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
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