Trash or Treasure? Censorship and the Changing Meanings of the Video Nasties

Trash or Treasure is a wide-ranging historical study of the British circulation of the video nasties – a term that was originally coined in order to ban a group of horror videos in Britain in the 1980s. Through an exploration of the range of historical materials, the book examines how this unusual genre category was formulated in a particular context and then used (for different reasons) by moral campaigners, distributors, critics, and fans. By examining the discourses that inform the circulation of a group of banned films, the book argues that censorship is not just about rules and regulations, but also about the discourses that generate censorship and the cultural and commercial consequences of a censorship act or law.