Criticism The Birmingham School’s subcultural theory: ● Focused on white working class masculinity ● Ignored ethnic minority, female and queer youth cultures
What is a subculture? ● Working-class youth culture ● Unified by shared tastes in style, music and ideology ● A solution to collectively experienced problems ● A form of resistance to cultural hegemony
Post-War British Race Relations: ● To understand the political significance of black music in the 1970s and 1980s, we must first understand the racial situation in post war Britain. ● 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.
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.
‘The political, personal and cultural are always intertwined.‘
cultural hegemony(Antonio Gramsci) – the dominant culture, power, rule, or domination maintained by ideological and cultural means. The ideologies of the dominant group are expressed and maintained through its economic, political, moral, and social institutions. 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 theory) In the 1970s, a group of cultural theorists in Birmingham applied Gramsci’s theories to post-war British working-class youth culture. They argued argued that the formation of subcultures offered young working class people a solution to the problems they were collectively experiencing in society.
Black music offered a means of articulating oppression and of challenging what Gilroy has termed, ‘the capitalist system of racial exploitation and domination’.
Key Concepts: ● Cultural resistance ● Cultural hegemony ● Subcultural theory Context: ● Race Relations ● Thatcher’s Britain Case Studies: ● Rock Against Racism ● Rock Against Sexism ● 2 Tone
We first think of these ideas:
○ Attempts to change to laws or legislation ○ Organised political movements ○ Public protests ○ Petitions, marches
However, we can look at:
○ Cultural resistance ○ Everyday people
The political, personal and cultural are always intertwined
Who is 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
Birmingham School
● In the 1970s, a group of cultural theorists in Birmingham applied Gramsici’s theories to post-war British working-class youth culture
What is a subculture? ● Working-class youth culture ● Unified by shared tastes in style, music and ideology ● A solution to collectively experienced problems ● A form of resistance to cultural hegemony
Political protest: ○ Attempts to change to laws or legislation ○ Organised political movements ○ Public protests ○ Petitions, marches
Political protest can be seen 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:
Subculture: ● Working-class youth culture ● Unified by shared tastes in style, music and ideology ● A solution to collectively experienced problems ● A form of resistance to cultural hegemony
The Birmingham School (1970s)
● They argued argued that the formation of subcultures offered young working class people a solution to the problems they were collectively experiencing in society.
● Looked at working class cultures like the teddy-boys, mods, skinheads, and punks – subcultures unified by shared tastes in fashion, music and ideology.
Teddy Boys: 1950/60s ● Responding to: post-war social changes ● Music: influenced by American rock n roll ● Style: upper-class Edwardian fashion (narrow trousers, lapelled jackets), fused with an element of rebelliousness in the form of exaggerated hairstyles and shoes (quiffs and creepers)
Skinheads: 1960s
● Responding to: social alienation. ● Rejected: late 50s conservatism, as well as the ‘peace and love’ middle class hippy movement of 60s ● Expression of: working class pride ● Music: West Indian music (ska, rocksteady, reggae) ● Style: shaven heads, Dr Marten boots, braces, shirts, and cropped trousers ● Politics: Original skinheads were anti-racist, however the movement quickly polarised
Punk: 1970s ● A Reaction to: ● 1) Capitalist middle class culture that has achieved dominance and legitimacy (hegemony) ● 2) Their alienation from the adult working class culture of their parents and grandparents ● 3) The social, political and economic crisis of the mid1970s, resulting in high youth unemployment ● Values: anti-establishment, emphasis on individual freedom, on doing it yourself. ● Fashion: emphasised ugliness, shock value, irony. Used items like safety pins, ripped shirts, chains. ● Music: often self-produced and independently distributed, the music is loud and aggressive, with lyrics expressing antiestablishment views and working class concerns.
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
Gilroy
Gilroy highlighted how black youth cultures represented cultural solutions to collectively experienced problems of racism and poverty
Racial otherness: ‘Ain’t no black in union jack’- His book
Civilisation: For Gilroy, the 9/11 World trade Centre terrorist attack in 2001, and it’s aftermath, radically altered both the tone and nature of the media-orientated representations regarding race and racial difference.
