“No job to be found in this country,” one voice cries out. “The people getting angry,” booms another, ominously.
But, clearly, it expressed the mood of the early days of Thatcher’s Britain for many. “It was clear that something was very, very, wrong,” the song’s writer, Jerry Dammers, has said.
Postcolonial Theory :
– Racial Otherness : Gilroy studied the importance of black representation. The ‘ There ain’t no black in the Union Jack relates back to the race relations from the Second World war. Thus where the poster-war wave of immigration from the West Indies produced a series of worries and anxieties regarding immigrant behaviour. The black community are constructed as a racial ‘other’ in the predominantly white world of 1950s Britain. There were worries that immigrant communities would swamp / take over white Britain. These fears were further noted in the news in late 1970s and 1980s and routed the black community with assaults, muggings and other violent crimes.
‘It is not then a matter of how many blacks there are, but of the type of danger they represent to the nation’ – Gilroy 2008
– Post-colonial Melancholia :
-The story of UK race relations post W.W. 2 : In 1950’s, the black community such as Indians and the Caribbean came to England as ‘we’ were in desperate need of filled job spaces.
– Legacy of the Empire : Gilroy suggests that we live in ‘morbid culture of a once-imperial nation that has not been able to accept its inevitable loss of prestige’. England couldn’t accept the fact that it was loosing its empire power.
Ghost Town – BBC:
Quote – “It was clear that something was very, very, wrong,” the song’s writer, Jerry Dammers, has said.
Quote – “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. Your economy is destroyed and, to me, that’s what Ghost Town is about.”
Quote – “No job to be found in this country,” one voice cries out. “The people getting angry,” booms another, ominously.
Specials grew up in the 1960s listening to a mixture of British and American pop and Jamaican ska. 1981, industrial decline had left the city suffering badly. Unemployment was among the highest in the UK. The Specials, too, encapsulated Britain’s burgeoning multiculturalism. It expressed the mood of the early days of Thatcher’s Britain for many.
racial otherness- Gilroys study of black representation ‘there aint no black in the union jack’ focuses on the story of UK race relationships from WW2. The immigration from the west indies caused anxieties.
post-colonial melancholia- substandard living conditions produced racial representations. There were intensified fears that immigrant communities would fill up Britain.
quotes- john Kelly
a depiction of social breakdown that provided the soundtrack to an explosion of civil unrest.
“It was clear that something was very, very, wrong,”
Racial Otherness:
Post Colonial melancholia- the deep rooted shame felt as a result of the loss of the British empire. In media the loss is deflected through nostalgia and anxieties surrounding British identity.
The story of UK race relations post W.W. 2- talks about the worries of immigrant behaviour in the post-war wave of immigration from the West Indies. Public associated these immigrants with the substandard living conditions.
Legacy of the empire- Gilroy suggests we live in “morbid culture of a once-imperial nation that has not been able to accept it’s inevitable loss of prestige”. British are undergoing a crisis of national identity. Empire immigrants and their descendants, is argued to be a visible representation of British power as it once was.
The Search for Albion – Albion England is nothing more than a distracting fantasy that disguises the reality of what Britain is really like – crippled by regional poverty and an ever-widening economic social divide.
Paul Gilroy
Paul Gilroy explores the construction of racial ‘otherness’ as an underlying presence within print media reportage during the 1970s and 1980s, arguing that criminalised representations of black males regularly stigmatised the black community.
Gilroys theory:
Paul Gilroy believed “unstable” and politicised identities are “always unfinished, always being remade” and ethnicity is an “infinite process of identity construction”. In other words, ethnicity and national identity are not actually fixed or permanent.
Gilroys main points:
Info from TheConversation.com:
Racial Otherness: Gilroy explored the idea of racial otherness being underlying in print media during the 1970s and 1980s, he mainly focused on how the idea of black males regularly was set to be a criminal one. Gilroy’s main focus and research was in his study of black representation in the UK. The study was called “There Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack” where he focused on how newspapers were lurid and racist towards black people.
