Trigger Warnings: Are They ALL Necessary?

Jenn McKinlay: Some time in that glorious week between Christmas and the New Year where time has no meaning, Hub and I went to see the movie AMERICAN FICTION. I had seen the trailer and the author bits resonated so resoundingly that I knew I had to see the movie. 

Well…it was not the satirical comedy I expected. I mean it was, but it was so much more. It was so very much more in fact, that in the first few minutes during a scene that was particularly poignant for me on a personal level, the Hub leaned over the tub of popcorn between us and asked, “Do we need to leave? It’s okay if we do.” I shook my head and soldiered on and I am so glad I did. Needless to say, I loved this movie but that’s not the point of my post. My point is that we now live in a world full of trigger warnings (not for real guns, because…yeah, let’s put a pin in that because if I start ranting I might never stop). Ahem. 

Emotional trigger warnings. They are everywhere. You pick up a book these days and before you can even read the first page, it warns you that there are discussions of eating disorders, mental illness, suicide, alcoholism, pet death, and on and on and on inside the novel – which is FICTION. 

Frankly, I have very mixed feelings about this because had I seen a trigger warning for AMERICAN FICTION for the scene that reduced me to a napkin clutching blubbering mess, I might have decided not to see one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long while. And that would have been a real shame. 

I’m also pondering the exact purpose of these warnings because a professional reviewer for one of the literary trade magazines dinged my upcoming book because it made her cry – she reduced it from five stars to four because there was no trigger warning in the advance copy she received. Yes, she said that.  *sigh*

So, how about it, Reds? How do you feel about having trigger warnings put in your books? Yay or nay and why?

HALLIE EPHRON: What I don’t like about trigger warnings is that they cast a shadow over the reading experience. I read in a protective crouch, waiting to be sideswiped by whatever I’ve been warned of. And it seems as if it’s being used as a big CYA across a very wide swath of narratives.

RHYS BOWEN:  I have had to deal with this so frequently recently. I had to put a foreword in one book to warn readers they may be shocked at the way the Brits treated the native Kenyans in 1935. Also about the way sexual predators were tolerated in those days. 

I felt like saying “It’s History. It’s how it was. I’m showing the truth. Get over it.” or, “Learn from it. Feel better that we have improved.”

I think one of the important things about reading is that it’s good to be shocked. We are shocked when a character is revealed to be a murderer, when we read about brutality in WWII  It’s good to be taken out of our comfort zone, to read something and know it isn’t right and feel angry or disgusted. Life cannot all be smoothed over for us. Life is sometimes gritty, unfair, brutal.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I am so grateful to hear this about American FIction, Jenn. I had the same expectation that you did, and cannot wait to see it–but I’m gonna CRY?  WHAT? Can you tell me in an email what happens? Or wait–I’ll just look it up.

In that particular case, it seems like a marketing failure, then– they should say “poignant, heartbreaking and somehow hilarious and timely”:--then I’m at least warned. If promo content was simply clearer, we wouldn't need to have warnings that say: be careful, you might be upset. 

I fear I am not qualified to answer this, though, because there’s nothing that would upset me enough–if it were something that I’m not comfortable reading, I’d just stop. But other people’s lives are different from mine.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, this is so interesting. I don’t want to see trigger warnings on things I might be interested in reading. As Hallie said, I don’t want to be reading with expectations of whatever the dreaded thing is. A general idea of what the book is about is just fine. If it doesn’t sound like my cup of tea, I can pass. If I’m reading something and find it distressing, I can quit. I can’t imagine all the wonderful books I might have missed if they had come with warning labels, and I very much hope I’m never required to add one to my books.

