(Credits: Far Out / Markus Spiske / Thea Hdc / Jeff Kingma)
Sun 22 March 2026 15:45, UK
Hollywood has long promoted movies that affirm the status quo, the last thing it wants is for people to take inspiration from a film to go against convention and what’s considered correct in hegemonic society, so, what happens when a film emerges that poses a real threat to the way things are – authorities simply try to make the movie as hard to see as possible.
This was the case for the British cult classic Babylon, a revolutionary moment in film history that depicted an authentic experience of working-class Black British life, set against the backdrop of Thatcher’s tyrannical reign – the movie, directed by Franco Rosso, immersed audiences in sound system culture, with lead actor Brinsley Forde playing a young reggae DJ, and living in Brixton, he finds community in other music lovers, yet he battles fierce opposition from racist individuals and even the National Front.
Babylon is an incredible film, and it was truly groundbreaking for its depiction of Black British culture. Few films had traversed such ground before – and this was years before Spike Lee’s era-defining Do The Right Thing, too. American cinema hadn’t even caught up with depicting the experiences of Black youth culture at this point; Rosso was a true trailblazer. With a dub and reggae soundtrack, Babylon is a genuinely authentic encapsulation of class and racial struggle, with an unflinching lens honing in on the brutality often experienced by many Black people.
There’s violence and retaliation at play, but unsurprisingly, this caused censors to wince. This was a film with the potential to encourage young viewers to act on inequality and racial abuse, and to inspire radical change – of course, that wasn’t going to go down with those who believed cinema should restore order, not disrupt it.
Reflecting on the film, Forde spoke to Vice about the movie’s American ban – with the film finally getting its US release in 2019, 39 years after it was made – and he didn’t shy away from highlighting how uncomfortable the film made many audiences.
“In one of the Q&As, when talking about the subject of why it was banned in the West, a woman said, ‘I think it’s the stabbing scene.’ Now I’m here wondering what that’s supposed to mean. There are a ton of movies that feature far more violence. But she then says, ‘the underdog,’ and it made sense. America turned their backs on it, and England gave it an X rating, because the idea of the underdog fighting back is too much for some to handle,” he said.
That’s what makes great art, though – when a movie challenges social norms and inequality, encouraging viewers to take action and to stand up for themselves and their rights, it becomes something more than just a piece of filmmaking, but a weapon, a tool for inspiring real change in the world, and that’s the most important thing about creating and consuming art.
“It’s a different thought process. Could this film incite riots? Could this group inspire others to go against the establishment? Maybe, and that’s what it was. As we’ve moved through the years, we’ve seen banned content for what it was. They thought differently and freed our minds from what we’ve normalised. In the 1980s, there was a great fear of what film could do alone to incite people,” Forde continued.
It’s a tragedy that Babylon wasn’t released in the US for so many years, and with its X rating on its home turf, many people missed out on the movie. Luckily, it’s widely available these days, allowing people to finally experience a film so full of resistance and truth.
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