Legacy of the Empire: Gilroy suggests that we live in a ‘morbid culture of a once-imperial nation that has not been able to accept its inevitable loss of prestige’ (Gilroy, 2004) He argued that the British are undergoing a crisis of national identity: the loss of the British Empire has forced a collective question regarding British identification.
Race Relations
1970s and 1980s: 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)
Racism from Far-Right Groups: The NF (national front) ● The National Front was a far-right group ● Advocated the an end to immigration and the repatriation of non-white Britons. ● Blamed immigration for the decline in employment, housing and welfare. ● In the 1970s, the NF gained the support of disillusioned white youth ● Racial attacks, violence and intimidation
Margaret Thatcher:
● Prime Minister 1979-1990 ● Militant campaigner for middle-class interests ● In an 1978 interview: ‘British national identity could be swamped by people with different culture’ ● Hard line attitude towards immigration ● Conservative Manifesto: ‘firm immigration control for the future is essential if we are to achieve good community relations’ ● British Nationality Act of 1981: introduced a series of increasingly tough immigration procedures and excluded Asian people from entering Britain.
● Scapegoating
Rock against Sexism
Rock Against Sexism was British anti-sexist campaign that used punk as a vehicle to challenge sexism, promoting female musicians while challenging discrimination in the music industry between 1979 and 1982.
Why was RAS needed?
– 1970s saw a plethora of sexist song lyrics, record covers and band advertisements, many depicting violence towards women.
– The terms ‘feminism’ and ‘sexism’ were not in common currency during this time, and there was widespread scepticism among young people with regards to organised feminism.
BBC News
The Specials: How Ghost Town defined an era
Jon Kelly
Specials gigs began to attract the hostile presence of groups like the National Front and the British Movement. When vocalist Neville Staple sighed wearily on Ghost Town that there was “too much fighting on the dance floor”, he sang from personal experience.
“But you don’t listen to Ghost Town and think it’s weird. I was 11 when it was released and I don’t remember going, ‘What’s this?’ At the time there were a lot of political songs in the charts. But if a record like that got to number one today you’d go, ‘Wow, that’s bizarre.'”
“It sums up how it felt to be young at the time,” he says. “But at the same time it’s timelessly resonant. “There are a handful of tunes that do that and Ghost Town is one of them.”
The conversation (news)
‘Ghost Town’: a haunting 1981 protest song that still makes sense today
Abigail Gardner
It’s an odd, eerie song, nodding to pop convention and sitting wilfully outside of it. It’s included, in passing, in Dorian Lynskey’s beautifully written book on protest songs, “33 Revolutions Per Minute”, but unlike the band’s “Free Nelson Mandela” does not merit its own chapter.
Claude Levi-Strauss (Binary Oppositions)
This theory suggests that NARRATIVES (=myths) are STRUCTURED around BINARY OPPOSITIONS eg. good and bad.
As such, it encourages students to understand narrative as a structure of key (oppositional) themes that underpin action and dialogue to develop a set of messages that the audience are able to decode and understand.
It 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.
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.
the political, personal and cultural are always intertwined
the theory that the political problems chain on to personal and cultural views that are all connected by a a single problem or causes
Antonio Gramsci: Italian philosopher writing in the 1930s
Antonio talks about hegemony and tat the domination of ideology and rule and that the thought of one view being correct and that you cant change a view forcefully and that the way of change occours in music and fashion which could be a idle consumption of change
the main causes of the political problems is a person called Margaret thatcher who used black people/the wind rush generation as a scape goat for the fall in economy after world war II she also shut down many factory’s as a result of these factory’s shutting down many people were unemployed as a company they sacked people in order to keep their money and sack those who weren’t needed or crucial to the job to work she also shut down mines which also resulted in unemployment of the masses the song ghost town was Addressing themes of urban decay, deindustrialization, unemployment and violence in inner cities and this song was published while the riots were on the rise and was liked by many and was put at the number one spot on the charts as the riots and such were going on this was also a way of protesting the way that things are and what they are like the music genre was called ska and it had a mix of race within it. the music video shows reckless driving and fighting and empty streets and boarded up houses suggesting the economy decline and the affects of unemployment you can say that the buildings were victims of Thatcherism and that they have been abandoned as the tenants have moved on to the streets as money was scarce the reckless driving symbolizes the craziness of thatcher’s idea of closing down the mines and making many unemployed as if they are on a (wacky ride) or it can symbolize the amount of people who got frunk out of boredom as they are un employed meaning that they give up with trying to look for them as they are all being declined a job so they have nothing better to do so they just sit around and drink. during a scene we can see a group of people fighting suggesting a riot has occurred or a mugging due to riots were a big thing during this time or it could relate to the stereotyping of mugging which thatcher coined to be black people who mug people for their money. there is a part where the car crashes into a wall suggesting the world coming to a stand still or the amount of people who have hit a metaphorical wall of unemployment. at the end we can see the singers throwing stones out onto a river or lake with buildings in the back ground this could signify as them throwing rocks at those who fired them or at big company’s who are all happy and safe with a job this could also be a hint at the riots that occur by signifying throwing things at big businesses’ and smashing window as riots do and by doing so supporting the riots.
