‘Reading Society Aright’: Five Years after the Video Recordings Act

2011/05/17 by Julian Petley · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Law in Society and Culture

paper · doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625383.003.0006

openalex publication_date 2011/05/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

This chapter presents an update regarding film and video censorship five years after the establishment of the Video Recordings Act. It specifically describes the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) Annual Report for 1988. This report stressed its ‘alleged potential for encouraging anti-social violence on the streets of Britain’. The BBFC cut violent material from fifty-four videos and seven films, a total of sixty-three minutes' screen time, in 1988. It was particularly preoccupied with the question of sexual violence, and general violence against women. It was also taken up with what it quaintly called ‘manners’. This turns out to be the problem of bad language. The chapter then investigates some of the issues raised in the Report I through a discussion with the BBFC Director, James Ferman.

Cited by

• Video Recordings Act 1984 [wikipedia]

Related

• Coercive cinema: police film in schools, 1966–75
• Visibility and Invisibility: An Examination of Hong Kong’s Film Censorship System during the Cold War Period
• ‘It Would be Better for the Newspapers to Call a Spade a Spade’: the British Press and Child Sexual Abuse, c. 1918–90
• Leitrezension: Kriminalitätsanalyse als Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Moralische Paniken, Krisen und der autoritäre britische Staat der 1970er Jahre
• Beyond critical partisanship: ethical witnessing and long takes of sexual violence