Post-colonial Melancholia: Racial representations were “fixed in a matrix between the imagery of squalor and that of sordid sexuality” Gilroy argued that this was gated the black community out by saying they are a “other” race in the majority white Britain.
The story of UK race relations post W.W. 2: After Gilroy’s study of how black people and immigrants where being pushed aside by people instead of being included and recognised. After that, 2 decades later, Britain was flooded with “fear” that immigrants and other races were going to “swamp” Britain.
BBC information on Ghost Town “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.” sums up the idea behind Ghost Town.
“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. Your economy is destroyed and, to me, that’s what Ghost Town is about.“
“It was clear that something was very, very, wrong,” the song’s writer, Jerry Dammers
“No job to be found in this country,” one voice cries out. “The people getting angry,” booms another, ominously.
Key Concepts:
● Cultural resistance
● Cultural hegemony
● Subcultural theory
Context:
● Race Relations
● Thatcher’s Britain
Case Studies:
● Rock Against Racism
● Rock Against Sexism
● 2 Tone
The Idea of Resistance and Political Protest:
● When we first think about political protest, what comes to mind?○ Attempts to change to laws or legislation
○ Organised political movements
○ Public protests
○ Petitions, marches
● However, we can look at political protest in terms of:
○ Cultural resistance
○ Everyday people
● Why look at cultural resistance?
○ Overt political protest is uncommon. When it occurs, it often results in a backlash.
○ Even if overt political protest does results in changes in legislation, it won’t necessarily change public
opinion.
○ Culture is what influences people’s hearts, minds and opinions. This is the site of popular change.
Key idea: the political, personal and cultural are always intertwined
Key Concepts:
● Cultural resistance
● Cultural hegemony
● Subcultural theory
Context:
● Race Relations
● Thatcher’s Britain
Case Studies:
● Rock Against Racism
● Rock Against Sexism
● 2 Tone
The Idea of Resistance and Political Protest:
● When we first think about political protest, what comes to mind?
○ Attempts to change to laws or legislation
○ Organised political movements
○ Public protests
○ Petitions, marches
● However, we can look at political protest in terms of:
○ Cultural resistance
○ Everyday people
● Why look at cultural resistance?
○ Overt political protest is uncommon. When it occurs, it often results in a backlash.
○ Even if overt political protest does results in changes in legislation, it won’t necessarily change public
opinion.
○ Culture is what influences people’s hearts, minds and opinions. This is the site of popular change.
Key idea: the political, personal and cultural are always intertwined
Cultural Hegemony:
● Antonio Gramsci: Italian philosopher writing in the 1930s
Key Terms:
● Hegemonic: dominant, ruling-class, power-holders
● Hegemonic culture: the dominant culture
● Cultural hegemony: power, rule, or domination maintained by ideological and cultural means.
● Ideology: worldview – beliefs, assumptions and values
● Cultural hegemony functions by framing the ideologies of the dominant social group as the only legitimate
ideology.
● The ideologies of the dominant group are expressed and maintained through its economic, political, moral,
and social institutions (like the education system and the media).
● These institutions socialise people into accepting the norms, values and beliefs of the dominant social
group.
● As a result, oppressed groups believe that the social and economic conditions of society are natural and
inevitable, rather than created by the dominant group.
Subcultural Theory: The Birmingham School (1970s)
● In the 1970s, a group of cultural theorists in Birmingham applied Gramsici’s theories to post-war
British working-class youth culture
● Looked at working class cultures like the teddy-boys, mods, skinheads, and punks – subcultures
unified by shared tastes in fashion, music and ideology.
● They argued argued that the formation of subcultures offered young working class people a solution
to the problems they were collectively experiencing in society.
