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| re: ‘It’s ludicrous’: Ian McKellen sparks debate over trigger warnings in theatre | |
| Posted by: Delvino 10:30 am EDT 10/03/23 | |
| In reply to: ‘It’s ludicrous’: Ian McKellen sparks debate over trigger warnings in theatre - young-walsingham 04:28 pm EDT 10/02/23 | |
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| Over the years, the trigger warning discussion has (appropriately, I think) separated into two distinct categories, which were erroneously conflated: course content in academia vs warnings on entertainment and standalone works of art. As a staunch believer in consumer rights, I am pleased to see the blurred lines ebb. Ticket buyers are very different from students participating in an educational environment purposefully designed to stimulate and challenge. Certainly no one is harmed by these up front warnings on shows, and in the case of some subjects - fatal disease, depicted violence, suicide - the PTSD factor is critical. I'll leave the classroom and syllabus matter to another board; really a different debate, at least in my opinion. | |
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| re: ‘It’s ludicrous’: Ian McKellen sparks debate over trigger warnings in theatre | |
| Posted by: portenopete 12:14 pm EDT 10/03/23 | |
| In reply to: re: ‘It’s ludicrous’: Ian McKellen sparks debate over trigger warnings in theatre - Delvino 10:30 am EDT 10/03/23 | |
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| I don't think there needs to be a great hue-and-cry about them and I suspect that McKellen's blunt and honest assessment was the result of some muckraking journalist peppering him with questions and being an octogenarian codger with a probably-bigger-than-average ego, he just said what was on his mind as old people do. (I'm 57, so I'm sort of an old person.) I don't find it so hard to ignore the warnings. The longstanding warning about strobe lights has faded into invisibility and irrelevance for me. Presumably people with epilepsy are much more eagle-eyed in their reading. But I do think that by normalising the trigger warnings, we are paving the way for increasing numbers of people to regard any unpleasant or upsetting qualities in a work of art to respond to such inherent aspects of a play or a movie or a book as somehow "wrong" or "provocative". If I DON'T feel angry or frightened or amused or shocked by a work of art, then I think "What's the point?" And definitely I do not want to know if there is a suicide or a quadruple homicide or a penis on display before the show begins. I go out of my way to go into a show or a movie with zero preconceptions. If I perceive that a piece has been critically well-received and/or has familiar artists on the team or is at a theatre with a track record of quality and artistry, then I buy a ticket. And read nothing about it. |
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