Warnings about Trigger Warnings

Last fall, Sir Ian McKellen railed against trigger warnings in the theatre: “Outside theatres and in the lobbies, including this one [he was referring to The Other Palace, where he was appearing in Frank and Percy], the audience is warned ‘there is a loud noise and at one point, there are flashing lights’, ‘there is reference to smoking’, ‘there is reference to bereavement.’  I think it’s ludicrous, myself, yes, absolutely. I quite like to be surprised by loud noises and outrageous behaviour on stage.”

Ralph Fiennes joined the discussion in February, suggesting that “I think the impact of theatre should be that you’re shocked and you should be disturbed. I don’t think you should be prepared for these things and when I was young, (we) never had trigger warnings for shows.”

And now Dame Judi Dench has weighed in on the subject: “[If] you’re that sensitive, don’t go to the theatre, because you could be very shocked. Where is the surprise of seeing and understanding it in your own way?  Why go to the theatre if you're going to be warned about things that are in the play? Isn’t the whole business of going to the theatre about seeing something that you can be excited, surprised, or stimulated by?”

Curmie’s commentary on the matter is considerably less likely to receive international attention, but he does have some thoughts.  First, ever the Confucian, Curmie notes that all cases are different.  More to the point, there are questions to be asked.

The logical place to start, it would seem, would be at the extremes.  Audience members who have specific medical conditions that could be aggravated by something in a production should obviously have the opportunity to know before they buy a ticket what effects are being used.  Strobe lights can induce epileptic seizures; smoking onstage or using haze in a small, poorly ventilated theatre could cause serious problems for spectators with certain respiratory conditions.  This kind of warning definitely needs to happen.  Fiennes mentions this explicitly, and I think we can grant that McKellen and Dench would have no objections.

At the other end of the continuum are the silly concerns of the pearl-clutchers.  If it’s only your tender sensibilities that are being offended, tough.  If all it takes to give you an attack of the vapors is to see someone drink a shot of whiskey (actually watered-down tea or flat cola, perhaps with a little food dye as necessary), or to see an onstage slap, or to hear a racial slur or a vulgarity derived from the Anglo-Saxon from characters who would use them, or it comes to your attention that the cultural mores of other times or places seem quaint or even offensive today, then kindly do not set foot in the theatre, any theatre, ever again.

Issuing warnings, especially unavoidable ones, for such trivial matters is indeed to infantilize the entire audience, and actually does interfere with their reception of the show.  If I’m told there’s going to be a shootout on stage, part of my mind is going to be occupied with when that is going to happen rather than simply following the play’s action and, perhaps, being surprised when the gunfire erupts.

Knowing what is going to happen, of course, can happen in a variety of ways.  One of those questions that need to be asked is whether this is a new play or part of the canon or neither.  Whether or not you’ve seen or read the plays in question, if you don’t know that the title characters in Romeo and Juliet don’t survive Act V, or that Godot never comes, you need to get out more.  On the other hand, new plays, even popular ones, haven’t yet entered the public consciousness, and there probably isn’t a whole lot written about them.  In these cases, the producers might need to be a little more forthcoming about content that could be problematic.

In between, there are the plays that might be well enough known to those in Curmie’s profession but wouldn’t be for many potential playgoers.  Titus Andronicus is probably the goriest of Shakespeare’s plays, a fact readily discernible with even a few seconds’ search on the Google machine, but despite the Julie Taymor film version (damn, was that really a quarter century ago?), the average person might indeed be taken by surprise (and not in a good way) if they didn’t spend that minute online.

A variation on the theme happened to Curmie a few years ago.  He went to see Rosmersholm at one of London’s West End theatres.  The play is one of Henrik Ibsen’s lesser-known works, but Curmie had devoted a large chunk of a grad school seminar paper to it, and had never had the opportunity to see it on stage.  The key point here is that thirtysomething years had passed between the writing of that essay and the viewing of the play: enough time that even though I’d studied the play pretty carefully once upon a time, I’d forgotten all but the general outline of the plot… and I couldn’t remember the ending.

I hadn’t paid any particular attention to the promotional materials when I bought my ticket, and the houselights were rather dark when I took my seat, so I didn’t really look at my program(me).  At the “interval,” as is my wont at theatres east of the Atlantic, I made my way to the bar… where I encountered a poster which showed the two leads… well… as they were at the end of the play.  I immediately remembered how the play concludes, and my experience as a playgoer was negatively affected.  It wasn’t ruined, but although that was a tasty gin and tonic, I rather wish I hadn’t gone to the bar.

One of Curmie’s mentors, for whom Curmie served as a graduate teaching assistant for an Intro to Theatre class, strayed from standard practice in such courses by not requiring students to read beforehand the plays they were about to see, and indeed suggesting that they not do so if they hadn’t already.  He insisted, and I think he was right, that seeing a play without preconceptions, without knowing what is going to happen, is an opportunity to be cherished.  That doesn’t mean, of course, that Curmie didn’t want culturally literate people to come see his productions of Gypsy or Tartuffe or Macbeth, but we must acknowledge that the surprises those works offer will affect neophytes in ways veteran playgoers might wish they could re-experience.

Another of those questions that needs to be asked is whether the alleged trigger is enacted or merely narrated.  At least some of what McKellen describes is patently ridiculous to include in a warning.  References to smoking or bereavement or cancer?  Seriously?  Things do change a little if the topic is, say, sexual assault.  A character who says she’s been raped is not a reason to include a warning.  That said, enacting such an assault on stage is; a detailed description of the event… maybe.

But note that when Curmie says a warning is appropriate, that doesn’t mean the lobby should be plastered with posters.  Rather, website technology is now sufficiently sophisticated that it would be rather easy to have a prospective customer simply click on a button to say that they do or do not want to see content warnings.  If “yes,” then a list of possible triggers would appear, along with a note explaining that it’s unlikely that any play would have all of them, but the prospective theatre-goer could click on, say, “loud noises” without having to learn in advance of the nude scene (or vice versa).  Curmie also notes here that “I’m coming, but should I bring my kids?” is a reasonable question that deserves an answer.

There’s one more variable that Curmie, a career educator, needs to mention.  Things change, even if only slightly, if someone is required to attend: to fulfill the requirements of a course, for example.  Even then, however, it’s reasonable to expect a student to check out the warnings page sufficiently far in advance that other arrangements can be made.

Ultimately, Curmie must agree with the trio of famous actors referenced above: with the rare exceptions mentioned earlier, trigger warnings do more harm than good.  My mind inevitably drifts back to what I wanted to write as a content warning for one show I directed: “If you’re looking at a content warning page to see if you should come see this play, the answer is ‘no.’  Sit this one out; we’ll see you next time.”  If nothing else, this would seem to be a good business decision. 

But, Gentle Reader, if a character mentions in passing that he has cancer, that’s gonna take you by surprise, and you’ll just have to cope.