LUCY BURDETTE: There is a lovely woman who reviews cozy mysteries who tells authors not to send books with suicide in them as she had a tragedy in her family and this is too hard for her. This to me makes sense–she knows what sets her off and she doesn’t want to read it. I think we should all be capable of assessing and making choices, right? Though I think Hank makes an excellent point about the marketing–the book jacket should give us enough of a hint to choose whether to buy and read the book–or not! Now I cannot wait to see American Fiction…

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I can understand the importance of certain kinds of scenes perhaps being acutely painful to someone. I have a dear cousin who lost a child to a particular form of suicide, and I can imagine it feeling like a punch to the chest if she were to run across a depiction of that in a film or in fiction. On the other hand, I find graphic violence extremely disturbing  - as in, I’ve never seen all of THE GODFATHER - but you don’t tend to see explicit warnings for that, except for the pre-show “Warning: scenes of sex, smoking, bad language and violence” which is SO broad as to be useless.

My take? It should be in the individual to protect themselves if they are deeply sensitive to something. When I had kids, I didn’t want them exposed to violence, so I read up on any movies before I took them. I read books along with them, and read reviews. There’s SO much information out there, if you know you’re going to be traumatized by a scene with clowns, read up on the book before you buy it!

JENN: For a deeper discussion by information professionals about content warnings, I highly recommend this article in School Library Journal: Trigger Warnings and Emotional Distress

Lest you think I am being overly sensitive (dare I say, triggered?) about content warnings, there is a website -- BookTriggerWarnings.Com -- specifically devoted to letting readers know what books contain content that might be alarming for readers. Am I listed on this website? Yes, but weirdly, not for my murder mysteries -- you know, where there are MURDERS -- but rather for my romcom PARIS IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA because the main character is dealing with grief. No one dies. She's just finally dealing with it. 

The librarian in me loves that readers who are sensitive to certain topics can weed out content that they might find disturbing but the author in me can't help but think, who missed a comedic trip to Ireland, France, and Italy because they were shooed away from a book they might have enjoyed? Hmm.

Also, because I found this crowd sourced content warning site while researching this blog post, I have to share it for those who do want a heads up about the content of the media they consume: DoesTheDogDie.Com Interestingly, their format allows viewers to vote so there is some debate around each warning. Full disclosure, if I see a movie with a dog in it, I am totally checking it on this site before I watch.

What about you, Readers, what is your take on trigger warnings? Yay or nay and why?

Revising Agatha Christie

 RHYS BOWEN:  We’ve all been talking about the revisions that have taken place in the works of several known literary figures recently.  Their works are being altered to conform to current sensibilities, creating debate over how much we should try to reform the past and whether we have the right to do so without permission of the author.

In Agatha Christie’s novels terms like ‘oriental, gypsy and native’ have been removed. Ian Fleming’s books are being scrubbed of racist and sexist phrases. (can you picture Bond girls wearing plaid skirts below the knee and suggesting a game of ping pong to James?)

We’ve all read about Roald Dahls books with adjectives like fat and ugly being taken out as well as references to skin color.

So is this a good idea? Is the aim of literature not to offend anybody? Are most readers not wise enough to think “this is how it was in the past. People were more racist/sexist.”  

I’ve just experienced this myself in the last round of edits for my upcoming Royal Spyness book. I too have had to remove words like “natives” even though I know that a person living in 1936 would have used them. The one occasion I dug my heels in was when an explorer says he was chased by tribesmen across the desert. No, they were not local inhabitants. They were Bedouins. Tribesmen.

In one of my books, set in Kenya, I had to write a foreword to explain that this was how the British colonials treated the natives  local inhabitants in those days, even though we find it offensive today.  How else do we know exactly how it was? How else do we learn?

My feeling is that books are supposed to invoke emotions in us. We are supposed to feel rage about Oliver Twist asking for more in the orphanage. We are supposed to feel rage and weep when we read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Books should be learning experiences.  When you read about what some of my characters had to endure in WWII you should feel that war is never a good idea.

