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Warning: this column is about trigger warnings. That’s the kind of lame witticism writers are tempted by (and succumb to), regarding trigger warnings, the latest subcategory for mockery in the genus, Political Correctness. The delightful, multifarious Stephen Fry stuck his foot in it this week:
“You can’t watch Macbeth because it’s got children being killed, it might trigger something when you were young that upset you, because uncle touched you in a nasty place, well I’m sorry. It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry your uncle touched you, you get some of my sympathy, but your self-pity gets none.”
PCness has been under bombardment like this for almost 30 years, though no one’s yet shown that it actually exists or has any formal adherents. Trump and the Republicans are basically running on (i.e. against) it. It’s a punching bag, pulled out of the air to thwart the previously voiceless and powerless when they start demanding better verbal treatment and often do so clumsily exactly because their means of expression have been starved or belittled in the past.
Trigger warnings are supposed to happen in university courses and their prissiness (your uncle) is easy to dismiss; but students — women or LGBTQ people, for instance — have at least in the past been subjected to casual slights by profs teaching the novels of, say, Norman Mailer or Mordecai Richler. It may have been inadvertent but nobody thinks that makes it harmless. It might help to think of trigger warnings (which make me uneasy, I confess) less as directed toward students than as a form of sensitivity training for their instructors. There’s nothing wrong with teachers learning from their students; in fact most would say, I expect, that those are the best moments in a classroom.
I do, come to think of it, issue ersatz trigger warnings when asking students to read essays on media by the late, great Harold Innis. I say they’ll find it hard slogging, they won’t understand much and they may feel inept; but they should soldier on till they come to the odd phrase that makes blinding sense. It’s not the same as being reminded of a rape and yet intellectual self-esteem in this society is a touchy area too. People hate being thought of as not smart, especially in the conventional, verbally cocksure way. So I don’t mind coddling them on that front even if other trigger warnings make me wary.
In fact the underlying concept is more common than you’d think from the ritual bashing it takes. Nobody thinks it’s OK to be sucker punched and we all take measures not to be blindsided, including by that nasty uncle. It’s normal to arm ourselves in advance by anticipating the worst that might happen. Consider these mindsets the psycho-historical lineage of trigger warnings, which is just another part of the human cultural toolkit.
Do they work? It’s iffy. Take the warnings on newscasts, about images that might be “disturbing.” Just how is that going to help? True, you could send the kids away but then they’ll find something far more agitating on the Internet.
Movie or theatre reviews are a kind of advance warning of what you’re going to like or hate. But back when I was writing plays, even a good review could undermine the experience for both audience and actors. The laughs came a bit too quickly, as if people were preprogrammed instead of simply present.
I speak as someone who did a fair amount of avoidance, at times in my life, of topics or images that might trigger painful feelings. That used to be called repression and in my case at least it led to no good. I’ve had traumatic surprises in movies and, if I’d had a trigger warning to flee them beforehand, it might’ve changed my life. But for better or worse? Of that I have no idea. That’s the rub with trigger warnings. They’re an attempt to control things that are largely unpredictable and uncontrollable. Enough said, I’m feeling tense.
Finally, what about spoiler alerts? They’re the great trigger warnings of our time. (And Game of Thrones returns next weekend!) I came to GOT late and, a few times, found out far more than I wanted to know while innocently scouting around online. In cases like that, bring those stop signs on.
This column was first published in the Toronto Star.
Photo: Robert Couse-Baker/flickr
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