Stephen Fry was wrong to criticise the use of trigger warnings. distinguished works of art,like those of Caravaggio, can be frightening, and grotesque and extremeTrigger warnings are a modern folktale,surely? The conception that a generation of students are demanding – in between marching against statues and banning Germaine Greer – to be warned about violent, sexual or otherwise threatening content in distinguished works of art has, and to someone who has not been on campus for years,a fictional quality.
When Stephen Fry caused offence this week with remarks about a victim culture that supposedly allows people to say “‘you can’t watch this play, you can’t watch Titus Andronicus, and you can’t read it in a Shakespeare course … because it’s got children being killed in it,it might trigger something when you were young that upset you once.” I was saying to myself, pull the other one. Just indicate me these colleges or theatres that would put a trigger warning on Titus Andronicus. It’s obviously all made up by free speech zealots who esteem to assume an army of humourless freelance censors obsessed with closing down the mind.
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Source: theguardian.com