So how far do we go with this cleansing of anything that could offend? Does Oliver Twist now live a happy children’s home? Does Fagin, that kind old man, take the children out for fun walks where they sometimes find a handkerchief fallen from a pocket?  I personally do not do well with violence in books. So no torture scenes from now on. No on page killing please. Every murder must be neat and sterile.  And what about bad language. Some readers get offended at four letter words. So are drug dealers now going to have to say, “Please go away, you naughty policeman?”

What do you think, Reds? Do you think we should purge books written long ago so that they conform to current sensibilities? Don’t you think readers can rationalize that this is how it was and even learn from past mistakes?

HALLIE EPHRON: I think… it’s complicated. When viewed from my more (what?) privileged viewpoint it looks one way. When I try to put myself in the shoes of someone who is arguing for the changes? No, I still don’t get it. But then…Coincidentally I recently managed to get my hands on a copy of a play my parents wrote; it ran on Broadway for a year, a hit, starting in 1944. It’s about a young couple who have a baby during the Depression and have to move in with her parents. Other relatives move in, too, and chaos ensues. It’s a farce  with the baby as a Whoopi cushion. 

Here’s the thing: It’s totally racist. There’s a Black housekeeper who is SO stereotyped it’s horrifying. Yes it’s a period piece. No amount of rewriting can make it palatable to today’s audiences. And my parents, old Lefties, thought they were liberal and racially tolerant. 

So, like I say, it’s complicated

JENN McKINLAY: I’m a recovering librarian so I am not down with censorship of any kind. And, yes, purging old books of anything offensive is censorship. How can we measure the progress of society if we take away the starting mark? I understand that some will argue that those original works promote racism, misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia, etc., but I believe it’s the opposite. I don’t believe they promote these things so much as they call them out by their mere existence.

I remember reading the opener of a John D. MacDonald book where Travis McGee slaps a woman (she was hysterical, of course, she was) and I thought nope, and yet, I kept reading because it was published in 1965 and I knew it was a reflection of the time in which it was written. Could we go back and erase the slap? Sure. But again, how does society improve if we don’t have an accurate reflection of ourselves from which to grow? My other core belief, as a librarian, is that a good library has something to offend everyone. So there’s that.

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m with Jenn and Rhys here–we should not try to fix what’s already written as those books are an important part of our history. It’s a different matter if an author wants to rewrite something, or for that matter, if a publisher denies a book because of racist/sexist/anti-LBGTQ language. I’m so worried about the growing trend toward removing books from schools and libraries–this feels like part of that. BTW, Hallie, you must have been horrified to read that play from your parents!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I’m just going to point out that announcing you’re going to publish an “updated, non-offensive” edition for an old book is a terrific way to get an enormous amount of unpaid publicity, and I’m cynical enough to suspect the opportunity to get everyone talking online and in print about your forty-year-old intellectual property might have something to do with these recent efforts - which, you’ll notice, are always announced by the publisher. Think of the sales - from people buying the original “before it’s gone,” and buying the “modern” version in order to either support it or tear it apart. Providentially, every company putting out bowdlerized versions of these classics has said it’s also going to continue selling the original. 

Anyone else notice this? Or do I simply have a low, suspicious mind?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Yikes, it is complicated. I start out being incensed at the idea of "re-writing" (censoring!) books that some people may now find offensive, and then I think that with my white, middle-class, Protestant identity, is that just me shouting out my privilege? But cleaning things up is a slippery slope and if we start down it, where does it end? Who gets to be the final arbitrator? And shouldn't we be aware of the changes in society's norms and perceptions? For instance, I've recently been rereading Dorothy Sayers. When I first read Sayers in my teens it would never have occurred to me that she used anti-Semitic terms. Now they make me cringe. But if you change them you lose the opportunity to see how we've progressed in the hundred years since they were written.

And my cynical self agrees with Julia.

RHYS: So what about you, dear friends? Should we re-write books to take out anything that might now offend or should we leave it to the judgment of the reader to realize that we have progressed in some ways and are now more enlightened as to what is offensive?  Or is there a middle ground?