Hollywood legend Dame Judi Dench has been acting since the 1950s and played all kinds of roles on the big screen and on stage, so she’s probably something of an authority when it comes to what is fit for cinema and threatre. Something that has recently become a little more complicated due to the sensitivities of ‘modern audiences’, who are rather more easily upset and offended these days.
Speaking to The Radio Times this week, Judi Dench was asked about trigger warnings and the impact it could have on an audience’s experience at the theatre:
“Do they do that? My God, it must be a pretty long trigger warning before King Lear or Titus Andronicus! Crikey, is that really what happens now?
“I can see why they exist, and it is preparing people, I suppose, but if you’re that sensitive, don’t go to the theatre, because you could be very shocked. Where is the surprise of seeing and understanding it in your own way?
“Why go to the theatre if you’re going to be warned about things that are in the play? Isn’t the whole business of going to the theatre about seeing something that you can be excited, surprised, or stimulated by? It’s like being told they’re all dead at the end of King Lear. I don’t want to be told.”
Well said, Judi Dench. Well said, indeed! The question is, why are audiences today so delicate and fragile that they need a warning to mentally prepare themselves for the type of content that people have been enjoying since the invention of theatre, TV and cinema? Obviously not all people, in fact not even most people, believe these warnings are necessary, but there’s got to be enough of them that the powers that be deem these sorts of warnings essential for the modern consumer.
As Judi Dench says, these warnings take away from the shock, the unexpectedness and the excitement of the whole experience. Can’t we just take the warning signs and trigger warnings off everything for a few years and see how it goes? Come on, everyone. Let’s suck it up and give it try!
For the Gen Z teens who labeled American Pie ‘problematic’ after watching it for the first time, click HERE.
