ‘ghost town’ such as the supernatural and horror genre. 
• The band are representative of all the young, poor, racially diverse disadvantaged people in the UK roaming the streets in a car. 
• M U S I C   V I D E O   A N A L Y S I S

  C A M E R A  S H O T S, S E T T I N G / L O C A T I O N, M I S  E N  S C E N E, M L I P  S Y N C E D, C O S T U M E S, M A K E U P, P E R F O R M A N C E, B U D G E T , S T O R Y , C H O R E O G R A P H Y / D A N C I N G, S P E C I A L  E F F E C T S, S E M I O T I C S  (How images signify cultural meanings)

  D E N O T A T I O N  /  C O N N O T A T I O N P O S T M O D E R N I S M (Intertextuality)
• D  I  A  S  P  O  R  A 

  This means a scattering of people such as black people from their original place of origin e.g. Africa to the UK or America by force(slavery)or for economic reasons. 

  People experience both a sense of belonging to a cultural group that is "other" to the dominant culture of the country of residence e.g. the UK or US.

  They may experience racism in the country of settlement and this helps develop a sense of 'otherness' called diaspora identity. There is a feeling of disconnection between both the country of origin and the country of settlement.
• Ghost town does follow the Black Atlantic Culture Theory in that it is a mixed race pop group producing a hybrid mixture of music styles including Jamaican reggae, jazz, music hall and film music creating something new. This fusion was termed SKA music and was signed to the Two Tone record label.
• What is now known as the 1981 Summer of Riots came to symbolize the disillusion of British youth with anything that smelled like government and authority. It also had a soundtrack in a perfectly timed and appropriately named number 1 hit by the Specials, their creative peak – Ghost Town.

  The discontent of the minor communities in the UK started way before 1981. Back in 1978 and before she won the election, Margaret Thatcher commented about immigration in an interview for Granada TV:
• • S  U  S  L  A  W S  T  O  P   &   S  E  A  R  C  H

  Police officers were encouraged by the sus (short for suspected) laws that authorized policemen to stop and search anyone to their discretion. After the police began Operation Swamp (named after Thatcher’s phrase) in the beginning of April to reduce crime, violence erupted in the form of turned police cars and fires that lasted a few days and ended with 280 police officers injured and hundreds arrested.
• The song's popularity was amplified once again in 2020 and 2021 when the covid 19 pandemic was at large. Everyone was enforced to stay at home, making huge cities like London appear like "Ghost Town(s)"