VHS is a maligned medium. Libraries are rapidly culling it from their collections, a project in Ontario, Canada, wants to recycle the province’s 2.26 billion tapes, and the rise of digital streaming has made it mostly irrelevant to the general public. It’s often described as obsolete, even by those charged with preserving America’s cultural heritage. One reason Yale bought this video collection was to preserve rare titles—it’s been estimated that about 40 to 45 percent of content distributed on VHS never made its way into any subsequent digital format. But the primary focus of this collection effort was the physical nature of the medium and the cultures it changed and created.

While not as convenient as a digital format, the physical qualities of VHS offer much more than the 0s and 1s carried on an electron stream directly to televisions. Much like a book’s physical features (paper, binding, dust jackets, the bite of the metal type into the page), and the seemingly secondary aspects of the text (the preface, acknowledgement page, table of contents, index), VHS tapes have tangible qualities that have defined the medium’s uniqueness and its legacy.

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When VHS broke into the popular consciousness in the early ’80s, the demand for it was immediate. To set tapes apart and guarantee profitability, distribution companies like Wizard Video, Thriller Video, and Media Home Entertainment commissioned box art containing shocking, lurid, and gory imagery of sex and violence. Big boxes were quickly introduced, adding several inches of real estate to the original slip covers in order to entice viewers. Not to mention the gimmicky boxes introduced by companies like Imperial Entertainment, who created 3-D molded covers that also featured light and sound effects.

David Gary

Beyond grabby images, boxes offered blurbs (“Written, directed, and produced by women, SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE will scare you right down to the core”) and witty tag lines (Nail Gun Massacre: “It’s Cheaper Than A Chainsaw!”). The first and last few feet of tape often carried trailers that helped viewers place the movie in a particular genre and learn about other titles they might be interested in. These trailers, which could be quite long and involved, offer evidence of how distribution companies were figuring out the best way to communicate with audiences.

Today, a variety of video content is readily available via YouTube, streaming services, and BitTorrent downloads, but in the late ’70s and ’80s, the idea that someone could control what they watched was revolutionary. Studios tightly managed their content and essentially charged for every viewing. The VCR, however, tapped into a popular desire to consume culture at will. In response to huge demand, distribution companies dug deep into their inventories to fill shelves in rental stores, and amateur moviemakers emerged to satisfy the market. “Shot on video” movies like Sledgehammer, Video Violence, and Blood Cult could be produced on low budgets with relative ease thanks to camcorder technology, and could still find shelf space next to Hollywood blockbusters. Like the steam presses that produced the dime novels and yellow journalism of the late-19th century, videotape allowed a popular culture to emerge.