Positives of The Birmingham School’s subcultural theory:
● Validated the study of popular culture – previously considered superficial
Criticism The Birmingham School’s subcultural theory:
● Focused on white working class masculinity
● Ignored ethnic minority, female and queer youth cultures
Race:
● Bringing race into the picture in the 1980s, Paul Gilroy
highlighted how black youth cultures represented
cultural solutions to collectively experienced problems
of racism and poverty
Post-War British Race Relations:
After WW2, many Caribbean men and women migrated to Britain seeking jobs.
They were faced with racism and discrimination, and found it difficult to find
employment and housing.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the children of these Caribbean immigrants were
reaching adulthood. They were subject to violence and discrimination from both
the state and far right groups. However, they more likely to resist the racism of
British society compared with their parents.
Racism from the State: The Police
● Frequent clashes between the police and black youth
● Widespread fears over law and order, black street
crime and the figure of ‘the mugger’
● SUS laws
● New Cross Fire (1981)
Gilroys theory:
Paul Gilroy believed “unstable” and politicised identities are “always unfinished, always being remade” and ethnicity is an “infinite process of identity construction”. In other words, ethnicity and national identity are not actually fixed or permanent.
Gilroys main points:
racial otherness
Gilroy’s hugely important study of black representation.
‘there aint no Black ibn the union jack’ -The story of UK relations from WW2 onwards, the post war wave of immigration from the west indies produced a series of anxiety’s regarding immigrant behaviours.
‘Lurid newspaper reports of black pimps living off the immortal earnings of white women’ – Gilroy 2008, 95.
The black community are constructed as a racial ‘other’ in the predominantly white world of 1950s Britain. There were worries that immigrant communities would swamp / take over white Britain. These fears were further noted in the news in late 1970s and 1980s and routed the black community with assaults, muggings and other violent crimes.
‘It is not then a matter of how many blacks there are, but of the type of danger they represent to the nation’ – Gilroy 2008
post-colonial melancholia
substandard living conditions produced racial representations. There were intensified fears that immigrant communities would fill up Britain. Racial representations were “fixed in a matrix between the imagery of squalor and that of sordid sexuality” Gilroy argued that this was gated the black community out by saying they are a “other” race in the majority white Britain.
The story of UK race relations post W.W. 2: After Gilroy’s study of how black people and immigrants where being pushed aside by people instead of being included and recognised. After that, 2 decades later, Britain was flooded with “fear” that immigrants and other races were going to “swamp” Britain.
Ghost Town – BBC:
Quote – “It was clear that something was very, very, wrong,” the song’s writer, Jerry Dammers, has said.
Quote – “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. Your economy is destroyed and, to me, that’s what Ghost Town is about.”
Quote – “No job to be found in this country,” one voice cries out. “The people getting angry,” booms another, ominously.
Specials grew up in the 1960s listening to a mixture of British and American pop and Jamaican ska. 1981, industrial decline had left the city suffering badly. Unemployment was among the highest in the UK. The Specials, too, encapsulated Britain’s burgeoning multiculturalism. It expressed the mood of the early days of Thatcher’s Britain for many.
As Ghost Town reached number one, its lyrics were horribly borne out. “Can’t go on no more,” sang the Specials, “the people getting angry.” As if on cue, the worst mainland rioting of the century broke out in Britain’s cities and towns. For the first and only time, British pop music appeared to be commenting on the news as it happened.
Levi Strauss
Binary Oppositions
This theory suggests that NARRATIVES (=myths) are STRUCTURED around BINARY OPPOSITIONS eg: good v evil; human v alien; young v old etc etc.
E.G from blinded by the light
dad and son
Uni and no Uni
old and young
Pakistani and English
Pakistanis vs skinheads
It therefore creates a dominant message (ideology) of a film, TV programme, advert, music video, animation etc. So in this way audiences are encouraged to make a judgements about characters, groups, places, history, society etc. In this way, texts can be seen to either support the dominant ideologies of a society, which would make it a reactionary text ,or to challenge, question or undermines the dominant ideologies of society, in which case it could be seen as a radical text
