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Underground: The Secret Life of Videocassettes in Iran
How Iranians forged a vibrant, informal video distribution infrastructure when their government banned all home video technology in 1983.
In 1983, the Iranian government banned the personal use of home video technology. In Underground, Blake Atwood recounts how in response to the ban, technology enthusiasts, cinephiles, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens forged an illegal but complex underground system for video distribution. Atwood draws on archival sources including trade publications, newspapers, memoirs, films, and laws, but at the heart of the book lies a corpus of oral history interviews conducted with participants in the underground. He argues that videocassettes helped to institutionalize the broader underground within the Islamic Republic.
As Atwood shows, the videocassette underground reveals a great deal about how people construct vibrant cultures beneath repressive institutions. It was not just that Iranians gained access to banned movies, but rather that they established routes, acquired technical knowledge, broke the law, and created rituals by passing and trading plastic videocassettes. As material objects, the videocassettes were a means of negotiating the power of the state and the agency of its citizens. By the time the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance lifted the ban in 1994, millions of videocassettes were circulating efficiently and widely throughout the country. The very presence of a video underground signaled the failure of state policy to regulate media. Embedded in the informal infrastructure--even in the videocassettes themselves--was the triumph of everyday people over the state.
In 1983, the Iranian government banned the personal use of home video technology. In Underground, Blake Atwood recounts how in response to the ban, technology enthusiasts, cinephiles, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens forged an illegal but complex underground system for video distribution. Atwood draws on archival sources including trade publications, newspapers, memoirs, films, and laws, but at the heart of the book lies a corpus of oral history interviews conducted with participants in the underground. He argues that videocassettes helped to institutionalize the broader underground within the Islamic Republic.
As Atwood shows, the videocassette underground reveals a great deal about how people construct vibrant cultures beneath repressive institutions. It was not just that Iranians gained access to banned movies, but rather that they established routes, acquired technical knowledge, broke the law, and created rituals by passing and trading plastic videocassettes. As material objects, the videocassettes were a means of negotiating the power of the state and the agency of its citizens. By the time the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance lifted the ban in 1994, millions of videocassettes were circulating efficiently and widely throughout the country. The very presence of a video underground signaled the failure of state policy to regulate media. Embedded in the informal infrastructure--even in the videocassettes themselves--was the triumph of everyday people over the state.
264 pages, Paperback
Published September 28, 2021
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July 21, 2025Really cool book that is about the significance of the illegal videocassette underground from the 70s-90s in Iran and its legacy in the decades after. I enjoyed learning about how the underground video infrastructure gathered people into collectives amid political upheaval and the video dealers served as creative laborers that facilitated that culture.
I thought it was interesting how cassettes serve as an archive not of film history, but of the memories of film culture back during the medium’s peak. Since cassettes degrade over time, they literally do not work as actual archives of films so nowadays they exist as objects not as the media itself. Atwood notes that because of the informal, illegal nature of the underground, the history of video at the time is largely constructed through memories of the era anchored in the cassettes left behind. In contrast, media culture today has no materiality since we rely on streaming for almost all our media. I wonder what our memories of media will look like in the future if since our memories are untethered to actual objects? Personally, I feel like when I watch a movie or a show, i’m prone to forgetting what I liked about it over time and maybe if I had a physical copy I might not forget as quickly. I worry that in 10 or 20 years I will look back at the media I enjoy now and only be able to say “it was good” or “it was bad”. Maybe i’ll be clutching my labubu reflecting fondly on ig reels dubai chocolate matcha latte video i saw in a dentist waiting room.
I thought it was interesting how cassettes serve as an archive not of film history, but of the memories of film culture back during the medium’s peak. Since cassettes degrade over time, they literally do not work as actual archives of films so nowadays they exist as objects not as the media itself. Atwood notes that because of the informal, illegal nature of the underground, the history of video at the time is largely constructed through memories of the era anchored in the cassettes left behind. In contrast, media culture today has no materiality since we rely on streaming for almost all our media. I wonder what our memories of media will look like in the future if since our memories are untethered to actual objects? Personally, I feel like when I watch a movie or a show, i’m prone to forgetting what I liked about it over time and maybe if I had a physical copy I might not forget as quickly. I worry that in 10 or 20 years I will look back at the media I enjoy now and only be able to say “it was good” or “it was bad”. Maybe i’ll be clutching my labubu reflecting fondly on ig reels dubai chocolate matcha latte video i saw in a dentist waiting room.
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