Triggering Triggers That Trigger
Dame Judi Dench is a great actress. Offstage she’s only human. But her fame gives her a platform. And her recent screed against trigger warnings reveals that humanity, in her case an inability or unwillingness to allow other people’s lived experience to have validity, instead presuming that everyone is like her. And to be fair, the way her words have been reported may colour (SWIDT) her actual meaning in a way she didn’t actually intend:
https://variety.com/2024/legit/news/judi-dench-criticizes-trigger-warnings-theater-1236005702/
The article quotes her as saying people shouldn’t go to the theater unless they are willing to be surprised. I go to be moved or delighted or amused. There may be surprises involved.
Consider the following scenario. I go into a restaurant, hungry. The menu consists of one line, the restaurant’s title. I ask what’s for dinner. They tell me it’s wonderful and I will enjoy it. By coming in I am presumed to have consented to accept whatever they serve. This is not a likely scenario, is it? And if I have dietary restrictions, lactose intolerance, for example (which I do), it could be really problematic.
Well, theater is a restaurant for the mind. And trigger warnings—let’s stop right there. Many people are, ironically, triggered by the words “trigger warning” and become upset and oppositional. So let’s use “content warning” or even “content labeling” as a safer moniker for letting people know what they are getting into. Lest we trigger people….
Movies have a rating system. Why not live theater? Let’s take King Lear as an example. Dame Judi does! First of all, the plot is not exactly a surprise. The sort of people likely to buy tickets already know the story. Dame Judi certainly does. What they might not know is how the production tells the story. This is where strobe lights and loud noises come into play. Those are things that are already customarily labeled so that ticket buyers are aware. Similarly, Don Giovanni has a well-known story but modern productions often display the sexual situations onstage whereas in the original they all offstage. Sexual content and violence are things that audiences have a right to know. Opera directors currently seem determined to push buttons—without any warning that the original setting has been updated and there will be nuclear power plants, yellow raincoats, and gratuitous nudity. It’s not that inventive productions are inherently bad, but there should be truth in advertising! New Coke vs. Coke Classic….
I got a good taste of this problem at a performance of The Inheritance, Part 1, on Broadway. There was a sex scene. The two guys were fully clothed. And VERY verbal! Between the words and the actions the scene was imaginatively pornographic, very hot. Two audience members near me leaped to their feet and fled, pushing their way across a row of people. I’m guessing they were a mother and daughter. Was it the cumulative gayness or the graphic sex? Either way, a content label might have benefitted them—and the people they trampled!
There used to be content labels for theater. We called them reviews. Formal criticism is all but dead. There are far fewer newspapers and the ones that survive do not prioritize reviewing theater or music. The information that most people get is from online sources. Some of which are quite good. But there is no organized sense of what’s going on to choose from. So any tool which helps people buy tickets to things they actually want to see can only be a good thing.
I have seen the suggestion that each play should have a QR code saying scan here if you want a content summary. That would do. The main point, as far as I’m concerned, is that content labels benefit some people and hurt nobody. So what’s the point of objecting to them?
My son summed up the need for “trigger warnings” as an act of compassion in graphic form. This was some time ago and some things have changed since then but the concept is still valid.
https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/11/what-trigger-warnings-are/