During the late 70s through to the late 80s, Home Video and VHS were on the rise. With this, new unregulated videos entered the market, readily available for their customers. These films were known as "Video Nasties" and featured graphic nudity, gore, imitable violence and even in some cases, rape. These were only a few of the themes featured, and each film aimed to provide a "shock factor" that was larger than one you'd find in your last 'Nasty'. The fact that these films were so readily available, selling in Garages and Sweet Shops, sent the UK into a Moral Panic. The fact that the content here was unregulated and untouched by the government, made it so that anyone (even children and teenagers) could get their hands on the most graphic of films around at this time. Noticing this, measures were put into place by the government to try to censor (ban) these films so that the could not be seen by the younger audiences that were so tempted as to see them. It is argued that this was "motivated by fears surrounding new technologies", which I believe is true to an extent, however, I also think that the only reason that these measures were adopted by the government was because it was something that you could blame the current Moral Decline on, a 'Scapegoat'.
The enforcement of censorship amongst these 'Nasties' was originally put in place to protect those of a more vulnerable mindset, of course; being the children and teenagers that could get their hands on these films. The largest age group that did so are the 12-16 year olds (primarily of which were boys). Mary Whitehouse, was a member of the NV&LA or the National Viewers and Listeners Association, this was a group of ordinary people who took it upon themselves to watch films available on the market and warn people of the content of them. However, after viewing just one of these 'Nasties', notorious amongst film history; "I Spit On Your Grave", Mary decided it upon herself that something was needed to be done about these films, their content and how available they are to the market. Mary started a pressure group of those who wanted to control how available these films are on the market. Being a traditional Christian and a mother, she took it upon herself to protect others from the horrors of these films, specifically the children. Rightly so, from a moral view, that these films should be banned from viewing by Children and Teens. It has been said that these films can be influential and therefore damaging to the children and teenagers who watch them due to their 'copycat' violence and graphic nudity. However, I do not believe that she had this idea in her mind in it's purest form. Mary Whitehouse had only seen the one nasty, "I Spit On Your Grave", which is arguably one of the most graphic and potentially damaging films to children, and refused to watch any more Video Nasties. This means she didn't have much to go on, only basing her views on what she'd seen in one of the many nasties that were around at this time. Even when she did have a point and we were lead into believing that it could damage children, most films at this time were a lot tamer than this. For example, "Evil Dead", with it's Claymation zombies who turn all "gooey" once they were killed, yet "I Spit On Your Grave" had real people with realistic looking blood, shot in a realism style. With these two points in mind, I believe that Mary Whitehouse did have a good moral view on the situation at hand, these films; as a new technology, were far too easily obtainable for Children and Teenagers of the 80s. But I believe her reasoning was inconclusive as it was not backed up with much evidence as she'd only seen one of the films and the argument would do much better in the hands of someone who was not as deluded by their theism and had actually seen more of the films that were under criticism.
The conservatives also jumped on the bandwagon after hearing of Mary's conquest, making the Video Regulation
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