The racial unrests permeating across Britain in the late 1970s resulted in a set of political agendas responding to racism to be brought into being though legislation, culminating in the passing of the 1976 Race Relations Act. Crucial to such agendas were strategies for the prevention of black urban uprisings against state authority and the politicisation of black youths against racism. The emergence of politicised black British film during the late 1970s offered a crucial counter-hegemonic exploration and re-enactment of an extra-filmic reality of police violence and popular racism within the British body social. However, these texts were subjected to forms of political censorship through a number of state organisations who identified radical black cinema as a political threat with the potential to incite violent responses from black youths. This article will offer a detailed analysis of Babylon (1980) and seeks to investigate the ideological processes leading to its X certification and the moral panic located in its representations of black youths within the crisis of race vis-a-vis the political, social and cultural authority of race relations, situating Babylon’s controversial X certification as an exemplar of the ‘applicational dexterity’ of the race relations discipline.

1970年代末期，席卷整个英国的种族动乱导致了一系列针对种族主义的政治议程通过立法得以通过，最终导致1976年《种族关系法》的通过。防止黑人城市起义反对国家权威以及将黑人青年政治化反对种族主义的战略对此类议程至关重要。1970年代后期，政治化的英国黑人电影的出现提供了至关重要的反霸权主义探索，并重新确立了英国社会团体内警察暴力和大众种族主义的电影外现实。但是，这些文本受到许多国家组织的形式的政治审查，这些组织将激进的黑人电影院视为政治威胁，并有可能煽动黑人青年的暴力反应。巴比伦（1980）并试图研究导致其获得X认证的思想过程，以及在种族危机与种族关系的政治，社会和文化权威相对的黑人青年代表中的道德恐慌，从而将巴比伦置于有争议的X认证是种族关系学科的“应用灵活性”的典范。