during the era of Thatcherism a party of 13-17 year old’s who were all of a black ethnicity were killed by a fire that engulfed the building that killed all of them sadly but one lucky person who survived but Margaret thatcher’s scapegoating of the wind rush generation caused the police to do nothing even though it was said that there was someone who caused it but the police just said that they were probably doing drugs and or they caused a fire by fighting ignoring any other ideas because they were so set on believing on these things that were happening due to those causes and no one was right except them.
Thirteen of the people in the house died – including the birthday girl, Yvonne Ruddock, and her brother. One of the survivors was so traumatized that he committed suicide two years later…
Linear = arranged in or extending a straight or nearly straight line
chronological = following the order in which they occurred
sequential = forming or following in a logical order or sequence
circular structure = an object that references itself. making sure the function that is being passed in, filters out repeated or circular data.
Time based = over a period of time
narrative arc = is an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, board games, video games, and films with each episode following a dramatic arc.
Freytag’s pyramid = Devised by 19th century German playwright Gustav Freytag, Freytag’s Pyramid is a paradigm of dramatic structure outlining the seven key steps in successful storytelling: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement
Exposition = Narrative exposition is the insertion of background information within a story or narrative. This information can be about the setting, characters’ backstories, prior plot events, historical context.
Inciting incident = The event that sets the main character or characters on the journey that will occupy them throughout the narrative.
Rising action = starts right after the period of exposition and ends at the climax. Beginning with the inciting incident, rising action is the bulk of the plot. It is composed of a series of events that build on the conflict and increase the tension, sending the story racing to a dramatic climax.
climax = The ending and leading up to the end of the narrative
Falling action = Falling action is what happens near the end of a story after the climax and resolution of the major conflict. falling action is what the characters are doing after the story’s most dramatic part has happened.
Resolution = the ending of the story, happens after the conflict
Denouement = the final part of a play, film, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.
Linear = arranged in or extending a straight or nearly straight line
chronological = following the order in which they occurred
sequential = forming or following in a logical order or sequence
circular structure = an object that references itself. making sure the function that is being passed in, filters out repeated or circular data.
Time based = over a period of time
narrative arc = is an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, board games, video games, and films with each episode following a dramatic arc.
Freytag’s pyramid = Devised by 19th century German playwright Gustav Freytag, Freytag’s Pyramid is a paradigm of dramatic structure outlining the seven key steps in successful storytelling: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement
Exposition = Narrative exposition is the insertion of background information within a story or narrative. This information can be about the setting, characters’ backstories, prior plot events, historical context.
Inciting incident = The event that sets the main character or characters on the journey that will occupy them throughout the narrative.
Rising action = starts right after the period of exposition and ends at the climax. Beginning with the inciting incident, rising action is the bulk of the plot. It is composed of a series of events that build on the conflict and increase the tension, sending the story racing to a dramatic climax.
climax = The ending and leading up to the end of the narrative
Falling action = Falling action is what happens near the end of a story after the climax and resolution of the major conflict. falling action is what the characters are doing after the story’s most dramatic part has happened.
Resolution = the ending of the story, happens after the conflict
Denouement = the final part of a play, film, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.
