*TRIGGER WARNING: THIS BLOG IS ABOUT TRIGGER WARNINGS*
The other day I was having a chat with a buddy, just discussing some random memes on Instagram, and then we saw a certain “news meme” that piqued our interests. Apparently Disney+ placed a content warning before certain episodes of The Muppet Show claiming “This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures”. I was like;
“What the hell is this? How can fucking puppets be racist,” and then I was like “Oh right, that show started in the 70s. Some of their songs and jokes might not have aged well.”
I did appreciate that Disney decided to place a trigger warning instead of just cutting out certain parts from the episodes, which would have been pathetic of them to do, but my friend felt that some people are being way too sensitive over some jokes. Usually I would agree with him, I do think our society is growing more sensitive each day (I can’t even make a joke about myself without someone else getting offended), but I told him that the only reason Disney uses trigger/content warnings for their shows and movies is so they don’t get too much bad publicity. We both switched to a different topic after that, but that little bit of news got me thinking about those warnings.
It’s easy for people to just delete these problematic topics from movies, tv shows, and books, but that’s just plain stupid. Avoiding these issues (racism, homophobia, sexism, police brutality, etc…) will rob future generations of learning that these topics/issues actually exist. People who try to prevent these issues from being taught in schools, or even banned from musuems, are essentially admiting to supporting censorship, which is fucking diabolical. My literary theory professor even brought up the topic that people merely avoiding or “deleting” these issues may cause future people to make the same mistakes our ancestors made, which is why she is a firm believer in trigger/content warnings.
Trigger warnings act as a little heads up for people, saying something like “Hey, how’s going? Just wanna let you know you’re about to witness some fucked up shit, so proceed with caution”, and that’s a good thing. Not only does it help people decide if they want to continue watching or reading the material, but it could also shine some light on certain topics that the reader/viewer might not know a lot about, or it might offer some relatability for people who have experience with issues the material they’re viewing brings up.
My point is, people should not try to cut out these issues from entertainment and social media. We have the right to speak our minds about these problems, and the more people who talk about them, the more awareness it brings. So censorship can go fuck itself, but trigger warnings can stick around. As long as these warnings don’t deny people of the truth, everything will be fine.
To wrap things up, I’ll leave you all with a little bit of extra wisdom. A wise person once said “We make mistakes to learn from them”, and I think we need to start following that kind of logic. Until next time….
Hall of Mercs 