ghost town

context

• released 1981

• post punk period

• genre hybrid- ska/ punk

• riots in brixton- police stop and search policy

• directed by barney bubbles

• deserted london with bleak and mournful lyrics -encapsulated time

tall buildings- worm eye view

• inferiority and powerlessness/ establishes the London setting

• sets up binary opposition between towering office buildings and desolate and abadoned factories, which signifies the band’s frustration with thatchers government/economic struggle in 1980s Britian

buildings- closed frame/ desaturated pallete

• colour codes: create misery/ gloom

• dirty/ unsafe- stereotypes of working class areas

• semantic code of business building being clean and large: capitalism championed by government, clean, grand expensive

• financial district- capitalism is the disrupter/ action code- car crosses through prohibited area

medium close ups

• underlift: hooror semantic code,

• lost sense of it being a car: breakdown of expectation/ rules- lyrics, facial expression, wide eyed + frightened

• charachters switch to off screen gaze, hopelessness

final scene: wide shot, desaturated extra-diagetic- police sounds

• pro-airetic code (throwing stone)- pointless, nihilism, small, less powerful working classes vs capitalism

• establishes morning mise-en-scene- location of abandoned docklands (closure of industry)