MovieChat Forums > Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape (2014) Discussion > American Censorship

American Censorship

posted 10 years ago by Anaraksoasis
2 replies | jump to latest

Many americans believe the Video Nasties craze that swept England had no baring on america. As an american I can say this is wrong. From 1978 to 1983, slasher films in this country were box office gold. In '83, 60 percent of all box office gross was from slasher films, the most that genre has ever taken in in a year. So why did the era come to such an abrupt close? Because studio's came under attack by parental and moral groups. See the history behind "Silent Night, deadly night"for one example. As Wes Craven so aptly put it in the doc "Going to pieces", studio's are in the business of making money, the outcry threatened to hurt that, so they changed direction. Horror became more watered down.

There is no official banning in this country as it would infringe on our freedom of expression. However, there is plenty of unofficial banning. You just have to bully enough and you'll force whoever to remove whats offending you.

So this film is equally important to americans.

[–] porfle 10 years ago

Another factor is that after the ratings board let FRIDAY THE 13TH slip by with an R, they started rating slasher films "X" for graphic violence. In order to get that all-important R rating, the filmmakers started censoring themselves by cutting out all the really gory stuff.

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[–] mrkm31 9 years ago

Slasher movies were targeted by the MPAA, however overall it just wasn't as sensationalistic as it was in the UK, nor were there government bodies involved. Most of the films designated as video nasties were low budget European releases that, if even released in the US got such minimal distribution that they slipped by with barely a blip. Instead we had the higher-profile slasher movies, which indeed were heavily targeted by the MPAA during their height.

In terms of official censorship, here in the US government officials targeted music instead in a somewhat similar way. There were senate hearings led by Tipper Gore and the PMRC that went after music that was considered sexually explicit, had violent or "occult" content or encouraged drug use. In the mid-80s heavy metal bands were targeted for censorship and prosecution due to the bizarre "satanic panic" phenomenon. By the late 80s rap and hip hop groups were the next targets, which lasted well into the mid 90s.