Beginning / middle / end = The plot through out the films
Equilibrium = Everything is balanced at the beginning
Disruption = Changing something over and over again
Transgression = Often disequilibrium is caused by societal / moral / ethical
Peripeteia = a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances, especially in reference to fictional narrative. “the peripeteias of the drama”
Anagnorisis = the point in a play, novel, etc., in which a principal character recognizes or discovers another character’s true identity or the true nature of their own circumstances.
Catharsis = is the purification and purgation of emotions through dramatic art, or it may be any extreme emotional state that results in renewal and restoration
The 3 Unities: Action, Time, Place = a tragedy should have one principal action. unity of time:
Flash-forward / Flash-back: a flash-forward takes a narrative forward in time, a flashback goes back in time, often to before the narrative began.
Foreshadowing = be a warning or indication of a future event.
Ellipsis = the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues.
Pathos = to persuade an audience by purposely evoking certain emotions to make them feel the way the author wants them to feel.
Empathy = is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference
Diegetic / non-diegetic = In film, diegesis refers to the story world, and the events that occur within it. Thus, non-diegesis are things which occur outside the story-world
Slow motion = A slow movement to add to a tense scene
In media res = the practice of beginning an epic or other narrative by plunging into a crucial situation that is part of a related chain of events.
Metanarrative = in critical theory and particularly in postmodernism is a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge
Quest narratives = one of the oldest and surest ways of telling a story.
This is a targeted CSP and needs to be studied with reference to two elements of the Theoretical Framework (Media Language and Media Representation).
1 TASK 1: MAKE SOME GENERAL NOTES ON THIS MEDIA PRODUCTION: NAMES, DATES, NUMBERS, ETC
Ghost Town is a product which possesses cultural, social and historical significance. It will invite comparison with the other CSP music video allowing for an analysis of the contexts in which they are produced and consumed.
2 TASK 2 Continue your notes: WHAT IS THE CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND? Use ppt from Jodie below
Ghost Town by The Specials conveys a specific moment in British social and political history while retaining a contemporary relevance. The cultural critic Dorian Lynskey has described it as ‘’a remarkable pop cultural moment’’ one that “defined an era’’. The video and song are part of a tradition of protest in popular music, in this case reflecting concern about the increased social tensions in the UK at the beginning of the 1980s. The song was number 1 post-Brixton and during the Handsworth and Toxteth riots.
The aesthetic of the music video, along with the lyrics, represents an unease about the state of the nation, one which is often linked to the politics of Thatcherism but transcends a specific political ideology in its eeriness, meaning that it has remained politically and culturally resonant.
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 context of a racially divided country. This representation of Britain’s emerging multiculturalism, is reinforced through the eclectic mix of stylistic influences in both the music and the video.
3 TASK 3:Continue to build up your notes (in preparation for the unseen essay) by reading see BOTH: 1. Paul Gilroy chapter in the Mark Dixon AND 2. some of the linked articles below.
1. Media Theory for A level by Mark Dixon
Look specifically at pp. 72-73 & 77-79 – Paul Gilroy chapter in Media Theory for A level book by Mark Dixon.Think about the following key terms:
racial otherness (72-73)
post-colonial melancholia (72-73)
the story of UK race relations post W.W. 2 (72-73)
4 TASK 4:MAKE SOME NOTES ON THE WAY IN WHICH THIS MUSIC VIDEOS CREATES AND COMMUNICATES MEANING THROUGH NARRATIVE
You should INLCUDE SOME SEMIOTIC TERMS ANALYSIS (ie the use of signs) which should specifically look at:
You should also focus on GENRE
Mise-en-scene – ie what can you see in each shot
Cinematography – ie how does the camera frame each shot & how are the shots edited together
How the story / narrative is constructed (this post should be helpful or this BBC Bitesize post). Put another way, how could TODOROV, LEVI-STRAUS & PROPP be applied to this music video.
