I’m way too tired (three film festivals in as many weeks will do that to you) and far too far removed from academia to make a coherent argument on this right now, but in trying to make a dent in my backed-up feed reader I came across some fascinating, British Marxist rumination on Joy Division. I think some of this writing might help me reconcile the two portraits of the band/singer Ian Curtis that I saw in Toronto: Grant Gee’s documentary Joy Division (which I have not yet had time to write about) and Anton Corbijn’s nominal Curtis biopic, Control (which I reviewed rather rapturously here).

Of specific concern: Gee’s provocative but not exactly fully realised thesis, that the story of Joy Division is synonymous with the story of the band’s home town of Manchester; and the philosophical concept of hauntology. You can find workable definitions of hauntology here and here, but both skew towards Derrida on one end, and music theory on the other. In relation to these two films, I think it’s more useful to simply think of hauntology as a tool with which to posit Ian Curtis as spectral presence in Control, and Joy Division as the ghost haunting Manchester in Joy Division.

What I think may be most interesting is the revelation in Joy Division that the band weren’t happy with the almost beyond-the-grave vocal effects injected into their two full-length records by producer Martin Hannett–according to Gee’s film, they preferred their live sound, which was stripped-down, faster, more aggressive. It’s Hannett’s production, perhaps more than Curtis’ death, that really turns the story of Joy Division into a ghost story. As Dan at The End Times [via K-Punk] puts it,

…the voice, the recognisable sounds of the instruments, all serve to reassure the listener of the presence of the musicians and singer, linking back to the live… Hannett’s studio interjections sever that link, making Curtis sound as if he’s singing from the Other Side…[if] Curtis sounds “already dead” – and, I’ll admit, he certainly doesn’t sound ‘live’ – then logically he can’t sing; the entire band, Curtis especially, sounds caught in the interzone between life and death.

As previously noted, Gee’s film throws out the idea that Joy Division is not only inextricably linked to Manchester by physical history (as well as the kind of Factory Records lore perpetrated by 24 Hour Party People and the NME) but that Joy Division and the city that birthed the band have parallel rise-and-fall arcs. I’m still not sure I’m quite able to fully parse that, but––I think––there’s a way to make a case for Manchester as that aforementioned interzone, with Joy Division as its deathly but simultaneously transcendent soundtrack.

Maybe it’s something, maybe it’s nothing (how spectral can you get?), but I’ll hopefully figure it out before Control opens here on October 3.