Forms of political protests:
– Attempts to change laws or legislation
– Organised political movements
– Public protests
– Petitions
– Marches

• Direct resistance against society and government can lead to conflict and backlash so the use and expression of meaning in video and lyrical videos can be used as a more subtle form of rebellion.
• BBC’s quotation and ideas 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.”

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

When writing in the 1930s Gramsci researched why so many people followed and believed in fascist Germany.

It became the idea about hegemony, where more powerful people would change peoples views and imbedded their own political views deep into their culture as the easiest way to make someone believe in such extreme views is to access their emotional and mental state and to get them to truly believe in what they are told, which is done through this hegemony. —–>

• 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).
• 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.

Paul Gilroy + GHOST TOWN QUOTES AND NOTES

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.

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.

Quotes:

• “It was clear that something was very, very, wrong,” the song’s writer, Jerry Dammers
• “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.“
• “No job to be found in this country,” one voice cries out. “The people getting angry,” booms another, ominously.