“I wish someone, or something, could’ve just warned me what was coming, and I would never have watched the opening ceremony,” lamented a neighbour as everyday conversations turned to reviews of the games as the Paris Olympics ended.
By all accounts the event was a magnificent success, but for the unfortunate uproar following what many read as a blasphemous portrayal of the Last Supper.
The statement resonated with many, especially families in local communities. They complained bitterly that some form of warning of what was coming would’ve helped to prevent younger children from witnessing the offending scenes.
It meant parents now had no choice but to discuss complex issues with their kids they may have wanted to leave for later.
These sentiments are not new or strange, but increasingly commonplace as virtual technologies and social media combine to cause an unending bombardment of images.
The need expressed is for “trigger warnings” – clear and prominent messages that warn audiences, readers and participants in a public conversation that the content that will follow may trigger a traumatic emotional response.
In psychological terms, a “trigger” is an experience that causes someone to remember a traumatic incident from the past and, at least in emotional terms, relive it in that moment.
A trigger warning therefore prepares you for themes and images that may follow in the lecture on campus, the movie that will start, the theatre production to follow, and in the book to be discussed at a book club, and many other instances, so that people can self-regulate – mediate their responses, or opt out and decide to leave the space.
As a tool to empower individuals and audiences to make informed choices, and to direct authors, producers and orators to be more sensitive to audience context, trigger warnings make sense. As a form of cultural expression they have become a proxy of inclusivity, of a modern society that remains aware of the traumatic histories and continuing struggles of injustice.
More than warning individuals of traumas that may be triggered and threaten to re-traumatise someone, trigger warnings have become warnings of a more public kind, to mediate triggers for groups of people that share similar realities.
The warning that a theatre production on racial histories includes a scene of racial violence therefore does more than warn members of an audience.
It also addresses groups that on the face of it share similar pasts that shared traumas may be triggered, as much as it shows that the production team is sensitive and committed to inclusivity – something as simple as a brief sentence at the start of an event has become a flag bearer-for democracy. But has it?
Critics of trigger warnings argue that they actually frame the content and intent of a text, production and image for the reader and audience.
Rather than leaving it to the individual and community to engage with the material afresh and develop their own interpretation and meanings, the authors of the event already decide on their behalf that the content may risk traumas.
Rather than enabling choice, they prevent it, they argue.
Read in this way, trigger warnings, as a proxy for histories and continuing realities of injustice and societal commitments to change, are indicative of power hierarchies where those historically excluded from decision-making are now again subjected to predetermined meanings.
Simply put, critics argue that the warning of a traumatic theme that may follow tells the citizen they are not yet ready to decide, not yet ready for democracy.
* Rudi Buys, NetEd Group Chief Academic Officer and Executive Dean, DaVinci Business Institute.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media
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