NEA – 43/60 (B)

Paper 1 – 70/84 (A*)

Paper 2 – 76/84 (A*)

= 189/228 (A)

Explain how economic and political contexts influence the ways in which media products represent reality.

You should refer to the Close Study product Ghost Town ands Figure 1 to support your answer.

The music video Ghost town was created in a time of depression, where Margret thatcher caused many young men to loose their jobs, therefore resulting in street riots around London. This is portrayed through Ghost Town, within the scenes where the men are being thrown around the car but keeping a clear gaze of confusion, we can analyse this through our own ideologies of Barthes theory of semiotics. Whether we feel that they’re are confused due to the lack of jobs or weather we think that they are confused due to anger. The same analysis can be used when looking at figure one, analyse the connotations of Christmas through our own personal thoughts and feelings on the holiday. When looking at the snow falling from the sky we can either connotate that with the excitement of Christmas or battle it with the anger of the cold weather. We associate the throwing around the car as the men spiralling. These clear signs gives an audience there own take, allowing them to fill in the gaps between with there own ideology’s, asking why the town has become a Ghost Town and if we feel that Manchester is the place of Christmas. This is through Henry Jenkins theory of fandom, being an active audience. There are white and black men within the Ghost Town music video, which may be seen as a response to the new stop and search las, in which many black people were racially targeted. This can be seen as a countertype, as wanting the video to promote diversity, we can also see a stereotype within Figure 1, being a figure of ‘father Christmas’, this may be controversial as people within different religion’s do not believe in him. The beat of Ghost Town consists of a British punk rock mixed with a new style Jamaican beat, this can be seen as a blend of binary opposites, opposing ideologies about white and b lack not mixing. We also see a blend of binary opposites within Figure 1, where the Ferris wheel is normally seen as a summer activity but it is show within the snow. The end scene of Ghost Town consists of men throwing rocks into the water, which may reflect how the ‘boomtown’ era is over, and that these men are not violent but instead frustrated, and just want their jobs back.

Exam Reflection:

Steve Neale

• A genre is a catagory, type, style.
• Distinguished by purpose and content.
• Subgenere is a spring off from a different genre.
• Hybrid genre is a mixture.
• Genres have a repetition of elements.
• When genres are added to each other Repertoire of elements.
• New texts are added to the body of old texts (corpus)
• Hybridisation between genres
• Some genres have historic specificity (associated with time periods) Tend to be popular at a specific historical time.
• Tensions between repetition and sameness and variation and change. A fine line of repeating but variating.
• Genres carry a narrative image which is communicated by word of mouth, which is closely connected with their expectations and hypotheses based on their views of that genre.
• A spectator must suspend disbelief in order to submerse themselves fully, buy into the product.
• The generic regime of verisimilitude refers to what is probable in a genre,