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.

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