| 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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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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