Think about how the visuals link to the song lyrics (is it a LITERAL OR METAPHORICAL interpretation, eg the journey through a deserted landscape, or the way lyrics refer to effects of political and economic conditions)
Make sure you reference Neale! You may remember that we looked at Steve Neale when we looked at AS TV CSP (link here)
How the music video genre uses intertextuality and hybridity to establish meanings
ASSESSMENT
We will complete an unseen question in class. This question could look at either MEDIA LANGUAGE and / or REPRESENTATION. THAT MEANS THE QUESTION DOES NOT REQUIRE YOU TO TALK ABOUT INSTITUTION AND / OR AUDIENCE
Most stories are linear and are broken down into a beginning, middle, and end. The Bulgarian structuralist theorist, Tztevan Todorov, presents this idea as:
– Equilibrium (the story constructs a stable world at the outset of the narrative. Key characters are presented as part of that stability.) – Disruption (oppositional forces – the actions of a villain, perhaps, or some kind of calamity – destabilise the story’s equilibrium. Lead protagonists attempt to repair the disruption caused.) – New Equilibrium(disruption is repaired and stability restored. Importantly, the equilibrium achieved at the end of the story is different to that outlined at the start. The world is transformed.)
VLADIMIR PROPP
Vladimir Propp
Todorov was hugely influenced by the Russian literary theorist, Vladimir Propp, and his highly influential 1929 book, Morphology Of The Folktale, in which Propp arrived at the conclusion that folk tales drew from a highly stable list of characters whose roles and narrative functions he defined:
– The Hero(Propp identifies two significant types of hero – the seeker hero, who relies more heavily on the donor to perform their quest, and the victim hero, who needs to overcome a weakness to complete their quest.) – The Villain (fights or pursues the hero and must be defeated if the hero is to accomplish their quest.) – The Princess and the Princess’s Father (the princess usually represents the reward of the hero’s quest, while the princess’s father often sets the hero difficult tasks to prevent them from marrying the princess.) – The Donor (provides the hero with a magical agent that allows the hero to defeat the villain.) – The Helper (usually accompanies the hero on their quest, saving them from the struggles encountered on their journey, helping them to overcome the difficult tasks encountered on their quest.) – The Dispatcher (sends the hero on his or her quest, usually at the start of the story.) – The False Hero (performs a largely villainous role, usurping the true hero’s position in the course of the story. The false hero is usually unmasked in the last act of a narrative.)
CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS
Claude Levi-Strauss
Claude Levi-Strauss, a French anthropologist and ethnologist, examined the structure and narratives of myths and legends from around the world, such as the tribal stories of the Amazonian rainforest or the ancient myths of Greece). He ventured out to uncover the hidden rules of storytelling, in order to diagnose the essential nature of human experience, and believed that common themes and tropes found in these stories would reveal essential truths about the way the human mind structures the world. He suggested that myths were used to deal with the contradictions in experience, to explain the apparently inexplicable, and to justify the inevitable.
SEYMOUR CHATMAN
Seymour Chatman
The American film and literary critic, Seymour Chatman,
Blinded by the Light is an example of a US/UK co-production and distribution. Its distributor New Line Cinema is associated with ‘indie’ films although it is a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Pictures, part of the global conglomerate, WarnerMedia.
New Line Productions, Inc., doing business as New Line Cinema, is an American film production studio and a label of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group division of Warner Bros. Entertainment. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye as an independent film distribution company, later becoming a film studio. It was acquired by Turner Broadcasting System in 1994; Turner later merged with Time Warner (now WarnerMedia) in 1996, and New Line was merged with Warner Bros. Pictures in 2008.
New Line Cinema was established in 1967 by the then 27-year-old Robert Shaye as a film distribution company, supplying foreign and art films for college campuses in the United States.
On February 28, 2008, Time Warner’s CEO at the time, Jeffrey Bewkes, announced that New Line would be shut down as a separately operated studio.
Blinded by the Light is a low-mid budget production ($15m) co-funded by New Line Cinema (an American production studio owned by Warner Brothers Pictures Group) and independent production companies including Levantine Films. Bend it Films and Ingenious Media. • Identification of how Blinded by the Light is characteristic of a low-mid budget release, considering production, distribution and circulation • The role of the use of Bruce Springsteen’s music in getting the film financed and in the marketing of the film • The use of film festivals in finding distribution deals for films • Use of traditional marketing and distribution techniques; trailers, posters, film festivals etc. • Marketing techniques such as use of genre, nostalgia, identity, social consciousness • Distribution techniques – reliance on new technology; VOD, streaming • Regulation of the industry through BBFC (British Board of Film Classification). • Regulation including Livingstone and Lun
